Steak houses serve just about the simplest possible things – grilled meat, basic seafood dishes – so what sets apart good and bad ones comes down to a few crucial factors:
- quality of meat, most obviously. Not all beef is equal, not by a long shot.
- quality of other things, like oysters, lobster, shrimp etc.
- quality of preparation and cooking. It’s surprisingly non-trivial to grill a steak properly. Seasonings or lack of them matter too. Aging of meat will also drive up prices because of storage costs.
- quality of side dishes. At a quality place you should get things like properly sautéed mushrooms, creamed spinach, well prepared potatoes, etc. Simple dishes involving some skill, made with quality ingredients. At a place like Outback on the other hand (got dragged there once… Ugh) you’ll see mountains of deep fried potatoes or onions, or perfectly inedible salads made of iceberg lettuce drenched in mystery goop, and the like.
- wine list. A small selection of cheap swill, or a long list ranging from cheap swill to outrageously costly bottles of Chateau Veblen, with some decent but fairly affordable bottles in between? A good place has the latter.
- service. A good steak house will have attentive, professional service on a par with any other high end restaurant, a cheap one will be either indifferent or some kind of creepy forced corporate “fun”
Of course, all that tends to come at a steep price. You also generally pay for the fancier location, decor, glassware, china etc. I enjoy the experience but it’s something I do roughly every two or three years at most.
(I have never been to a Ruth’s Chris but have been to a few other high end places… I’d be surprised if any of the above didn’t apply.)
