| rev:text
| - Despite living ten minutes away, I generally avoid going to Norterra as often as humanly possible. Several years ago, I bitterly nicknamed the round-about as the "Circle of Death," due to the fact that few drivers in Phoenix actually know what to do when encountering one on the road.
This complaint aside, I do make occasional exceptions when the situation calls for it. When I noticed that a Texas Roadhouse was opening up in the shopping center, we decided we'd give them a try.
I'm typically not a big fan of chains. It's not just the food itself, but having to deal with the massive crowds all clogging up the restaurant, forcing you to wait ridiculous amounts of time for food that is never quite as good as they seem to think it is. Roadhouse, however, actually isn't too bad when it comes to their food. Former colleagues and myself used to frequent another location during lunch hour, finding that, while the food isn't quite mind-blowing, it's at least consistently good and cheap by the standards of many other places.
As another review pointed out, it appears that everyone who lives within a ten mile radius of the restaurant that isn't dining here is most likely working here. The crowd for an early 6pm Friday night bordered on flat-out annoying. But I guess that's always the case whenever you open up a new restaurant in an area that's largely void of any real entertainment besides going to Harkins.
Unfortunately, despite adding a new restaurant, they forgot that it might be a good idea to add additional parking as well. We were forced to park almost a mile away from the restaurant.
Wait time was about an hour to get in, but once seated, our service was actually decent. If they fibbed and claimed to have been in operation for a year, I could have easily been fooled. Their bread rolls with cinnamon butter were as good as they've always been. We both ordered six ounce sirloins, which were cooked properly and are actually pretty decent quality for the 9.99 asking price. I opted for loaded mashed potatoes and corn, as I was quite distraught to discover that they ran out of my beloved mac and cheese earlier in the day (those damned kids - I'll get them for this!). My girlfriend's salad was passable and she had no complaints about her baked potato.
For the standards of a chain, the food is decent, the price is cheap, and the service seemed to be spot-on. I don't see us becoming regulars, as there are far better places to go for a good steak (with significantly less wait time). But for what it is, I'm sure it'll serve the community quite well.
Recommended if you're in the right mood.
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