Dining at America’s Steakhouses
It’s safe to say that everybody loves steak, well almost everybody (except for the vegetarians). If you love steaks, then you have come to the right place. Every kind of meal has its own purpose, its particular ritual and significance. Burgers are meant for tailgating, road trips run on fast food, and French restaurants seem fit for special occasions like anniversaries. Chief among dining rituals is the steakhouse dinner, when friends and colleagues gather around a generously sized table to eat charred flesh and drink. It’s not just an “ordinary” meal. It’s a beef séance.
The Palm
The Palm is also a well known steak house in the United States. When The Palm opened in New York City in 1926, it was an Italian restaurant that served steaks on request. You can still get classic Italian-American dishes like veal marsala and chicken parmigiana there, but the restaurant is best known today for its decor, caricatures of celebrities, politicians, otherwise famous patrons and its Prime grade steaks. The Palm’s signature cut is a New York strip, but the rib-eye at their Theater District location, one of four locations in the city, was seasoned and cooked perfectly. You could even say that they have a very particular set of skills. True “skills” that they have through the years over a very long career.
Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse
Unlike The Palm, which is intimate and borderline genteel as steakhouses go, Del Frisco’s in midtown has a big “pile” of beef, quality steaks as well. It fills out 18,000 square feet and three floors, each with its own martini-slinging bar and a floor to ceiling view of 6th Avenue. The food here is absolutely amazing. What you get is an almost comically large rib-eye that’s been neatly trimmed and nuked under a 1,500º broiler, giving it a crust that looks like polished lava rock.
Ted’s Montana Grill
If you’re looking for various “meat” dishes, then Ted’s Montana Grill is the place for you. Ted’s Montana is really more of an American restaurant and grill than what we might traditionally consider a steakhouse. The focus there is meat, though, and there’s also a buffalo head mounted on the wall at the New York location. Ted Turner is the owner of these chains, supplies the bison from his 15 ranches in the western plain states. Depending on the location the steaks differ, it’s a combination of beef and bison, with cuts ranging from bison strip steaks to beef prime rib and all of it butchered in-house. Better try the bone-in cowboy bison rib-eye, this baby gets seasoned and seared on the griddle in olive oil rather than broiled. It’s noticeably leaner than beef, and the flavor is light and a little sweet compared to the round richness of a beef rib-eye. No doubt it’s very fine steak, one of the best.
Morton’s The Steakhouse
You couldn’t talk steakhouses without going to Chicago. Chicago is America’s meatpacking capital from the Civil War through the 1920s. Morton’s was founded in Chicago in 1978, and today all of its 69+ locations still get their Prime-aged beef cut and shipped from the Windy City. We think of Morton’s as a businessman’s steakhouse, it has an old timely decor, dim lighting and plenty of room to spread out in a comfortable booth. So if you want to try quality steaks then this is the place to go. It’s scrumptious “meat” dishes will truly satisfy a person who loves steaks.