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When Perini Ranch Steakhouse opened 40 years ago in tiny Buffalo Gap, Texas, co-owner Tom Perini says he did “everything you should not do.”
He put the restaurant in an old barn that was basically invisible to West Texas travelers. The restaurant, which is 15 miles from Abilene, sold steaks, hamburgers, green chile hominy and often-dry brisket. Some of the neighbors knew about it, but it would take a decade or more before A-list celebrities and world leaders would learn to love Perini Ranch.
“I couldn’t have done things more wrong,” Perini says of his 1983 beginnings. He ran out of money more than once. But eventually, Perini Ranch became a Wild West escape worth the three-and-a-half-hour drive west of Dallas. Tom and his wife Lisa Perini capture some of those stories in Perini Ranch Steakhouse: Celebrating Forty Years with Tom and Lisa, which was released May 2, 2023. They also have a new podcast, Meet Me at the Wagon.
It was Lisa who watched Perini Ranch find its tempo more than two decades ago. Tom was a chuckwagon cook and a caterer who loved “real Texas food.” When he met Lisa, he was just trying to keep the restaurant running. Eventually, the Perinis were asked to cater Cattle Baron’s Balls all over the state — a big opportunity for them to connect with charity-minded Texans. The Perinis also flew to Russia and Japan, acting as ambassadors for U.S. beef.
Famous folks like Reba McEntire and Billy Bob Thornton took a liking to the restaurant, as did TV chef Rachael Ray and editors for Oprah’s Favorite Things.
The company even served beef tenderloin and fried catfish on the White House lawn in 2002.
Perini calls the restaurant’s eventual rise to fame as “just one of those lucky things.” But Lisa knows.
“It’s the everyday person who makes it work,” she says. Regulars, many from the Abilene area, have been driving to Buffalo Gap for decades, feeding off the Perinis’ magnetic personalities.
Famous people make it fun — folks like Robert Earl Keen, Robert Duvall, Tanya Tucker and the Judds have stopped in. Helicopters can land in the parking lot.
But the celebrity visitors often want to be treated like everybody else, Lisa says. When Reba visited Perini Ranch for the first time, the Perinis were careful to ask how she wanted to enter the steakhouse.
“Well, how about through the front door?” Reba answered. Reba has since put her name on a restaurant in Oklahoma.
Thornton blended in, too. He visited the steakhouse at least once without the Perinis noticing. The guest book was the giveaway: “There are three George Washingtons, two George W. Bushes and I saw ‘Billy Bob Thornton,’” Lisa says. “Who would write that?” She thought it was a spoof until a few months later, when Thornton told a magazine writer that Perini Ranch was one of his favorite restaurants. (The Perinis have since introduced themselves.)
Tom loves the restaurant’s storybook Texas setting, on a 640-acre ranch his family bought in 1952. Tom took over in 1965, after his dad died. He learned he “wasn’t a great cowboy” — he was better at cooking and entertaining. Perini Ranch celebrates both.
Tom loves this joke: “I ask people, ‘Do you know the difference between a nice steakhouse and a joint?’
“At a joint, you can pick up that bone and chew it. And people do.”
Perini Ranch’s one big year
As Tom tells it, “those early days were very tough, but we limped through,” he writes in the just-released book.
“It evolved from a joint to a nice joint and then a real restaurant, but it seemed to take a long time to make any money.”
The pivotal year was 1995, when three things happened: The James Beard Foundation invited Tom to cook at their lauded house in New York City, which brought fine-dining-level restaurant attention to the smalltown steakhouse. Then, Texas Gov. George W. Bush asked Tom to cater an event, which initiated a long relationship with the governor-turned-president. Finally, The New York Times named Perini’s peppery tenderloin one of the best mail-order holiday gifts of the year.
Tom calls the Times honor a “fluke.” It was an accident, really. He mailed about 20 tenderloins to publications all around the United States, desperate to drum up interest for his restaurant, now 12 years old and relatively unknown. The Times was running a contest, unbeknownst to Tom, and Perini Ranch’s tenderloin was picked as a winner just before Christmastime.
Great, right? Well: “We didn’t have a mail-order business,” Tom writes in the book. In quick time, they figured out how to take orders via phone, secured USDA approval, and found boxes to ship the food safely.
Almost immediately, “Perini Ranch had reach,” Lisa says.
“If you live in Manhattan, you can experience Perini Ranch without driving to Buffalo Gap.” So maybe it doesn’t matter that you can’t see it from the road.
The Perini empire grew from there, with the guest quarters opening on the property in 2007, giving out-of-towners a place to stay a day or two. The family now operates a gift shop and a breakfast spot, both in Buffalo Gap.
How they ‘made rural cool again’
As Tom looks back on 40 years of serving steaks and traveling the world, he and Lisa agree they worked the hardest during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their catering business dried up overnight, but their mail-order business thrived.
Perini Ranch customers’ loyalty was tested once again. When the restaurant could reopen, the Perinis served steaks with buckets of beer. Families ate on picnic tables while kids ran around the property.
“It’s interesting, [the pandemic] kind of made rural cool again,” Lisa says. “Everybody loved the country, everybody wanted fresh air.”
She gives a tip for anyone who travels out that way: Stay for the stars. They’re big and bright, deep in the heart of Perini Ranch.
“One of the things our guests love to do is lay in a hammock and look at the sky. It’s just magical,” she says.