Simonton – On the outskirts of Houston in the small town of Simonton, you’ll find a fine restaurant sitting in the middle of some wide-open spaces. “It’s my living room,” said Anthonie Dekker. “I live here most of the time.”
Anthonie is the proprietor of Anthonie’s Market Grill, a sort of a city comes to the country kind of restaurant with a down home, classy feel to it. It’s very hard to explain unless you see it for yourself. “Literally, people come out on horseback here,” said Anthonie. “They park them right here.”
Anthonie isn’t from these parts, but he still fits in perfectly. “I still have an accent,” said Anthonie. “I think personally, I speak like John Wayne, but I don’t.”
He hails from Holland where he had an infatuation with the Lone Star State as a boy. “Me sitting between my brothers on the couch watching all the gunslinger movies,” said Anthonie. “So it was for me like, you know what? I’m going to go to Texas, and I just did what Davy Crockett did. I came as soon as I could. I came here in 1990. January 11th of 1990. It’s the best thing I ever did.”
When he came to the states, Anthonie didn’t exactly have a plan, but some things will take you further in life than a plan. “I remember I wanted to work,” said Anthonie. “I wanted to work hard because hard work pays off.”
Anthonie started at a country club, made his way to major culinary positions in Houston and Kemah, and was even the Executive Chef for the Houston Texans before becoming a private chef at a South Texas ranch where he fed folks like George HW Bush and George Strait. “Texas has done so much for me,” said Anthonie. “It’s an amazing state. If you cannot make it in Texas, then forget it.”
Anthonie’s Market Grill is known as a steakhouse, but the menu has much more than that. “A lot of the dishes that we create are comfort dishes,” said Anthonie. “Dishes that most Texans are used to.”
That includes a down-home favorite that’s done with a twist here, meat loaf. “When I said, ‘Guys, we’re going to do a meatloaf,’ everybody’s looking at me,” said Anthonie. “’Meatloaf?’ I said, ‘yeah, because everybody in America grew up on meatloaf. Everybody likes meatloaf.’”
The biggest difference here is that instead of using regular old ground beef, Anthonie’s showcases livestock that happens to live nearby. “We have our own herd with cattle, Wagyu, and the hamburger meat of it we use for our meatloaf,” said Anthonie. “Always make sure it’s fresh and the best quality.”
They say don’t knock it till you try it and if it’s Wagyu, I have no problem trying it. “We serve it with collard greens, mashed potatoes, and then we put a little gravy on it and it’s just delicious,” said Anthonie. “In order to make a meatloaf right you got to have onions and bell peppers. Green bell peppers and garlic.”
Anthonie makes massive meat loafs to feed the masses and it all starts with cooking up the veggies that make their way into the meal. “We got fresh ground Wagyu, akaushi beef,” said Anthonie. “Amazing meat. So we’re going to transfer this nicely into the bowl. We’re going to take the milk with the egg wash, fresh eggs and milk. We dump it in there. We put some black pepper in there. We get it going real slowly. We are massaging the beef. We are making the meat real happy here. We’re making the beef great again.”
Once all mixed up, the mixture is mashed into meatloaf pans and Anthonie makes sure there aren’t any air pockets, or one other ingredient. “A lot of us have grown up with it where we put a red sauce or ketchup,” said Anthonie. “We don’t do that. We just put brown gravy and mashed potatoes, and then our famous collard greens.”
After being baked, the meatloaf is sliced. “Some beautiful slices right there,” said Anthonie. “Almost looks like a pate.”
And sent to the flat top to finish it off. “We let it get happy for two minutes on each side,” said Anthonie. “Happy. It’s all about happiness. We’re in Texas.”
Add collard greens, mashed potatoes and brown gravy and good gravy we’re almost ready. All that’s left is a side of the crab ranchero dip. A mixture of avocado, roasted corn, pico, ranch, and of course, fresh crab. “Voila,” said Anthonie. ““Wagyu akaushi beef meatloaf.”
Now that this marvelous meatloaf is completed, it’s time to try that crab ranchero first. The freshness of the pico, the smokiness of that corn and that fresh crab, that’s amazing. From there, we move on to the main attraction, the meatloaf. That is not meatloaf like mom used to make. Never thought I’d say meatloaf is decadent, but that meatloaf is decadent. “The meat, it’s Wagyu and that gives it a special flavor,” said customer Tim Kelly.
“The meatloaf is fantastic,” said customer Moses Rangel. “The Wagyu in the meatloaf makes it just right.”
Of course, we got to try these potatoes. When an Irishman says, ‘Oh my gosh, the potatoes,’ you know they’re good. Those are the creamiest potatoes I’ve ever had. “Everything that they make here is awesome,” said customer Jeff Cook.
And finally, we got to get into these collard greens because they look beautiful and amazing. Don’t even taste like collard greens. Just tastes like a fantastic vegetable dish with a little kick. I mean, you do eventually get the earthiness of those collard greens, but those bell peppers and that spice come through real nice. “He’s always bringing in something fresh, something new, being creative about the way he does it,” said Tim.
Well, if you happen to have a hankering for a home-cooked meal with some serious Texas roots that happens to be cooked by a guy from Holland, coming here to Anthonie’s Market is definitely well worth the stop on The Texas Bucket List. “I get very emotional about Texas because I love Texas that much,” said Anthonie. “It gave me the American dream. It made me the man I am today.”