{"id":282598,"date":"2026-05-07T09:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T09:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/282598\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T09:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T09:38:15","slug":"roanokes-texas-tavern-makes-a-splash-in-new-york-city-and-southern-living-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/282598\/","title":{"rendered":"Roanoke\u2019s Texas Tavern makes a splash in New York City and Southern Living Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROANOKE, Va. \u2013 Is it possible for something to be mysterious, delicious, and authentic all at the same time? If it is — perhaps it\u2019s the Cheesy Western at the Texas Tavern.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a Western when we opened up, which is a hamburger and egg. That\u2019s from the beginning. And a few years later, my grandfather decided to put cheese on it, sometime in the 30s. We\u2019ve had a cheesy Western since then,\u201d Matt Bullington, owner of the Texas Tavern, said.<\/p>\n

Bullington says as far as he knows, the Texas Tavern was the first to put an egg on a hamburger. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019ve been doing it for a long time. And it\u2019s synonymous with the Texas Tavern. If you grow up in the Roanoke area and you hear Cheesy Western, then you think of Texas Tavern,\u201d Bullington said. <\/p>\n

But as it turns out, the burger\u2019s reputation is reaching well beyond Roanoke. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I got the cheesy western. I got a double cheesy western, and that blew my mind,\u201d said hamburger expert George Motz, after a visit to the Texas Tavern<\/a> several years ago.<\/p>\n

A self-proclaimed burger scholar, Motz can back it up. He is the author of Hamburger America<\/a>, a book now in its fourth edition, and owns a restaurant by the same name in New York City. He has hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram. <\/p>\n

\u201c…If there is a resident scholar on hamburgers in America, it\u2019s George Motz. The guy went to literally thousands of places over a couple of decades, and he understands where the burger came from,\u201d Bullington said.<\/p>\n

Motz, as it turns out, has a high opinion of the little restaurant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started to realize that this is one of the most important restaurants in America, seriously,\u201d Motz said.<\/p>\n

And starting today, (May 6, 2026), it will be featured for a month in New York City at Motz\u2019 restaurant.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so, what we do at Hamburger America is we do a monthly special. And the monthly special is always based on my relationships, people I know in the hamburger world,\u201d Motz said. \u201cIn the case of Texas Tavern, what we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re actually bringing up the famous Texas Tavern relish that goes on the burger. Matt, of course, you know, didn\u2019t want to give me the recipe, and I don\u2019t blame him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great honor, it really is. You know, George understands that it\u2019s about the burger and the food, that\u2019s certainly important, but it\u2019s also about the places, and most all of the places are all the places in his books,\u201d Bullington said. <\/p>\n

The addition of the Tavern\u2019s fare to the menu in New York was to be celebrated with an online news conference and celebration.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd New York City, I think at this point, has gotten used to me launching one burger a month. And there\u2019s always a lot of excitement around it. This has a lot excited because the older the place is and the more multi-generational a restaurant is, the more excitement it gets for sure. And this definitely fits the bill for a very exciting monthly special at Hamburger America,\u201d Motz said.<\/p>\n

The promotion in New York City comes at the same time the Texas Tavern is being featured in Southern Living Magazine<\/a>. The magazine tapped the Tavern as one of the top four burger restaurants in the South.<\/p>\n

Bullington says it\u2019s great to be featured and recognized at the national level, but he says the Tavern will stay true to its roots.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always joke and say Texas Tavern\u2019s kind of we\u2019re a cultural mooring, so people crave things that are unchanged that they\u2019re timeless, because everything else is so chaotic seemingly and changing all the time. So, we try to stay true to that and try to keep things as we\u2019ve always had them, but we don\u2019t want to lose that authenticity. That\u2019s really important. So, that\u2019s a big factor of our success,\u201d Bullington said.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by WSLS 10 – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROANOKE, Va. \u2013 Is it possible for something to be mysterious, delicious, and authentic all at the same…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[104098,104100,104099,81418,27,29,28,65518],"class_list":["post-282598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-cheesy-western","tag-hamburger","tag-hamburger-america","tag-southern-living","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-tavern"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}