Pass the bowl.
That is basically how dinner starts making friends here.
The meal comes family-style, so plates move around the table before anyone settles into the main event. You choose an entrée, then let the shared courses do their thing.
The Basque roots run much deeper than the menu.
Northern Nevada grew around ranching, railroads, and generations of sheepherders who brought their food traditions with them. This dining room still keeps that history close.
Lamb and solomo carry plenty of Basque character. Sweetbreads and Steak Martin keep the choices interesting without turning dinner into a homework assignment.
The building has more than a century behind it too.
So take your time.
If that bowl comes around again, are you really going to be the one who says no?
The Martin Name Dates To 1913
The building has a longer story than the name over the door. A business known as the Roman Tavern and Restaurant operated on the property sometime between 1898 and 1908. Augustine A.
Martin and Elisee Henri Martin acquired the building in 1913, and that is when it became The Martin Hotel.
Its location near the Southern Pacific Railroad made practical sense. Travelers, workers, and livestock people moved through Winnemucca regularly, and the hotel became one of the places where they could find a room, a meal, and company.
Basque sheepherders became especially important to the building’s history. Northern Nevada drew Basque immigrants into sheep work, and boarding houses offered a familiar stop between long periods spent tending flocks in remote country.
The Martin became associated with that community and later passed through several Basque owners.
A fire damaged the property in 1919. Reconstruction followed in 1920, expanding the hotel to twenty-five rooms while keeping a restaurant downstairs.
The rooms are no longer part of the dining experience, but the boarding-house past still helps explain the shared-table tradition.
Family-Style Dinner Keeps The Old Rhythm Going
Dinner still centers on family-style service, one of the clearest links between The Martin and Nevada’s Basque boarding-house tradition.
The basic idea is simple. Diners choose an entrée, while several parts of the meal are shared around the table rather than arriving as individual sides for each person. Soup, salad, bread, beans, potatoes, vegetables, and dessert can all be part of the broader spread.
That changes the pace immediately. Instead of waiting for one plate to arrive and treating everything else as decoration, dinner develops in stages. A bowl lands on the table, someone serves a portion, and the dish moves on.
The entrée may get the most attention, but it is only one part of the meal. Start lightly with the shared dishes if lamb, pork, or steak is coming later.
Family-style dining also makes the meal feel less isolated. Everyone is working with the same bowls and passing the same dishes, which gives the table an easy rhythm even when conversation stays within your own group.
That communal structure comes straight out of the old boarding-house world, when sheepherders gathered around one table after weeks of solitary work.
Lamb Keeps Sheep Country Close To The Menu
Lamb remains one of the most direct links between the menu and northern Nevada’s sheepherding history.
At dinner, The Martin offers lamb chops or lamb shank among its traditional Basque specialties. Lunch includes lamb shank with mint jelly, along with a lamb dip sandwich served on a roll.
The shank is the slower, softer option. It suits the unhurried pace of a family-style meal, especially after the early shared courses have already made their way around the table. Lamb chops give you a different texture and a more straightforward cut.
Mint jelly adds a sweet, cool contrast to the lunch shank. If lamb is not something you order often, that pairing keeps the plate familiar enough to approach without much guesswork.
Lunch provides an easier entry when a full family-style dinner does not fit the day. The lamb dip keeps the ingredient in focus while turning it into a simpler road-trip meal.
Dinner is the better choice when the history and shared-table format matter as much as the food itself.
Let appetite decide which version makes sense. A sandwich can get you back on the road quickly, while lamb at dinner gives the meal time to stretch out.
Either way, the ingredient feels at home in a town where Basque sheepherders helped shape the local story.
Solomo Brings Garlic And Pimentos To The Table
Solomo gives pork its own place among the traditional Basque choices.
The dinner version uses boneless pork loin simmered with fresh garlic and pimentos. At lunch, solomo appears as an open-face sandwich traditionally made with pork tenderloin, with chicken available as a substitute.
