The last York Steak House: Columbus restaurant serves up nostalgia with your sirloin

The last York Steak House: Columbus restaurant serves up nostalgia with your sirloin

By Joey Morona May 19, 2016

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Everybody remembers their favorite meal growing up. Mine was the sirloin tips at York Steak House.

For me, a successful family trip to the mall was convincing our parents to take us to York Steak House. I celebrated birthdays there. While at John Carroll University, I once fasted for 48 hours for a church thing. The moment it was over, I headed straight for the York Steak House at Randall Park Mall to pig out.

By the late 1980s, York Steak House restaurants here and across the country started to disappear. They were gone from the landscape, but not my memories.

Imagine my surprise when, not too long ago, I just happened to drive past a York Steak House during a trip to Hollywood Casino in Columbus.

How could this be? Didn’t they all go out of business?

The mission

York Steak House was a popular, cafeteria-style restaurant located primarily in malls in the 1970s and 1980s.

The chain had locations across the eastern United States, but eventually went out of business.

People fond of the restaurant may be surprised to learn there is still one York Steak House remaining: on W. Broad Street in Columbus.

We traveled to the last York Steak House left in the country to see if it’s everything we remembered.

A brief history

York Steak House was founded in Columbus in 1966. It was similar to Ponderosa and primarily located in malls. The chain was sold in 1977 to cereal manufacturer General Mills. By 1982, there were nearly 200 restaurants in 27 states from Texas to Maine.

There were nine York Steak Houses in Northeast Ohio: Rolling Acres Mall, Belden Village, Southgate, Euclid Square Mall, Great Lakes Mall, Southland, Great Northern, Randall Park Mall and across the street from Parmatown.

By 1989, however, sales began to sag and General Mills sold some of the stores off while others closed.

Last York Steak House standing

As York Steak Houses across the nation began to close, Jay Bettin, who started with the company in 1980 and worked his way up, bought the restaurant on W. Broad Street in Columbus in 1989.

“I went back to the basics of what York was successful with, you know, just good quality food, good service and reasonable prices,” he said.

Amazingly, the York Steak House is still there 27 years later across a now abandoned mall, drawing both longtime customers and the nostalgia crowd.

“I’ve had people make road trips for miles, whether it be from Cleveland or Massachusetts or New England, and they’ll come in just to relive their memories and say they ate at the last York Steak House standing,” Bettin said.

“I love it here,” said one of the first customers through the line for lunch on Wednesday. “Hi, Jay!” another regular said, waving to the owner.

“We’re real fortunate to have our loyal customer base,” Bettin said.

This owner said his York Steak House has been the last one standing since a restaurant, which had been renamed Bradfield’s, in Springfield, Ohio closed in 2010.

The classic menu

The menu at York Steak House remains largely the same, with only a modest price increase. The sirloin tips is still the most popular entree, Bettin said. There’s also the honey glazed chicken, the York Filets and a one-pound T-Bone for under $17. For dessert, it was and still is all about the chocolate pudding.

A step back in time

Walking into the last York Steak House is like traveling back in time. The menu board is as huge as I remembered, with appetizing pictures of steaks, chicken and seafood on the wall. If you were a kid like me in the 1980s, ordering was a special treat. Order a big steak from the counter like a grownup. It was so fancy, the cashier would yell out your order to the cook in French. Move down the line, perhaps picking up a salad, dessert or even some sauteed onions and buttered mushrooms. Whatever you wanted. Mom and Dad, after all, were way back at the end of the line.

But not stuck in time

York Steak House had a unique decor with iron chandeliers, heavy wood chairs and dim lighting consistent with its castle theme. The Columbus restaurant, however, has made a few changes over the years. Bettin added a salad bar — that was a Ponderosa, not a York Steak House thing. The wood paneling remains, though the dining room has been brightened up. The iron chandeliers are still hanging, but the candelabra bulbs have been replaced.

“It’s funny, people always say ‘Don’t change too much, these are my lifelong memories’ from being a childhood coming in after church on Sunday to coming with their parents,” Bettin said. “We’ve tried to keep up that tradition, but still upgrade it, keep it fresh and new, but still keep that nostalgic look.”

Yes, I got the sirloin tips

Of course, I ordered the sirloin tips with baked potato and mushroom gravy. The generous chunks of steak (served in the same tin pan seen in the vintage TV ad!) were tender and juicy, the onions just as buttery as I remembered. The fluffy dinner roll was the perfect device to sop up the extra mushroom gravy.

“What did the mushroom sauce taste like?” my girlfriend asked me.

It took a moment to identify the elusive ingredient.

“My childhood,” I said.

York Steak House’s future

While the York Steak House chain has become extinct, one last restaurant in Columbus has somehow beaten the odds and survived. The owner hopes it stays open for another 50 years.

“My son works with me. Hopefully, he’ll be the one who continues the tradition,” Bettin said “This area is tough. There’s a mall across the street that’s boarded up.”

He hopes the Hollywood Casino across the street continues to help his oasis of nostalgia in the middle of the concrete jungle draw in new business.

“That’s helped me, just from people going to the casino who see the York Steak House sign and say ‘Hey, I remember that place. Let’s go in.'”