The steakhouse craze hasn’t been confined to Center City Philadelphia. Firecreek seeks to bring the steakhouse blitz to Downingtown. Craig LaBan finds food and service both need some help.

When things go right, I see Firecreek’s appeal. The N.Y. strip, at $34 the most expensive entrée, was perfectly cooked and tender, with a hearty smoked-bacon and potato hash and a traditional red-wine gravy. A New Orleans-style “BBQ” shrimp was also satisfying, its buttery Worcestershire-tanged sauce and summer succotash of corn and limas hitting the spot. The seared tuna steak with mango salsa over bok choy was perfectly fine in a 1990s-fusion kind of way.

But this kitchen needed far too many tweaks – big and small – to make these dinners work.

One Bell – Hit or Miss

Firecreek [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Firecreek [Official Site]

Craig LaBan finally makes it to Union Trust to give the oppulent steakhouse the once over. What he finds is a restaurant that has come back to Earth from its heady opening in February but one that does at least deliver where it matters most.

When it comes to the main event – the steaks – Union Trust more than holds its own. The wet-aged prime chops were simply spectacular, from a “rib eye filet mignon” cut two inches thick from the eye of a rib steak that tasted like filet injected with butter to a Kansas City strip wrapped in an L-shaped bone that sang brightly with well-peppered complexity. A thick mallet of 14-ounce, grass-fed veal chop was among the most flavorful veal chops I’ve had. Even the steak sandwich at lunch, a half-inch pad of rib eye layered with spicy fried onion laces and blue cheese, was memorable.

Two Bells – Very Good

Union Trust [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Union Trust [Official Site]

In this economy it is difficult to resolve bailouts and $125 per head dinners and as Craig LaBan found at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House, it’s even harder when the cooking is mediocre.

Del Frisco’s unmistakable DNA as a chain, meanwhile, surfaces all too often in the mass-produced character of its cooking, and the hard sell of its service. We felt the push at the host stand, where they reflexively sent diners on time for their reservation into the bar, when the oily waiter welcomed us with the old “And of course we’ll be drinking sparkling water?” line, and when the sommelier answered my query for a bottle in the $80-to-$100 range with opening suggestions at $125 and $250.

One Bell – Hit or Miss

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Another steakhouse is in Craig LaBan’s sights. He gave Stephen Starr’s Butcher & Singer 3 Bells, how will the Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse fare?

In Craig LaBan’s review of Butcher & Singer he states, “Butcher’s overly chirpy manager might restrain herself from incessantly interrupting meals to blather on about the retro nostalgia. Her uninvited monologues (four at my first meal) and forced introductions were a saccharine distraction.”

It’s one thing to say the service was cloying in general, but another to single out an employee. Should Craig LaBan have called out the manager for being chatty?

Craig LaBan visits Stephen Starr’s Butcher & Singer and finds plenty to sing about at the red meat mecca.

Butcher doesn’t mess around with its signature commodity: The meat here was outstanding and perfectly cooked. This was especially true of the 28-day dry-aged porterhouse, which had a sublime tenderness and mineral complexity, even a faint sweetness, that wore just enough funk for a dry-aged connoisseur. Double-size it into a 32-ounce broiler-charred slab for two ($74), like the plump lovebirds behind me did, and indulge in a T-bone romance.

The rest of Butcher’s steaks are wet-aged, which I’m not typically fond of, but chef Shane Cash has mastered the technique (a little air-drying) to eliminate the common metallic aftertaste. Both the New York strip and filet mignon were exceptional. And the 18-ounce Delmonico, sourced from exclusive Four Story Hill Farm in Northeast Pennsylvania, was possibly even better than the porterhouse, with a buttery beefiness that revealed itself in waves of layered savor.

Three Bells – Excellent

Butcher & Singer [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Butcher & Singer [Official Site]

With Union Trust’s imminent opening it would seem that Center City’s quota of steakhouses has been reached. But questions remain, how will all these new spots do in this economy? Is the food any good?

Sunday, Craig LaBan will begin to answer the latter question as he reviews Stephen Starr’s Butcher & Singer.

Craig LaBan pounds Chima’s oversalted, over-cooked all you can eat Brazilian meats.

The garlic-rubbed top sirloin, meanwhile, was embalmed in a puree of allium so thick it sizzled like pungent white foam on the meat and curled my nose hairs before taking a bite. When we did, it was so wrong all four of us at the table spit it out simultaneously – including a neighbor who eats raw garlic daily for pleasure. This was the single worst morsel of food I’ve tried to eat all year.

No Bells

Chima [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Chima [Official Site]

Craig LaBan hits the base of the Comcast Center and visits Table 31, the high-end steakhouse by Chris Scarduzio and Georges Perrier.

Well, it isn’t cheap. All but a couple of the prime steaks cost in the high $30s or well beyond (which is why most restaurants avoid the pricier prime grade). But the quality is high. And it’s also true that this multilevel restaurant with 200-plus seats aspires to be more versatile than a standard-issue steak house. The menu offers some intriguing bistro fare, well-cooked seafood, homemade pasta twirled around fistfuls of crab, and lunchtime sirloin burgers topped with mops of juicy short-rib meat.

Three Bells – Excellent

Table 31 [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Table 31 [Official Site]

From inexperienced servers to heavy handed sauces there was lots that was off for Craig LaBan at Chadds Ford’s Brandywine Prime.

There was a handful of dishes among them I’d want to keep. The classic shrimp cocktail was huge and luscious. The house-cured duck confit gets a nice ride in a rustic tomatoey saute with linguine and kalamata olives. The tartares of beef and tuna – also classically prepared – highlighted the pure quality of the kitchen’s best ingredients.

So many other ingredients, though, seemed to be wasted on the pretense of fussy fixings. If a chophouse goes to the trouble to serve an excellent cut of beef – and Brandywine’s dry-aged cuts were good, but shy of exquisite – why drown its flavors with heavy-handed sauces and garnish? Brandywine Prime lays all of its steaks over a pool of fruited demiglace as thick as motor oil, then tops them off with a slice of oozing herbed butter the size of a credit card. And they’re all so strong, you could hardly taste the meat. It didn’t help that the rich gravy had already acquired a skin and gone tepid, as had the cookie-cutter vegetable garnishes.

One Bell – Hit Or Miss

Brandywine Prime [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Brandywine Prime [Official Site]