Garlic does much of the work here, adding depth without burying the pork. Pimentos bring color and a mild sweetness, keeping the dish firmly in savory territory while giving it more personality than a plain roast.
For someone new to Basque food, solomo is an easy place to begin. The main ingredient is familiar, but the preparation moves beyond an everyday pork chop.
It also gives the table another direction when lamb or steak is not the first choice.
At lunch, the open-face version makes the dish easier to fit into a shorter stop. At dinner, the pork loin becomes part of the longer family-style sequence.
If the name is unfamiliar, there is no need to overthink it. Decide whether pork, garlic, and pimentos sound right that day, then let the rest of the table fill in around it.
Historic Details Still Surround The Dining Room
The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its connection to Winnemucca commerce and Basque sheepherders. The building also shows several layers of construction, reflecting the changes made as its role evolved over the decades.
Original pressed-tin walls and ceilings remain among the most noticeable interior details. Outside, historic hitching posts offer another reminder that travelers once arrived very differently than they do now.
The 1920 reconstruction followed the 1919 fire and expanded the property while preserving its hotel and restaurant use.
Later Basque owners continued the dining tradition, and the building remained connected to the community long after the upstairs rooms stopped serving travelers.
Look up at the patterned metal before the soup arrives, then notice the room again as the shared courses move around the table.
The setting works quietly in the background. Railroad history sits outside, boarding-house history lives upstairs, and the dining room keeps doing the job it has done for generations.
That makes the address more than a place to enter into navigation. It is part of the reason the meal and the local history still fit together.
The Martin Hotel stands at 94 W Railroad St, Winnemucca, NV 89445, near the railroad corridor that helped shape this part of town.
Steak Martin Gives Beef A House Specialty
For anyone leaning toward beef, Steak Martin is the restaurant’s signature steak.
The current version starts with a sixteen-ounce Choice Black Angus rib-eye grilled with lemon and pepper, then topped with sautéed mushrooms and garlic. It keeps the focus on the beef while giving the plate a combination specific to the restaurant.
Mushrooms add a softer savory layer, and garlic provides the stronger note that appears across several Basque-influenced dishes. Lemon and pepper keep the seasoning direct rather than piling on too many competing flavors.
The steak is a substantial choice after soup, salad, beans, bread, and other shared courses, so pacing helps. There is no prize for reaching the entrée already full.
A smaller appetite may be happier with another main dish, while someone planning dinner around beef can let Steak Martin take center stage.
Other rib-eye options are available too, which gives steak eaters room to keep things simpler. The question becomes whether you want the mushrooms and garlic or prefer the beef with fewer additions.
For a first family-style dinner, choosing one strong entrée and letting the shared dishes provide the variety is often easier than trying to sample everything.
The table already has plenty going on before the rib-eye arrives.
Lunch And Dinner Offer Two Different Experiences
The Martin serves lunch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with dinner running from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Lunch is the more flexible stop for a driving day. The menu includes burgers, sandwiches, Basque specialties, salads, pasta, and straightforward entrées, so a meal can stay as simple or as substantial as the afternoon allows.
Basque lunch choices include lamb shank, solomo, chorizo, a daily side dish, and sweetbreads. That gives you a way to explore the restaurant’s regional identity without committing to the longer dinner format.
Dinner shifts the focus toward traditional Basque entrées, steaks, pork, seafood, and the family-style sequence that carries the boarding-house tradition most clearly.
Choose lunch when time matters. Choose dinner when the shared meal itself is part of the reason for stopping.
Either way, this is a place where the route and the appetite can make the final decision. Winnemucca sits along Interstate 80, so The Martin can become a practical break in a longer Nevada drive rather than an all-day plan.
Sit down, pick the entrée that sounds right, and let the rest of the meal arrive at its own pace. More than a century after the Martin name appeared on the building, that slower rhythm still feels right for a table built around sharing.