Visit Round Top, a tiny Hill Country town two hours from Houston with a population hovering around 90, and you’re bound to hear about Royers Round Top Café.

Yes, the antique shows that transform the quiet town into a seasonal hub each spring and fall, with more than 100,000 shoppers, are a major attraction, too, but Royers has created its own kind of legend.

The beloved restaurant, tucked into the town’s center, has built a reputation on Southern hospitality and big flavor—a little slice of Texas charm where the ceilings and walls are rife with kitschy decor. Locals and visitors alike pack into the cozy dining room for heaping plates of chicken-fried steak, shrimp and grits, and fried chicken platters (served only on Sundays). And then, of course, there are the pies. These deep-dish, buttery creations, including the famed Texas Trash Pie—a gooey amalgamation of chocolate chips, caramel, pretzels, graham crackers, coconut, and pecans—draw in dessert-seekers from far outside Fayette County. But Round Top wasn't always a hot spot for pie, antiques, or otherwise.

“There’s just so much more than there was 15 years ago, let alone 39 years ago when we took over,” says J. B. Royer, who now runs the restaurant with his wife, Jamie-Len. 

Back then, Round Top was little more than a quiet pit stop between Houston and Austin. The restaurant's building, which the Royers now own, initially operated as a grocery store where residents could score cold beer, burgers, and barbecue. Then, in 1987, following the oil bust, Royer's father, Bud, and his wife, Karen, took over the café through what J. B. describes as a “handshake agreement.” “The rest is history,” Royer says.

Though there was some hesitation at first (the Royers were newcomers from Brenham), the café quickly won over both locals and tourists. It became a full-service restaurant with a reputation that traveled far beyond its small-town roots. Royer’s father became a trailblazer in pie shipping in Texas, sending his treats all over the country, and later, Royer's sister, Tara, who now operates the nearby pie-and-coffee shop Royers Pie Haven, ran the café to help keep the family legacy alive. 

Since then, Royers Round Top Café has remained one of Texas’s most recognizable small-town restaurants with a following around its steak specials, shrimp BLT salads, sandwiches, snapper served with sautéed tomatoes in wine and garlic, and pillowy rolls paired with bright red apple butter.

The pies, offered whole or warm by the slice with a hefty scoop of vanilla ice cream, have a fanbase of their own, and as the holidays approach, Royer says there’s no better time to master a few pie-making fundamentals. The secret is keeping it simple with a homemade pie crust, and the Royer recipe does exactly that with just four ingredients. “The beautiful part is it makes a little bit extra, but they freeze well too, so you can use a frozen pie,” Royer says.

When things get busy, Royer admits he's not above taking a shortcut. “In a pinch, I’m using the Pillsbury crust when I’m at home and don’t feel like making homemade,” he says. 

When it comes to flavor, Royer likes to push past the basics. Originating from his mother's recipe, the café's signature Not My Mom's Apple Pie (recipe below) was his father's reworked and more decadent version, topped with a caramelized, crumbled pecan praline made with brown sugar, heavy cream, and flour. “It just kinda elevates [the pie],” Royer says. “You get that nice crunch with every texture. That allows you to get the depth of flavor that you’re looking for.”

Similarly, Royer adds more spice to pumpkin pies, giving them “a little bit more flavor than what you’re gonna get [elsewhere].” 

Nearly 40 years later, Royers remains more than just a restaurant—it’s a reflection of family, community, and persistence, with catering, cooking classes, and monthly wine dinners that lure in curious diners across the South. “We’re just very grateful to be here for almost 40 years, and we definitely wouldn’t be here without the support of people,” Royer says.

One thing that hasn’t changed: the feeling of being part of something personal. “We have a lot of people who say that they love having the recipes, but they would rather come and see us and be at the café,” Jamie-Len says. “It’s absolutely about the relationships.” That's one of the reasons the Royers weren't afraid to share their family recipes in their 2022 cookbook, Cooking with JB & Jamie: Royers Round Top Café. “Why not share a good thing?” Royer says.

Recipe: Royer's Pie Crust

Ingredients
Yields: three 10-inch crusts

1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
2 cups minus 3 tbsp Crisco shortening (blue label)
5 cups flour

Directions:

1. Dissolve salt in milk. Set aside
2. Cut shortening into flour, working thoroughly until mixture is crumbly.
3. Add milk-salt mixture to flour mixture. Work together until the liquid is absorbed. If needed, add several tablespoons of flour and continue working the dough until it pulls cleanly away from your hands.
4. Divide the dough into three equal balls.
5. Freeze in plastic bags until needed.

Tips: Dough rolls out most easily when chilled. When using frozen dough, set it out for 3 to 4 hours, or thaw it in the refrigerator overnight.

Recipe: Not My Mom's Apple Pie

Yields: 6–8 servings
Prep Time: 30 min
Cook Time: 50 min

Ingredients

5–6 Granny Smith apples
1 10-inch Royers pie crust (recipe above)
1 1/3 cups brown sugar
2/3 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup flour

For crumble topping:

1 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsps butter, melted
1/2 cup pecan pieces, finely chopped

Combine brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, butter, and pecan pieces. Mix thoroughly.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Peel, core, and cut apples into chunks.
3. Roll out the pie dough and form it into a pie shell.
4. Mound apples in the pie shell.
5. Combine brown sugar, whipping cream, and flour to make filling.
6. Pour the mixture over the apples.
7. Press crumble topping on apples and filling. Make sure apples are covered.
8. Bake for 50 minutes, or until the apples are soft and the topping is crispy.