6 Best North Carolina Steakhouses: Our Favorite Local Spots for a Great Steak
There’s more to a great steakhouse than a great steak.
Of course, that’s where it starts.
But after that, it’s everything else.
And we don’t just mean the walls, the lighting or how fancy the dining room is.
It’s the people. The service. The noise coming from the tables around you. The bartender who remembers what you drink. The owner walking through the room.
The feeling you get when you settle into your chair and realize you’re in absolutely no hurry to leave.
We eat a lot of steak around North Carolina, but these are six of the places we find ourselves going back to most often.
Not saying there aren’t plenty of other great ones.
Just six places we know, love and would recommend to anybody.
1. Rustic Roots • Bunn 
Probably the one we’ve written about the most, and for good reason.
Rustic Roots sits out in the woods in Bunn and somehow manages to feel special without ever feeling stuffy. The ingredients matter here, the cocktails matter, the service matters, and they can flat cook a steak.
We’ve had everything from a beautifully cooked steak to filet trimmings over Carolina Gold rice here, and somehow we still have to save room for that brown butter cake.
Our biggest complaint these days?
Y’all found out about it and now we can’t get a table.
2. NanaSteak • Durham
NanaSteak is a different kind of steakhouse experience.
It has that downtown Durham energy to it.
A little more polished, a little more city, but still comfortable enough that dinner feels like dinner instead of some formal ceremony.
This is the kind of place we think about when we want a really good steak, a good drink and a night out where the whole experience feels put together.
3. The Depot on First • Knightdale
This one has become a regular for us because it does something Knightdale needed badly.
The Depot is inside a restored early-1900s Sears Catalog home overlooking Knightdale Station Park, and the house itself gives the place a personality before the first plate ever hits the table.
Then the food backs it up.
Hand-cut steaks, seafood, pasta, a menu that changes, locally sourced ingredients and a kitchen that clearly cares about what leaves the pass.
It feels like somebody invited you into a beautiful old house and then happened to cook you one heck of a supper.
4. Carl and Chelle’s Grill Room • Goldsboro
Some places win you over with polish.
Some win you over because they just feel right.
Carl & Chell’s falls into that second category for us. It’s the kind of steakhouse experience where the people are every bit as important as what comes off the grill.
Good steak is what gets you through the door.
Hospitality is what makes you remember where the door is.
5. The Butcher’s Table • Dunn
They keep it simple.
Quality beef, cooked right, at a price point that makes it easy to come back more than once in a blue moon.
Nothing fancy. Nothing trying too hard.
Just a straightforward steakhouse serving a really good steak for a fair price to people in jorts, jeans and everything in between, and sometimes that’s exactly what you want.
6. The Rustler at the Mills • Rocky Mount
One of the newer additions to our regular rotation, sitting right there at Rocky Mount Mills.
A couple local guys with years of experience opened the place with a pretty simple philosophy:
“If you show up, we’ll feed you.”
And they mean it.
Steaks are hand cut in house, the salad bar has fresh vegetables, hand shredded cheese and real made-in-house bacon bits, and then there’s the baked potato, grilled bread and those stewed onions.
Nothing about it feels manufactured to look like an old school steakhouse.
It just feels like one.
Pictured – Tomahawk Steak at Rustic Roots in Bunn, North Carolina
The steak gets us there.
But the people, the room, the little things on the plate and that feeling of being somewhere you actually want to sit awhile?
That’s what brings us back.
If we left off your favorite, we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you personally.
If you own a steakhouse and want us to come try it out, shoot us a message on FB or IG.
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