Getting to the meat of Morton's

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Bartender Mike Lee serves happy-hour drinks at Morton's, Ala Moana Center. Among the drinks, from left: apple martini, 25th Anniversary Silver (one of four flavors), cosmopolitan and a chocolate martini. Photos by Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

A lobster and steak special is a popular attraction.

Who knew?

Morton's opened here with a fair amount of flash in 2002, and I enjoyed a memorable steak there early on. But then the restaurant rather faded from my radar because it's in that odd, windowless, second-floor spot on the far side of Ala Moana Center, and because there are so many places to try that it's hard for me as a food writer to become a regular anywhere.

Too, Morton's prices are a bit steep for my everyday budget ($44 for a New York strip, a la carte). And — well, here's the real problem — I just don't get that show-and-tell thing they do with the plastic-wrapped steaks and the poor live lobster twitching in an uncomfortable-looking way on the cart, not to mention the potatoes the size of Shaquille O'Neal's shoes.

In case you haven't visited, the show-and-tell menu is one of a number of signature Morton's practices (others include an insistence on a design that mimics the original in Chicago and individual wine storage for VIPs). The waiter rolls a two-layer cart up to the table and launches into a memorized, almost breathless, recital of the menu, with props — the aforementioned cuts of beef, the lobster and vegetables.

My problems with this are: 1) I know what a potato looks like, thank you. 2) As one who cooks pretty much every day, one reason I come to a restaurant is so that I won't have to deal with raw food. And 3) It all goes by so fast that I still have to look over the menu and ask questions.

But a couple of weeks ago, I made a return visit to Morton's with a Chicago friend and she set me straight. "Look, you don't get it," she said. "You're from a fish-and-salad culture. Chicago people are SERIOUS about their steaks, and they wanna see what they're getting. Deal with it."

Chastened, I licked my paws, whined a little and prepared to greet the waiter — and even his lobster, Herman — with a smile.

But in fact, I was already in good humor. Because while I had been waiting for my friend in the bar, the bartender had thoughtfully let me know that my gin-and-tonic order would be half as expensive if I could live with Gordon's (their standard pour) instead of Tanqueray during the 5-7 p.m. happy hour. I was happy to change the order and leave the difference in a tip. I'd also been treated to a delicious little mini-steak-sandwich pupu (free!) and nobody looked at me oddly when I pulled a New Yorker out of my purse and proceeded to eat, drink and be intellectual. Later, my friend was impressed when she ordered a nonalcoholic beer and was served Buckler, an unusual and highly thought of choice in this rather esoteric category.

We began with a ramekin of buttery herbed wild mushrooms on a crisp crouton ($10) and a well-prepared Caesar-style salad ($9), which we shared. What with the generous bread basket and lovely sweet butter, I was beginning to slow down even before we got to the meat course. A word about butter: It's one of my subtle measures of how much the kitchen cares and how well-run the restaurant is. If the butter is a fancy shape but tastes like a refrigerator, it's not a good sign. Nor is butter that's sweating or slick with separated fat. I've rarely been completely disappointed by a restaurant that got the butter right.

My friend and I really liked our porterhouse steak ($44) and New York strip ($44) — which was a good thing because we, our families and our pets were eating these luscious slabs for days. When you think about $44 split by three meat portions, it's a considerable salve to the sticker-shock sting. The steaks were prepared as ordered and tasted just as they ought, without a lot of extraneous additions.

With our steaks, we ordered Lyonnaise potatoes (a potato and onion sautÚe, with the onions deliciously browned; $7) and potato skins ($7... oh, sour cream, oh butter, oh, oh ... ).

I must compliment Morton's on getting another detail right: Their take-home boxes are commodious and well-designed and our server took the trouble to wrap the mushrooms in plastic, so they didn't flow all over the steak.

Our meal ended with a warm Grand Marnier soufflé for two ($14). Funny how you can always find room for dessert. And soufflÚs are light, right? This one certainly was — almost too light; I rather wished we'd chosen the more intensely flavored chocolate soufflÚ if we were going to go for broke anyway.

As enjoyable as this meal was, and as nice as the service, I probably still won't get to Morton's very often. But thanks to my tough-talking Chicago friend, I now "get it."