Is There a Lunch Menu, and Is Lunch Cheaper?

This is the part that surprises people. A great many restaurants in this chain open in the afternoon on Monday to Friday rather than at midday, which means a weekday lunch visit is often simply not possible.

The reason is operational. Hand-cut steaks and made-from-scratch sides require substantial preparation, and concentrating that work into an evening service rather than spreading it across a full day is a deliberate choice about quality and staffing.

Weekends are different. Saturday and Sunday opening is typically earlier, which is when a lunch visit is genuinely available at most locations.

Because this varies restaurant by restaurant, the only reliable answer is to check your specific location rather than trusting any national statement — including this one.

There is no separate cut-down lunch card at most locations. The steaks, the ribs, the combinations and the sides are the ones you would get in the evening, at the same prices.

That is worth knowing because people arrive at lunchtime expecting a reduced midday menu at reduced midday prices, which is the convention at a lot of American casual chains. It is not the convention here.

What does change is the room. A weekend lunch service is quieter, the wait is shorter, and it is a considerably easier environment for a family with young children than a Friday evening. If that is why you were asking, the answer is a good one even though the prices are the same.

If the question behind "is there a lunch menu" is "is there a cheaper time to eat", then the answer is yes, and it is not lunch. It is the reduced-price early menu served on weekday afternoons.

That menu covers a fixed set of full entrées at a substantially lower price, with the same two included sides, and it needs no coupon. For anyone whose schedule is flexible, it is the single largest saving available anywhere on the menu, and it beats anything a lunch service would have offered.

The catch is timing: you have to be seated within the window rather than merely arriving before it ends, and the window is on weekdays only. The <a href="/early-dine/">Early Dine page</a> covers the detail.

Where a location is open, ordering to collect at lunch is straightforward and the wait is usually shorter than in the evening. Steaks travel less well than most food — they continue cooking in the box and a medium rare steak can arrive medium — so order a step under if you are collecting.

Ribs, chicken and the fried items travel considerably better. If you are feeding an office rather than yourself, those are the sensible order.

If you want a midday meal on a weekday, ring first. That single call saves the specific frustration of driving out to a restaurant that does not open for another three hours, which is a common enough experience that it is the reason this article exists.

If the day is flexible, a weekend lunch is the genuinely good version of this: earlier opening at most locations, a quieter room than the evening, shorter waits and the same full menu at the same prices.

And if what you actually want is the cheapest possible full meal, ignore lunch entirely and build the plan around the weekday afternoon window instead. That is a materially better deal than any lunch service would have been, and it is available at almost every location.