ROANOKE, Va. – Is it possible for something to be mysterious, delicious, and authentic all at the same time? If it is -- perhaps it’s the Cheesy Western at the Texas Tavern.
“We had a Western when we opened up, which is a hamburger and egg. That’s from the beginning. And a few years later, my grandfather decided to put cheese on it, sometime in the 30s. We’ve had a cheesy Western since then,” Matt Bullington, owner of the Texas Tavern, said.
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Bullington says as far as he knows, the Texas Tavern was the first to put an egg on a hamburger.
“And we’ve been doing it for a long time. And it’s synonymous with the Texas Tavern. If you grow up in the Roanoke area and you hear Cheesy Western, then you think of Texas Tavern,” Bullington said.
But as it turns out, the burger’s reputation is reaching well beyond Roanoke.
“So, I got the cheesy western. I got a double cheesy western, and that blew my mind,” said hamburger expert George Motz, after a visit to the Texas Tavern several years ago.
A self-proclaimed burger scholar, Motz can back it up. He is the author of Hamburger America, 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.
“...If there is a resident scholar on hamburgers in America, it’s George Motz. The guy went to literally thousands of places over a couple of decades, and he understands where the burger came from,” Bullington said.
Motz, as it turns out, has a high opinion of the little restaurant.
“I started to realize that this is one of the most important restaurants in America, seriously,” Motz said.
And starting today, (May 6, 2026), it will be featured for a month in New York City at Motz’ restaurant.
“And 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,” Motz said. “In the case of Texas Tavern, what we’re doing is we’re actually bringing up the famous Texas Tavern relish that goes on the burger. Matt, of course, you know, didn’t want to give me the recipe, and I don’t blame him.”
“It’s a great honor, it really is. You know, George understands that it’s about the burger and the food, that’s certainly important, but it’s also about the places, and most all of the places are all the places in his books,” Bullington said.
The addition of the Tavern’s fare to the menu in New York was to be celebrated with an online news conference and celebration.
“And New York City, I think at this point, has gotten used to me launching one burger a month. And there’s 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,” Motz said.
The promotion in New York City comes at the same time the Texas Tavern is being featured in Southern Living Magazine. The magazine tapped the Tavern as one of the top four burger restaurants in the South.
Bullington says it’s great to be featured and recognized at the national level, but he says the Tavern will stay true to its roots.
“I always joke and say Texas Tavern’s kind of we’re a cultural mooring, so people crave things that are unchanged that they’re 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’ve always had them, but we don’t want to lose that authenticity. That’s really important. So, that’s a big factor of our success,” Bullington said.