Stockyard Grill

If you are in Montgomery, Alabama, wanting to eat delicious beef at a reasonable price, you’re in luck. The Stockyard Grill is a real find. Serving weekday lunch primarily to people who are here to buy and sell cattle, it offers a red-meat repertoire from hamburgers to prime rib to steaks cut however large you want.

The signature cut is a ribeye. Sliced fairly thin, but still overwhelmingly juicy, it gets seasoned with a mix of spices known only to proprietors Kevin and Jennifer Meredith. Kevin’s grandfather created it years ago, and now it adds a magnificent radiance to beef served here. The ribeye comes on a plate or in a sandwich, or as one layer in a somewhat ridiculous item known as the DAM sandwich, which also includes a hamburger, Swiss and American cheeses, and all known garnishes. On Texas toast, of course. The DAM sandwich may be a stunt, but the fact is that the two meats in it are each four-star wonderful.

Beyond beef, the Grill offers a Monday through Friday meat-and-3 menu of pork chops, fried chicken, meat loaf, etc. sided by the likes of purple hull peas, fried okra, and broccoli-cheese casserole.

Dessert is a must. Both peach crisp and buttermilk pie are Jennifer’s recipes, and each is grand in its own way, the crisp all crunchy-chewy-fruity and the pie smooth as velvet.

It’s a boisterous place, the dining room humming with the enthusiasm of auction buyers and sellers as well as high spirits inspired by such very good food as well as by a staff of git-er-done waitresses. The one who took care of me was wearing a shirt that said, “Home of the original steak sandwich.”

The dining room is fairly small and always crowded. It is customary for arriving customers to sign in on a wait-list in the vestibule just outside, then listen to be called to a table by one of the waitstaff.

Again: The Stockyard Grill is open only for lunch, Monday through Friday.