Finally, well done

The medium-rare New York strip. The ice-cold martini. The tableside Caesar. For ages, THE STEAKHOUSE and its trappings signified success and a damn good time... even if the food and service could be hit-or-miss. But now, thanks to a handful of splashy, CHEF-DRIVEN RESTAURANTS from New York to Chicago to San Francisco, the party has reached a new golden age. Here are the fresh temples of beef worth traveling for.

- JOSHUA DAVID STEIN

The table is laden with slabs of beef, trays of oysters, and copper pots of pommes aligot. A waiter in a tux, tossing a Caesar salad. Iceberg's in the air. Diners grinning at the show. One, a doubting Thomas, cuts into his rib eye, scarlet under char, and wonders, “Is this really rare?” Limbs are limber, eyes shine bright, and the Barolo is empty. If Caravaggio were alive today, there is no doubt he would take his talents to a steakhouse. There is no other restaurant that better captures all that is primal, all that drama twixt life and death, all the revelry mankind can summon, all the pleasure mankind can feel, than a steakhouse.

And yet the past few years have not been kind to the American steakhouse. The plant-based revolution not only threatened its relevance but also triggered an existential crisis: Should these temples of beef even exist when it's a known cause of climate change? The pandemic didn't help, either. Steakhouses were hit hard. In Chicago, the unofficial capital of steakhouses, they closed at twice the rate of other types of restaurants. But the institution has persevered, and today the American steakhouse is experiencing a renaissance. Across the country, ambitious chefs are returning to the steakhouse to rejuvenate the genre, balancing virtuosity and fidelity, theme and variation. These restaurants are worth traveling to. Not just because of hot damn if a skirt steak and a strong cocktail aren't one way to achieve satori. But, more profoundly, because there's something hopeful about how vibrant and vital an old idiom can still be.