Outback Steakhouse

4211 S. Lamar, 383-8024 (and various other locations around town)

Monday-Thursday, 4-10:30pm; Friday, 4-11pm; Saturday, 3-11pm; Sunday, 3-10pm

The Outback is a disappointment. Tea glasses are tiny: One good gulp, and you’re half-empty. The salad was uninspired iceberg, floating in a lake of insipid dressing that bore a faint resemblance to blue cheese. The bread was oddly pumpernickel (or some variant thereof), baked (but not made) in-house. The butter was ice-cold, hard, and dense, making it difficult to spread.

Our rib eye ($17.49/14 oz.) was ordered “just past medium rare” and came out closer to medium-well. It was cut from the chuck end (not the lean end) of the rib eye roll, so it was very fatty for the amount of doneness specified. The flavor was OK, but for the price, my expectations were higher. The baked potato was small and moist, unfluffy, with a tough skin. The potato condiments were too cold, so that by the time they almost melted, the potato had chilled.

Our prime rib ($18.99/16 oz.) was ordered medium rare and arrived medium well. There was no crust from “oven baking” (which adds flavor), and it tasted as if it was not cooked on-site, but merely reheated. It had no appreciable flavor, with a gummy texture.

Our Bloomin’ Onion ($5.99) was perfectly breaded. It prompts the question: How could they take such care with the onion and relegate the steaks to such lower standards? The onion dressing was a strange amalgam of what tasted like a bottled Russian topping with horseradish added, overpowered by the use of too much thyme in the breading mix.

Outback? … Back out.

This article appears in January 14 • 2005.

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Mick Vann is a retired Austin chef who is a food writer and restaurant critic, cookbook author, restaurant consultant, and recipe developer. He moonlights as a University of Texas horticulturist with a propensity for ethnic eats and international food, particularly of the Asian persuasion, but he also knows his way around a plate of soul food or barbecue.