Budget Bites: Star Rover

👋 Jay here! I celebrated my birthday with dinner at Houston's newest steakhouse, thanks to my doting girlfriend, and had to shout from the rooftops about it.

Dig in: Star Rover opened in the Heights last month as a retro homage to the Texas steakhouse experience.

• Inside, the Texan decor is reminiscent of another famous roadhouse, but seriously elevated. You even get free, twice-baked rolls to start. Plus, there are Skee-Ball machines!

What to order: I started the night with A Perfect Manhattan ($13), a lovely rye and bourbon concoction.

• The 12 oz. ribeye ($63) was the right choice. It was seriously a whopper of a steak and saved well enough to fill homemade burritos the next morning.
• We mentioned it was my birthday and I was delighted to find I did not receive a restaurant-wide sing-along — but they did comp dessert. We split a slice of Chocolate Chess pie ($8) and vowed to learn how to make it ourselves because it was so good.

Pro tip: The restaurant is dark. Really dark.

• Be sure to not use flash photography, like I did accidentally for this dispatch.

The bottom line: Consider this for your next date night. Just practice your Skee-Ball skills before promising to hit a big score.