From The New Orleans Menu Daily By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published December 22, 2006 Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse 6$ French Quarter: 716 Iberville 522-2467 Lunch Mon.-Fri. Dinner seven nights. AE DC DS MC V Of all the restaurants the younger generation of the Brennan family has opened, Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse is probably the greatest success. A runaway success, even. Almost from the day it opened in 1998, the place has been a full house. Not only are locals attracted to it, but visitors--including those who don't feel comfortable with fancy dining but can indeed get their minds and wallets around a good steak--keep the place full. Even on a recent Monday and Tuesday there were not many empty seats. The Steakhouse was the last of Dickie Brennan's three restaurants (the other two are the Palace Café and the Bourbon House) to reopen following the storm. It had a good excuse. It's the only restaurant in New Orleans whose dining rooms are below street level. Even though there was no flooding in the street, ground water pushed its way through the power-bereft sump pumps and, after going through a filter that made it as clear as swimming pool water, filled the place up to the level of the tabletops. There was so much damage that they had to rebuild completely. It opened with minimal hours in April. But the steakhouse segment of the restaurant business here was hit much harder than any other, and the demand for a beef specialist of this caliber was so strong that the hours expanded quickly. I am intrigued by how this was done. My two recent dinners there revealed a very new staff, many of whom had accents from a wide range of other lands. On the first visit, I was there for an hour and a half before anyone realized who I was. I like to fly under the radar, but I am very well known to the management here, so that was interesting. (Also interesting: service was at the level I have experienced here in the past.) Dickie Brennan's steaks have a pedigree of unquestionable quality. All the beef--including the insane one-pound hamburger they serve at lunch--is USDA Prime. While that may sound like a common claim, in fact, few steakhouses can legitimately make it. (Mr. John's and Besh are the only others I know of.) Most filet mignons in the steakhouses famous for Prime beef are in fact of a lower grade. Here, they are indeed Prime. They offer all the classic cuts, and cook them differently, broiling or grilling or pan-searing as the cut calls for. Three steaks are standouts. The most distinctive is the house filet, a middling-large cylinder whose plate is filled out with fried oysters, Pontalba potatoes (about which more later), creamed spinach, and bearnaise sauce. This is an enormous plate of food. Despite that (or because of it) you will see many of these cross the dining room through the night. Of greater interest to me are the porterhouse and strip sirloin, two cuts that benefit the most from the additional fat of Prime beef. The strip is supposed to be seared in a cast iron skillet, making it crusty. That technique has a long history with the Brennans, going so far back on the menu at Commander's Palace that it was the inspiration for blackened redfish. But when I got this a couple of weeks ago, I was mildly distressed to note grill marks on it, too little Creole seasoning to taste, and none of that great crustiness. Either they just threw the thing on the grill, or are using skillets with ribbed bottoms--which would defeat the whole purpose. I was thinking about that when I ate the crabcake on my second go-round here. And by the end of that meal something was clear. This is a very good restaurant, using very good ingredients, served reasonably well, while all the long-standing rules of fine dining are observed. But nothing at Dickie Brennan's makes you raise your eyebrows and say, "Well, now!" The seared crab cake was soft, uncrusted and minimally seasoned. The salad was a decent but standard salad. The steak was a steak. The side dishes--with one exception--are ordinary. And the service is devoid of personality. That last one we can let pass, because of the personnel problems restaurant have these days. But the rest of it. . . well, these guys are smart enough to get more pizzazz into the menu than they have. A long-running issue I have with this place is the reluctance to offer a highly distinctive element of New Orleans steak cookery--the sizzling butter on a hot plate. That idea predates Ruth's Chris (which claims it as its own, though it's not), and was universal around town for decades. It's a great idea, an exciting idea. Hell, we even persuaded Smith and Wollensky to do it. But even if Dickie's doesn't go with that, how could they let the skillet-seared effect get so diluted? That was their most distinctive steak. Now it's from Anywhere, USA. This is New Orleans, one of the country's great steak towns (it really is, and has been since the 1930s), and this place ought to lead the league and be distinctive. They do, in some ways. That side dish I mentioned--Pontalba potatoes--grew out of the Brennan's fantastic old chicken Pontalba, topped with potatoes with garlic, ham, green onions, and bearnaise sauce. It's a marvelous side. But the creamed spinach? Au gratin potatoes? French fries? Anywhere, USA, again. And the whole dessert list is a snore. A piece of coconut cake sounded great, but was stale (or made in a way that resembles staleness.) Also, I find the menu limited. Of course, no matter what's on the menu, most people will go for steaks. But how about lamb or veal chops? (They do have a nice pork porterhouse.) I'm done complaining. Here are some good things: Escargots Orleans are very rich and filling, but good: snails hidden in a stew of bacon, mushrooms, and fennel. The tomato and blue cheese salad with remoulade sauce, an inspired combination. Turtle soup, tasting like the one at Commander's Palace but perhaps even better, good and spicy and lemony. The wine list is very good, and offers many good wines by the glass. We're so bereft of steak houses now that Dickie Brennan's fills a very large gap. It does so well enough to keep lots of people happy. But I know it can do much better than this. Click here to return to today's edition. Click here for an index of all restaurant reviews. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com.