Dining at a steakhouse is a lot like going to a magic show. You (the audience or the diner) agree to buy into the fantasy (the illusion or the meal). And as a willing participant, when you see the wires holding up the levitating magician, you kindly avert your gaze.
Morton’s Steakhouse in LoDo can be just such a show. If you wanted to, you could spend your evening poking holes in the performance.
But if you’re willing to suspend doubt and just roll, you can have a great time.
The folks behind Morton’s, a large nationwide chain, understand steakhouse shtick. Forest-green carpeting, glass partitions between the bar and dining room, wood-paneled walls punctuated with snapshots of celebrities, high-roller lockers housing high-roller bottles of wine, waiters in white shirts and bow ties, Rat Pack background music – Morton’s looks like the classic steakhouse fantasy.
Just don’t look too closely or you’ll see cracks. Like a shabby entryway. Or a chocolate-brown stain on your waiter’s shirt. Or a bright green Sunkist stamp on the lemon that came with your shrimp cocktail.
Or, worst of all, a steak knife with a bent tip. At a steakhouse, knives must be flawless, period. But on a recent visit to Morton’s, mine was bent nearly 90 degrees at the tip, as if it had been tossed carelessly into the sink one too many times. I eventually got a new knife, but I had a hard time recovering.
Then again, I can be intolerably picky about such things. Hey, it’s my job.
What got me past the bent knife was the warm onion loaf and plate of sweet butter that kick off every meal at Morton’s. Soft and savory and hot, it made for a fine nosh with my icy Gibson while I watched the opening act: the presentation of the food cart.
Glad you asked. Before relinquishing paper menus at Morton’s, your server will hold up a plastic-wrapped tray of raw steaks to illustrate the difference between strips and rib-eyes. Next, plastic-wrapped plates of fish fillets to illuminate the distinction between salmon and tuna, and finally a raw tomato and red onion to help you get a visual on what goes into the sliced tomato salad.
Each item is shown off like Janice used to do with the prizes on “The Price is Right.” It’s dopey, yes, and you feel a little sorry for the server that has to do it umpteen times a night, but it’s a harmless and charming icebreaker.
Service, on every visit to Morton’s, remained harmless and charming. Sometimes they flub, like when one server apologized for putting two fillets on our bill by saying “Sorry! I’ve done so many airhead things today!” but for the most part they’re on point.
But is harmless and charming good enough with prices like these? (Think $42 for a New York strip, $17 for a shrimp cocktail, and $8.50 for a side of creamed spinach.)
I’m not sure. I know that the balance between friendliness and formality can be a difficult one to strike, but I believe that at a steakhouse it’s better to err on the side of formality. At Morton’s they can be a notch too chummy.
Still, I’ve never seen them deliver courses out of order, or forget to sweep appetizer crumbs before the main course, or bring a cold steak. So they’re a step ahead of many of their competitors.
What they did bring cold, correctly, was the colossal shrimp cocktail, with four meaty monsters perched around a piquant cocktail sauce. (The colossal shrimp, aptly named, are also served “Alexander”-style, broiled with bread crumbs and sauced with buerre blanc.)
Another good app, the crab cake, flaked beautifully after the first forkful, sweet lumps of meat soaking up a mustardy sauce. But the broiled scallops wrapped in bacon took too much effort to chew. And the lobster bisque was too light on lobster, too heavy on bisque.
Good salads: the center cut of iceberg lettuce (as big as your head!), crisp and cool and topped with chopped egg, bacon, tomato and blue cheese. The Caesar, tart and savory with a strong but not overwhelming hit of lemon.
Less successful salads: the chopped salad (underchopped) and the beefsteak tomato slices (underripe).
The end of the salad course, for me, is also the end of the martini course. Bring on the wine.
Morton’s wine list is extensive and robust, if predictable (mostly steakhouse-appropriate cabs and blends from France and California). It’s also expensive. A little day-after research on the velvety Ferrari-Crano Tresor blend from Sonoma that we’d enjoyed at dinner told me that the $100 price tag, while not totally out of the park, was pushing it.
As to the steaks: The bone-in ribeye, almost always my favorite cut, was excellent – nicely marbled and beautifully cooked. The New York strip, a meaty monster that took some sawing to get through, also boasted much flavor.
(I’ve had better examples of each of these cuts in Denver – the ribeye at Capital Grill and the strip at Brook’s – but Morton’s versions were worthy competitors.)
The filet mignon, though flavorful and lovely to look at, was plagued by a subtle mealiness. When dressed up, as in the filet Oskar (asparagus, crab, and sauce béarnaise) the filet fared better.
All steaks traveled well in to- go boxes, making for excellent late-night refrigerator raids and morning-after steak-and-eggs breakfasts.
Surprisingly, my favorite meat dish at Morton’s was the kingsized double-cut chops of Colorado lamb, lusciously crusty on the outside and pink in the middle. (A most excellent thing about Morton’s: They use Colorado lamb in all of their 60-plus locations nationwide.)
Fish is never the best thing on a steakhouse menu, and Morton’s salmon fillet was no exception. It cut an impressive figure on the plate but was too mildly flavored and in our case, cold in the middle. (Then again, who orders salmon in a steakhouse? Oh, yeah. We did.)
The benchmark side dish at any steakhouse is creamed spinach, and Morton’s has some of the best in town – soft, creamy, not cloyingly spiced, rich, and even better out of the to-go box the next morning. Wild mushrooms and potatoes “Lyonnaise,” or potatoes sautéed with onions and bacon, also shone.
French fries, though, were more pedestrian than they should have been, with plenty of grease and salt but precious little potato flavor. And the jumbo asparagus just confused me. (Then again “jumbo” is not, in my mind, a selling point for asparagus.)
Desserts are hit-or-miss. The signature dessert, an overgrown soufflé (billed as big enough for two, but easily big enough for six) fell flat, literally, before it arrived. Our server warned us, announcing “Your Grand Marnier soufflé fell, but it’ll still taste good.”
It didn’t.
Better dessert bets were the crowd-pleasing hot chocolate cake and the comfy upside-down apple tart with golden raisins and ice cream.
On my last meal at Morton’s, I noticed that the restaurant had boxed sets of those steak knives for sale. Given the fragile state my own knife had been in earlier that evening, I resisted.
Bottom line: If your martini is chronically half-empty and you choose to look for cracks in the steakhouse illusion, you’ll find them at Morton’s.
But if your cocktail glass is half-full and you’re willing to squint your eyes at the occasionally clumsy smoke and mirrors, you’ll pay your astronomical bill with few regrets.
(Note: Morton’s has a second location in Greenwood Village that was not visited for this review.)
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-954-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
Morton’s Steak
1710 Wynkoop St., 303-825-3353
**|Very Good
Atmosphere: Classic, post-speakeasy steakhouse décor with wood-paneled walls, white tablecloths, big banquettes and low lighting. Separate bar area.
Service: Mostly efficient and sharp. Always charming. Honest.
Wine: Big, pricey list, mostly brassy, meat-friendly reds from California, France, and Italy.
Plates: Appetizers, $11-$19. Steaks, $39-$43. Other entrees, $24-$51.
Hours: 5:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Monday-Saturday. 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday.
Details: All major credit cards accepted. Reservations recommended. Valet parking. Good choice for business dinners or out-of-town guests.
Three visits.
Our star system:
****: Exceptional.
***: Great.
**: Very good.
*: Good.
No stars: Needs work.
