Steak-Out

Steak-Out has been serving char-grilled steaks and burgers around Huntsville and Madison since 1986, when founders David and Rhonda Martin opened the first location alongside David’s brother Danny and his wife Elisa. Four decades later, the Martin family is still actively involved in day-to-day operations, running five locations across Madison County with roughly 250 employees between them, all without ever expanding outside North Alabama.

The Huntsville Hospital area location, at 2105 North Whitesburg Drive, is one of three Huntsville addresses, joined by a South Huntsville location on South Whitesburg Drive and a third on Jordan Lane Northwest, giving Huntsville residents a Steak-Out within a short drive from most parts of the city. Two additional locations sit just over the line in Madison. Every location keeps the same hours and menu, a consistency that comes from decades of the same family running the operation rather than a corporate franchise model imposing standards from outside the state.

The menu centers on USDA Choice char-grilled ribeye steaks, sold in six, nine, and twelve ounce cuts ranging from about nineteen to twenty-nine dollars, alongside an eight ounce filet mignon added to the menu more recently. For a more casual visit, the Steak-Out Cheeseburger and a ribeye steak sandwich sit on the same menu as the full steak plates, along with a Hot Honey Sandwich, a grilled chicken breast filet, a chopped steak lunch special made from ground steak prepared fresh daily, and salads topped with chicken or sirloin and a choice of ten different dressings. Lunch specials run until 3:00 p.m. daily, giving weekday visitors a lower-priced window before the full dinner menu takes over. It is a format that splits the difference between a sit-down steakhouse and a quick-serve counter, letting a lunchtime visitor order a burger and a dinner visitor order a filet mignon from the same kitchen.

Desserts stay simple and Southern, with a slice of New York cheesecake, a fudge brownie, and pints of Blue Bell ice cream in four flavors rounding out the menu. Steak-Out also offers catering, a natural extension of a menu built around cooking steaks quickly and consistently for a crowd, along with delivery in a limited area for a small fee and a free drink for pickup orders that include an entree. Physical and virtual gift cards are available for anyone looking to give the restaurant as a gift rather than order for themselves, and the business also lists employment openings for anyone interested in joining one of its five kitchens. Delivery drivers carry less than twenty dollars in cash for security, a small operational detail that shows up in the restaurant’s own delivery policy and one worth knowing for anyone paying with cash at the door. Delivery is limited to a set radius around each location and requires a ten dollar minimum order, so a single sandwich order from farther away may need to be picked up in person instead.

All five Steak-Out locations run Monday through Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and Friday and Saturday until 10:00 p.m., and all are closed on Sundays. Because the restaurant has been part of the North Alabama dining scene since the mid-1980s, it has become something of a default answer for visitors asking locals where to get a fast, reasonably priced steak in Huntsville rather than driving to a national chain. The same Martin family group also runs Ted’s Bar-B-Q, Rosie’s Cantina, and Shaggy’s Burgers and Tacos, all separate, Huntsville-area restaurants rather than outposts of any national brand, giving visitors who like Steak-Out’s char-grilled cooking a few other family-run stops to try around the same part of town.