Blood-soaked gloves dotted the ice inside of a Little Rock skating rink Monday morning. Soft rock music played in the background. There wasn't a child in sight.
In the middle of the ice, eleven grown men stood at a line of fold-out tables, chopping and weighing cuts from 60-pound logs of meat. Judges peered over their shoulders, marking off each cut that went into the aluminum containers by their sides.
Overhead, a clock counted down the minutes.
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Photos by Kally Patz
Photos by Kally Patz
The men were there for the preliminary round of Texas Roadhouse’s annual meat-cutting competition. The cutter who delivered the most steaks, without wasting or compromising the quality of the meat, would advance to the championship in Orlando, Fla.
“For some of these guys, it can be life-changing,” said Sara Price, a regional marketing coach with the chain.
The competitors came from Benton, Fort Smith, Conway and Texarkana; others from as far as Louisiana, Kentucky and Missouri.
Oscar Ayora traveled 254 miles from Tyler, Texas to reach the Arkansas Skatium.
He used to cut meat at a Texas Roadhouse there for 8 hours a day, often without breaking to leave the 35-degree room. Since winning the championship round in New York seven years ago, he’s been working in upper management and only cuts part-time.
“I’m feeling a little rusty,” he said Monday with a nervous laugh.
On his table, there were three kinds of meat, each of which required a specific shape and weight. A sirloin could measure 10, 12 or 16 ounces. A perfect fillet had to be 1.5 inches thick.
While he cut, he listened to Metallica, Pearl Jam and The Eagles. He said the music calmed him while he made his calculations.
“If you’re serious about it, you do the math before you come in,” said Chad Perry, a managing partner at the Texas Roadhouse on South Shackleford road.
He noted a man to Ayora’s left who was on the verge of cutting a “legendary 12-ounce ribeye.” Perry explained that the cut was clean, the marbling of the fat was smooth, there was no gristle — but the ribeye was on the verge of becoming an 11-ounce steak.
At Texas Roadhouse, there is no such thing as an 11-ounce steak.
Rather than lose the whole cut, the man shaved off an ounce, taking the ribeye down to 10 ounces. The scrap went into a tupperware bin under his table, a point wasted.
Still, it wasn't the worst case scenario. A 12-ounce steak could become 10, Perry explained, but at 6 ounces, there was nowhere left to go. Texas Roadhouse has no lower weight. The cutter would lose the whole steak, and with it, the competition.
With one minute remaining, Ayora began shaving his final cuts. He slammed the steaks on his orange cutting board, trimming the fat off the sides. To his left, he kept his own count on a blood-stained notebook to avoid any confusion.
A buzzer went off and the men threw up their hands. It would be months before they learned the result of the competition, but they began discussing their performances the moment they left their tables.
As a Texas Roadhouse spokesman tried to gather them for a photo, they grouped off to talk numbers.
“How were your ribeyes?” asked one.
“I was watching Oscar,” whispered another.
“He wasn’t accurate,” someone said from a group in the back.
At his table, Ayora packed knives into a bag.
"I admire everyone here today," he said, smiling broadly. By his count, he had produced 25 steaks from 50 pounds of meat. The fillets had gone particularly well.
"It was a lot of fun."