The Absolute Worst Texas Roadhouse Cocktail Is So Sweet It Could Be Dessert

Texas Roadhouse is known for a wide selection of steaks and iconic menu items like rolls with cinnamon butter and a marshmallow-topped sweet potato. However, like any steakhouse worth its salt, Texas Roadhouse also has a cocktail menu. We sampled 9 Texas Roadhouse cocktails, ranking them according to flavor, presentation, and price.

According to our criteria, the absolute worst Texas Roadhouse cocktail is the Island Cooler, a bright blue drink consisting of coconut rum, peach schnapps, blue curacao, sweet and sour mix, and lemonade. Its blue hue and pop of orange and red, thanks to a cherry and orange slice garnish, earned points for presentation, while its $8 price tag is also pretty reasonable considering it's served in a veritable fishbowl of a serving glass. However, the taste was so overwhelmingly sweet that a reasonable price and presentation weren't enough to compensate. Peach schnapps is undeniably sweet with an intense peach flavor, and if it were simply the schnapps, the nutty coconut flavor and tartness from the lemonade and sweet and sour mix would balance out the sweetness. But the addition of blue curacao, a veritable triple sec flavor doppelganger, loaded on even more citric sweetness, tipping the scales into an overly sugary taste and syrupy mouthfeel.

While coconut, citrus, and peach sound like a summery and rich trifecta, Texas Roadhouse needs to go back to the drawing board with the Island Cooler. Altering the ratio of each ingredient would help to enhance the tasting notes and downplay the sweetness.

Customers on Reddit and TikTok were much more impressed with the taste of the Island Cooler. Many comments from social media and bloggers tried to come up with copycat recipes for the Island Cooler to recreate its sugary, fruity goodness at home. It just goes to show that a dessert adjacent cocktail is in high demand for many customers. That said, what customers weren't crazy about was the price and the weak alcohol content. Customers argued that for a drink the size of the Island Cooler, the alcoholic buzz should be as strong as the sugar content. Furthermore, at $8 a pop, customers don't want to have to imbibe in two or three cocktails to achieve the buzz they crave.

Most of the signature cocktails at Texas Roadhouse are fruity, and many overlap in terms of fruit flavors. So, if you're looking for a better summer fruit drink, we enjoyed the Pink Sunset, with its sweet and tart balance of strawberry rum, Sprite, and triple sec. It uses the Long Island iced tea mix for an especially strong alcoholic profile. If you're set on the Island Cooler, food pairings could help you balance the sweetness. We'd recommend something spicy like the Rattlesnake bites or the shrimp skewers, both some of our favorite popular menu items.