NVM Review

Perfect Presentation

By Warren Rojas

Non-disclosure is never an issue at Morton’s, a steak emporium where transparency and showmanship go hand in hand.

The Chicago-based chain has built up its reputation by delighting customers with sterling service and top quality beef, the world over. “Consistency is our trademark,” stresses Roger Drake, Morton’s vice president of public relations, “which is what our guests expect.”

Staff address you by name from the minute you enter until you walk back out the front door, while regulars are often greeted with warm handshakes or half-hugs and genuine affection. The experience only intensifies during the tableside menu presentation—an interactive exposition of the restaurant’s signature selections where servers proudly display the mammoth cuts of raw steak, still-wriggling Maine lobsters and colossal garden vegetables that make up the heart of the Morton’s carte. Should sides be ordered, caddy-toting servers return bearing crocks brimming with fresh butter, sour cream and crumbled bacon to help dress any plain starches.

Then there’s the beef.

According to Drake, Morton’s serves only USDA prime, grain-fed beef supplied by the same Chicago meatpackers that started with the chain back in 1978. Drake says the suppliers typically wet-age each steak for between two and three weeks, and each steak gets finished in a 1200 degree broiler. He cites the 14-ounce filet, 20-ounce NY strip and 24-ounce porterhouse as the “featured cuts” at every Morton’s location.

Each meal commences with a jumbo bread round studded with crispy onion bits outside and a flaky interior. A simple starter of smoked salmon demarcated by clusters of horseradish, capers, minced onions and toast points coalesces superbly, while the eponymous Morton’s salad produces scattered romaine sprinkled with chopped egg and fresh anchovies.

A traditional porterhouse is all business, summoning a magnificently tender steak hiding pockets of fat that literally burst in your mouth. The Cajun rib-eye—marinated for 60 hours in Cajun spices—produces a generous slab of succulent beef soaked through with plenty of zest (not quite hot, but definitely exciting). NY strip emerges firm but flavorful, bearing a seared-on salt crust shielding a still-juicy interior. Boneless prime rib remains crisscrossed with veins of fat that provide a buttery release with each bite, and comes with a scorching homemade horseradish.

Sample Roster

Double-cut filet mignon (with béarnaise)

Porterhouse

Double porterhouse

New York strip

Chicago-style, bone-in rib-eye

Bone-in, double-cut prime rib (Friday and Saturday only)

Single-cut filet mignon (with béarnaise)

Filet Oskar

Filet Diane

Rib-eye

Cajun rib-eye