The Best Restaurants in Commerce, Texas

Tripadvisor ranks it first of the 23 restaurants it lists in Commerce, and the reason is coverage. One menu carries chicken fried steak, hand-cut steaks, burgers, grilled fish and fish baskets, shrimp, oversized salads, stuffed baked potatoes, pizzas, and a Tex-Mex section with enchiladas and fajitas. In a town this size, that means a table of six with six different appetites can all order well.

It is also the only place on this list with a full bar and draft beer, with drink specials running in the late afternoon. That combination, a real kitchen plus a bar, is why it is the default answer when somebody visiting Commerce asks where to take a group to dinner.

The most established sit-down Tex-Mex restaurant in Commerce, open since 2015 and a Commerce Chamber of Commerce member. It is one of the few restaurants in town that maintains its own website rather than living entirely on a delivery platform, and the one that treats an evening as an event, with live music and a bar rather than just a dinner rush.

The stuffed avocado is the dish reviewers name most often, ahead of the more predictable fajita plates. Salsa, nachos and margaritas carry the rest of the reputation.

The Commerce Chamber describes it in one line that gets it exactly right, a place to come for good home cooking and to run into old friends. It opens early, closes in the early afternoon, and does not pretend to be anything else.

Breakfast is the reason to go, and the Friday fried catfish is the reason regulars plan their week around it. Barbecue is on the sign and on the menu, but the biscuits and the plate lunches are what the reviews keep returning to.

The most distinctive food in Commerce, and it is not close. Indian and Nepali dishes side by side, including momos, curries, rice bowls and naan, from a husband and wife operation working out of a small space attached to a gas station on Culver.

The gas station address puts some people off and should not. It is halal, it is cheap, and for the international student population at East Texas A&M it is the only kitchen in town cooking anything close to home. It shows up at the Taste of Commerce event alongside the town's older restaurants.

Family owned and operated, doing hibachi and sushi, and a Commerce Chamber member since June 2017. The fact that a town this small supports a sushi bar at all is down to the university, and Tokyo Express has outlasted the churn that usually takes out college town restaurants inside three years.

Expect an express format rather than a teppanyaki show. The hibachi comes out of the kitchen, not off a table grill in front of you, and it comes out fast.

The local burger answer, and the one that stays open latest on this list seven days a week. Drive-through, curbside, delivery and dine-in all work, which matters at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday when almost everything else in Commerce is dark.

The named burgers are where it separates itself from the fast food half a mile up the same street. The Texas BBQ and the Ghost-Fire are the two people order by name.

A family run taqueria a couple of doors from Dos Laredos on Washington, and the more interesting of the two if what you want is tacos rather than a combination plate. Tamales, enchiladas and elote round out a menu that stays close to the taqueria format instead of drifting into Tex-Mex.

It is a Commerce Chamber of Commerce member, which for a small independent taqueria is a reasonable signal that it is settled in rather than passing through.

Sandwiches built on smoked meat, which is a gap nothing else in Commerce fills. The brisket hoagie stacks thin sliced brisket with caramelized onions, queso and a house sauce, and there is a plate of thick sliced brisket, pulled pork and smoked sausage for anyone who wants it without the bread.

A Commerce Chamber member that turns up at Taste of Commerce, so it is part of the town rather than a highway pull-in. Catfish, shrimp and local beer fill out the rest.

Family owned and operated, and the one claim it makes for itself is worth repeating because it is specific and checkable on the plate, that the fajita meat and ground beef are fresh and never frozen. That is the difference you taste against the frozen-and-flat-topped version of the same dish.

It sits on Lee Street, away from the Washington Street pair, and keeps the longest week of any Mexican restaurant in town, seven days with late Friday and Saturday closes.

The second daytime option and the more recent one, remodelled for a bigger dining room and running a straightforward American diner menu. Pancakes and omelettes are what reviewers single out, along with a patty melt at lunch.

Reviews are less consistent than McKay's, which is why it sits below it here. What it offers instead is a second chance at breakfast on a day McKay's is closed, and it is a short walk from Tokyo Express on the same street.