LUBY'S CAFETERIA

"What do you mean you've never eaten at a Luby's before?" - Mike, Houston Historic Retail

Alas, it was true! There was one in my hometown, closing in the next-to-the-last semester of college, but it was never on the rotation. It wasn't particularly close and I think I was mislead by my brother and sister, who told me that the food was bland and served old people (Luby's elderly clientele is not quite an exaggeration, though).

But when I first went to the restaurant in Austin (a Fuddruckers/Luby's unit, unusual in that was a later conversion), I quite enjoyed it--it was moderately priced (overall a better value than most fast food today), had lots of selection, was healthier (real vegetables!), and above all, a sit-down restaurant where you didn't have to tip. Certainly a lot of stores have disappeared over time, and even within Texas it has disappeared from several markets, including Waco-Temple-Killeen, which had something terrible happen in the Killeen restaurant back in 1991...and we've covered Luby's in some form or fashion on this site before, like the short-lived Luby's on New Road in Waco. While they partnered to make the short-lived Water Street Seafood Company of Houston (see the Westheimer page), they had another concept called Bob Luby's Seafood House, which had the same restaurant design as the New Road Luby's (the preferred late 1990s/early 2000s Luby's design). They had one of these restaurants in Huntsville instead of a traditional restaurant.

I'm not sure when they dropped the "Cafeteria" from the name (I'm guessing early 2000s). Toward the very end, there were signs some menus at the Post Oak Boulevard store read something along the lines of "Luby's Homestyle Kitchen" but even back in 2006, it seemed that Luby's was fading away, slowly but surely. Eventually, some 200 stores stretching from Arizona to Tennessee (11 states) would dwindle down to less than 60 stores in Texas. It nearly went extinct during COVID but did find a buyer. Today just 35 restaurants remain.

There are a few Luby's items sold in H-E-B (their fried fish patty and macaroni & cheese) in the frozen section, and a cookbook was published in 1996....though no one has scanned it yet. Below is a list of closed Luby's back when the list still updated. This is very out of date, has no out-of-state locations, and is missing a lot; only here for completionist reasons.