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Burly's Roughrider is Nate and Rhoda Dutchak. Not a group, not a franchise, not a manager on rotation from somewhere else — two people who live in Belfield and built the room you're sitting in.
Theodore Roosevelt came to the Dakota Badlands as a grieving twenty-five-year-old and left as somebody else entirely. He later said he would never have been president without his time in North Dakota, and the men he raised for Cuba took the name Rough Riders from this country.
North Dakota is still the Roughrider State, and Belfield sits right in the middle of the ground that earned it. Naming a steakhouse after that isn't decoration — it's just where we are.
The south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the Painted Canyon are right down the road.
This is beef country. Serving a bad steak here would be a genuinely strange thing to do.
Everybody who works here knows most of the people who walk in. That's not a marketing line, it's just arithmetic.
Belfield, North Dakota
RJD StudioRhoda Dutchak co-owns Burly's and works as an artist under RJD Studio. The mural in the dining room is hers — painted by hand, on site, on the actual wall.
It is the single most unusual thing about this building, and the reason the room feels like somebody's rather than anybody's. Restaurants of this size do not normally have original art in them. This one has a whole wall of it, by one of the two people whose name is on the door.
Straight onto the wall, in the room, while the room was becoming a restaurant.
Not commissioned from a supplier. Made by the person who runs the place.
Most people notice it halfway through their steak. Try noticing it on the way in.
She works beyond the wall too — a Native American artist and photographer in bold acrylics and fine art photography, on the wildlife and landscapes of the same Badlands the mural is of. The wildlife photography hanging in the restaurant is hers, and it is available — ask any of the staff. Originals, archival prints and commissions are at rjdvisualartstudio.com.
Nate and Rhoda own Burly's. They are not the ones who get it open at eleven, turn a full Friday, and put the room back together at close.
Every steak on the certified Angus board goes across one flat-top, cooked to order on the busiest nights of the week. The prime rib goes in the smoker before most of Belfield is awake.
The people who know which regulars want which table, and who tell you the truth when the prime rib is nearly gone rather than letting you order it at nine.
Who open it, close it, order it, schedule it, and cover the shift nobody else can. Some of them have been here since Nate and Rhoda took the place on.
Some of this crew have stayed for years. In a town this size that is not a small thing, and none of what is on the rest of this website happens without them.
Eight hours inA smoked prime rib is not a dish you decide to make at six o'clock. It goes on early, it sits in oak smoke for hours, and it is either right or it is ruined — there is no rescuing it at the end.
That's the reason it's only Friday and Saturday, and the reason it runs out. A restaurant that could make more of it on demand would be doing something different to what we're doing.
The sirloin, the strip and the ribeye. Graded, not just labelled.
Prime rib, brisket, pulled pork and the wings. Same smoker, same building.
The gravy, the soups, the tomato sauce on the spaghetti.
The Nate-N-Ater. Blackened, coffee-seasoned, pepper jack, bacon and horseradish.
“A hidden gem with delicious, fresh food and efficient, friendly service.”
Joelle AnthonyGoogle reviewAnd eat something while you're looking at it.
(701) 575-4129