The breakfast-and-lunch spot at 620 19th St. in downtown Lubbock has spent almost two decades building a following for chicken-fried steak and a long list of pies. This month it showed up again on a widely shared list of Texas’ best chicken-fried steaks, and this month marks 19 years since it opened in October 2007.
A prayer, a phone call and four weeks
Owner Teresa Stephens has told the origin story on the restaurant’s website. She wrote that she had been a stay-at-home mom for about 15 years. In the fall of 2006, as her youngest son was getting ready for his last year of elementary school, she started a prayer journal. Every day she wrote a request asking to be used to make a difference in one person’s life.
In the fall of 2007, her husband, Shelby, got a call from his younger brother, Shawn, a longtime restaurant-chain employee, about a closed diner “on K” that was up for rent. Shelby wasn’t interested. Teresa couldn’t stop thinking about it and asked to see the building the next day.
“I knew I was home,” she wrote.
She joined her brother-in-law as a partner. According to her blog, they bought the business two days later and had four weeks to clean it up, name it, write a menu, hire a crew and teach her the business. She was 38.
Focus Daily News reported in 2016 that a $13,000 investment from her husband got the 55-seat diner open. She became the sole owner in spring 2009, when her brother-in-law was ready to move on, she wrote.
Stephens has written that the opening date was set for Oct. 13, 2007, and that she opened the grill that October. (The 2016 Focus Daily News profile gave an earlier date, Sept. 11, 2007.)
From burnt pies to hundreds at Christmas
Pies weren’t part of the plan. “I had never baked a pie in my life. I cried over many burnt pies,” Stephens told Focus Daily News. She said the restaurant sold just four pies its first Christmas. By the 2015 holiday season, it sold more than 700.
Today the website lists more than two dozen whole pies available with 24 hours’ notice, from buttermilk chess and Jack Daniel’s pecan to “Millionaire” and “Billionaire” pies and several banana split versions. Austin Chronicle travel writer Gerald E. McLeod singled out the strawberry-banana pie in 2024.
Outgrowing the first building
The first Cast Iron Grill opened in an old office building at 18th Street and Avenue K with 55 seats and five crew members, Stephens wrote. Five years later it had 167 seats and 24 employees “working on top of each other.” The restaurant moved and reopened on Jan. 2, 2013, about four blocks from the original spot.
On her undated “About Teresa” page, written about 16 years after the opening, Stephens writes that the grill has grown to 200 seats and 28 employees, and that she and Shelby work alongside their youngest son and daughter-in-law.
Weathering hard times
In 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions closed dining rooms, Stephens told KCBD the switch to curbside was rocky at first. “We were a complete disaster at it,” she said. On her website, she credits the community with carrying the restaurant through that year.
In 2025, the restaurant switched from canola oil to beef tallow for frying. KFMX reported the change, quoting the grill’s Facebook post that the switch “truly has exceeded our expectations.”
‘St. Cast Iron’
In the 2016 Focus Daily News profile, Stephens described working with St. Benedict Chapel to serve sit-down meals to people experiencing homelessness and working families. Volunteers from other congregations nicknamed the restaurant “St. Cast Iron,” she said. In 2014, Stephens wrote that the restaurant received the Louise Allen Award for community service from the Association for Women in Communications.
That 2016 profile is the most recent public account of the partnership we found, so it isn’t clear whether it continues today.
On the list again
The 2026 “Top 20” chicken-fried steak list from Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day founder Jeffrey Yarbrough includes Cast Iron Grill. A second Lubbock spot, Cuevas Drive In on North Ash Avenue, is also on the list. The Lubbock Chronicle reported the local connection on Oct. 23 and said it had not yet confirmed the list’s selection criteria. Cast Iron Grill also appeared on the organizer’s 2025 list.
If you go
Cast Iron Grill, 620 19th St., Lubbock; (806) 771-7690. According to the restaurant’s website, it serves breakfast Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. until about 10:30, then lunch until 2 p.m. (The Austin Chronicle’s 2024 listing said Monday through Saturday, so call ahead to check weekend hours.) Whole pies require 24 hours’ notice. It also runs a food truck and offers catering.
Hub City UnCovered did not interview Stephens for this profile; details come from her published writing and earlier news coverage, cited below.
Sources
- Cast Iron Grill, “About Teresa”: https://www.castirongrilllubbock.com/about-teresa.html
- Cast Iron Grill blog, “Getting to know the CIG” (Jan. 1, 2011): http://www.castirongrilllubbock.com/teresas-tidbits/getting-to-know-the-cig
- Cast Iron Grill, homepage and pie menu: https://www.castirongrilllubbock.com/ ; https://www.castirongrilllubbock.com/pies.html
- Focus Daily News (Joshua C. Johnson), “Cast Iron Grill Served With A Side Of Heart” (Sept. 12, 2016): https://www.focusdailynews.com/cast-iron-grill-lubbock/
- Austin Chronicle (Gerald E. McLeod), “Eight Dining Destinations on the Lubbock Food Trail” (Jan. 19, 2024): https://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/eight-dining-destinations-on-the-lubbock-food-trail-12947734/
- KCBD (Julie Castaneda), “Lubbock restaurants react to reopening dine in for customers” (May 1, 2020): https://www.kcbd.com/2020/05/01/lubbock-restaurants-react-reopening-dine-customers/
- KFMX (Renee Raven), “See Ya Seed Oil: Local Lubbock Restaurant Switches To Beef Tallow” (April 25, 2025): https://kfmx.com/local-lubbock-restaurant-beef-tallow/
- Lubbock Chronicle, “Two Lubbock Restaurants Appear on Shared 2026 Chicken-Fried Steak List” (Oct. 23, 2026): https://www.lubbockchronicle.com/p/lubbock-restaurants-2026-chicken-fried-steak-top-20-shared-list
- Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day, “Jeffrey’s Top 20’s List”: https://texascfsday.com/f/jeffreys-top-20s-list
