Walk into the original Bob’s Steak & Chop House on Lemmon Avenue on any night but Sunday, and there’s a good chance the man whose name is on the sign is the one holding the door.
Bob Sambol opened this place in 1993, and after a long detour he’s right back where he started, working the front of the house six nights a week and shaking hands like it’s opening night. In a city that trades in shiny new steakhouses, there’s something wonderful about a founder who simply missed the room and came home to it.
The building has its own history. Before it was Bob’s, 4300 Lemmon Ave. was home to the original Dallas Del Frisco’s. When Dale Wamstad moved that operation north, Sambol stayed behind on Lemmon, and the restaurant opened as Bob and Del’s before the “Del” quietly fell off the sign. The first stretch was lean, with nights when the dining room held only a handful of tables. Sambol kept the doors open anyway, and Bob’s grew from that one room into a steakhouse brand with more than a dozen locations around the country.
Sambol eventually stepped away from the original. In 2019 he bought it back, and he’s been greeting regulars, and turning first-timers into regulars, ever since. A New Yorker by birth, he grew up admiring how fiercely people stuck by their favorite restaurants, and that’s still the whole idea. As he likes to put it, every big occasion gets celebrated with a steak dinner, and nobody ever says, “Let’s go celebrate with chicken.”
The kitchen has a story worth telling, too. Executive chef Victor Gorostieta, who was born in Michoacán, was hired at Bob’s in 2004 as a high school junior washing dishes. He was so proud of that first paycheck that he hung it in his living room like a trophy. He worked his way to line cook, learned every station in the kitchen, made sous chef in 2012 and took over as executive chef in 2013. It’s hard to find a better Dallas restaurant story than the dishwasher who now runs the place.
What comes out of that kitchen hasn’t changed much, and that’s the appeal. The beef is USDA prime from Stock Yards in Chicago, hand-selected from the top two percent of the grade. Most cuts are butchered in-house and seasoned with nothing but kosher salt and black pepper, because good prime doesn’t need anything else.
Before the steak arrives, the table fills up with Bob’s rituals. A hot loaf of locally baked bread comes out first, along with a jar of half-sour pickles, crisp and bright with just a little brine. Then comes the famous glazed carrot, a sweet, glossy giant that has stretched across every steak plate since 1993. It’s an old family recipe, and first-timers almost always laugh when it lands. Then they eat the whole thing.
Back in 2013, Sambol sat down with us on craveRADIO and told the story of that carrot himself. It’s worth a watch.
Every entrée comes with that carrot and a choice of potato, with the smashed potatoes and the skillet-fried potatoes with onions and peppercorn gravy splitting loyalties among the regulars. A prime ribeye and that carrot is about as classic a Dallas dinner as you’ll find, and the room fits the meal, with dark wood, high-backed booths and a dining room built for birthdays, anniversaries and closing a deal.
With the founder at the door and a chef who started at the dish station, the original Bob’s runs on exactly the kind of loyalty Sambol admired as a kid in New York, and you can feel it the minute you walk in.
And Sambol isn’t done. In 2027 he plans to open Charlie’s, a small dining room in the former Adelmo’s space at 5450 W. Lovers Lane in Inwood Village, with Hunter Pond and Rick Dunlap of Vandelay Companies, the group behind Hudson House. Sambol has known both since they were kids, and the restaurant is named for Pond’s son. It will have about 30 tables and no online reservations, and the public books by calling a landline. The inspiration goes back to the East Coast neighborhood dining rooms Sambol grew up around, including The Continental, his father’s restaurant in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. “This is a very personal restaurant for me,” Sambol said when it was announced.
Bob’s Steak & Chop House is at 4300 Lemmon Ave., just north of Uptown, and it’s open Monday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. Call 214-528-9446 for a reservation. We’ve been following Bob’s for a long time, from that 2013 craveRADIO conversation to our 2024 look at Bob’s as a Dallas icon. For more of the city’s best beef, see our Dallas steakhouse guide, and for the full story behind the bread, the pickles and the carrot, Bob’s tells it on its own site.
