The Restaurant-Brand Seasoning That's Just Not Worth Shelling Out For

There are plenty of people out there who want the flavor that could only be delivered by a specific restaurant, but don't want to make the drive. And restaurants know this very well, which is why, if you look, you'll find just about every famous chain offering their very own special seasoning bottles to go. The promise is that you can get the exact same flavor from the comfort of your own kitchen. Tasting Table tried and ranked six different restaurant-brand seasonings from worst to best, to get a sense of how good they are in general, and besides discovering a must-try (Red Robin Red's original seasoning), we also found one to avoid: Lillie Q's steak butcher butter seasoning.

When they labeled it as "steak butter," they truly meant it. We just couldn't get past the intense buttery flavor of this seasoning to even taste the other ingredients that were in the bottle (garlic, dill, onion, and so on). Outside of dishes that can really use a lot of buttery notes, like grilled corn on the cob or baked potatoes, you'll have a hard time finding a good use for this. While Lillie Q did say on the bottle that it'd do the job as a steak seasoning, it falls short on that too. In fact, you're far better off with a simple salt-and-pepper approach or even a homemade compound butter instead.

Notably, we weren't the only ones who found this heavy-tasting seasoning overwhelming. An Amazon reviewer reported that the buttery note was so strong, they could barely taste the steak under it. Another unhappy customer even went as far as describing it as tasting like "fake butter popcorn." In reading other reviews, though, we found a pretty concerning pattern of vastly different tasting experiences from one person to another. One recalled how the bottle they got had very strong notes of dill, while another claimed that theirs was very heavy on the salt, with not a lot of butter flavor. Meanwhile, the bottle Tasting Table tried was so buttery we could hardly taste anything else. 

Sure, there are explanations for this: Some people might not have shaken theirs properly, so the seasonings aren't evenly distributed. Still, this makes the quality control process of the seasoning questionable. Look, there are fans out there who genuinely enjoy the bold flavor profile. The person with the too-salty bottle said that while they were initially taken aback, they still thought it tasted pretty good. Between the hit-or-miss results and the butter overload we had when we gave it a taste, though, we're giving this one a hard pass. Unsurprisingly, in Tasting Table's ranking of 15 popular barbecue sauce brands, Lillie Q's Carolina Barbeque Sauce also didn't have a very good showing.