Sirloin Tips, peppers & onions.
The plate we named the house for. Eight ounces of marinated tips cooked hard on the flat top with green peppers and sweet onions. Has been on the menu, exactly this way, since October 2001.
Since 2001, we’ve been serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner from a corner diner in Eden, North Carolina. Family-owned from day one. Steaks cut by hand. Vegetables cooked from scratch. A buffet that has fed this town through four presidencies and a pandemic.
Johnny started working in restaurants when he was sixteen years old. By 1999 he had his own — a little hole-in-the-wall up the road in Mayodan, North Carolina, called Johnny Steak & Seafood. You sat at the counter, and he cooked right in front of you.
Two years later, in October of 2001, he opened the doors at 207 South Van Buren Road in Eden — the town he grew up in. He called it The Sirloin House. In those first days there was no buffet — just a menu and a kitchen. The breakfast buffet came a few years in. The lunch buffet followed later. Restaurants are the only business Johnny has ever been in.
The idea was simple and it hasn’t changed: cook like your grandmother did. Cut the steaks by hand. Cook the vegetables down slow. Make the biscuits and the cobblers from scratch every morning. Charge a fair price. Treat everyone who walks in like they’re family.
Eden is a working town — Rockingham County, right on the Virginia line, built on textiles and tobacco. Folks need a good hot breakfast at six in the morning before their shift. A family wants something affordable on a Sunday afternoon. A ribeye ought to cost what it costs and be worth every penny. We set out to be that kind of place, and twenty-four years later we still are.
A handful of moments that got us from a gravel lot to a full dining room.
Johnny opens Johnny Steak & Seafood in Mayodan, NC — a small hole-in-the-wall where the cook stood in front of the room. The training ground.
October 2001. Johnny opens The Sirloin House on South Van Buren Road, in the town he grew up in. No buffet yet — just a menu and a kitchen. Breakfast and lunch buffets came in the years after.
North Carolina sent us home for a stretch. When we opened back up for takeout, the table of regulars who come in every morning for breakfast brought lawn chairs, set up in the lot right in front of their cars, and ate together anyway. One of our longtime waitresses carried pitchers out and refilled their to-go cups — nobody asked her to. That’s Eden. That’s why we’re still here.
Cooks arriving at 4 a.m. Biscuits and cobblers out of the oven before sunrise. Same hand-cut steaks, same hand-mashed potatoes, same coffee pot on at a quarter past five.
We believe the best meals are those surrounded by family and friends — so come join us and let us serve you home cookin’ done right.
The Sirloin House · Eden, NC · Since 2001
Four things that have been true since the day we opened and will still be true the day we close.
Every steak on the menu is hand-cut on premises, USDA choice, from a whole primal. No vacuum-packed portions, no pre-portioned cuts. It’s slower. It’s better.
Biscuits from scratch every morning. Cobblers — peach, strawberry, apple — baked before sunrise. Ranch, blue cheese, and thousand island made in house. Mashed potatoes hand-mashed with a masher. Blooming onions, fried chicken and chicken tenders all hand-breaded. Steaks and chicken cut in our own kitchen.
A breakfast buffet should cost what a breakfast buffet costs. A ribeye ought to be what a family can afford on a Friday night. We’ve held that line for twenty‑four years and we’re not changing now.
We remember your name, your kids’ names, and your Sunday order. If you’re sitting alone, you won’t be for long. That’s not a slogan. That’s just how a good diner is supposed to work.
Three dishes that have been on the menu since year one and that folks still drive from two counties away to eat.
The plate we named the house for. Eight ounces of marinated tips cooked hard on the flat top with green peppers and sweet onions. Has been on the menu, exactly this way, since October 2001.
Fresh‑baked biscuits, split by hand, with fatback rendered crisp on the flat‑top. An old Southern plate our mothers and grandmothers served, still exactly the way they did it.
Peach, strawberry, apple — we change the cobbler every single day. Baked from scratch at 4 a.m. with the same recipe Johnny’s mother used. Ask what’s coming out of the oven today.
On the same corner of South Van Buren Road as the day we opened.
A corner diner on South Van Buren. Breakfast, lunch, dinner — all seven days. Free parking, friendly faces, and coffee that’s been on since a quarter past five.
Visit the house →Breakfast’s on by six. Lunch buffet runs till three. Dinner service until nine. We’ll keep a seat for you.