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Steak

Teresa Taylor

Tyrone Walker
The Post and Courier

Steak Pizzaiola is one of the many steak choices at Oak Steakhouse on Broad Street. It’s a New York strip seared and finished off in the oven over sauteed peppers, onions and mushrooms seasoned with fresh oregano.

Even on our seafood-centric coast, it's not hard to find great steak on the menu, especially among upscale restaurants in the Charleston area. Restaurateurs say that "turf" usually trumps "surf" on the menu when people treat themselves to dinner and a night out.

The requisites for a top-notch steak are good quality beef, a deft hand with seasoning and cooking it perfectly to order. When one of those fails, the whole dish starts going down. These restaurants run a tight ship where steak is concerned.

Triangle Char and Bar

828 Savannah Highway, West Ashley

377-1300

www.trianglecharandbar.com

$-$$$

On a quiet winter's night, the Triangle Char and Bar west of the Ashley created a ripple of excitement: A great steak doesn't have to warp the credit card.

The Triangle is roomier and nicer inside than it looks from the street. The look is industrial retro-chic, with glass garage doors standing in as walls. It's a clean, light and airy space that adapts to the changing seasons. The outdoor seating is part of the plan, not an awkward add-on as we've seen elsewhere.

The menu offers familiar casual fare like wings and calamari, Caesar salad and fish tacos, but segues into an interesting selection of heartier plates and pastas. "Grill" choices include five beef items, as well as seafood, ribs and chicken, and each comes with bread, two sides and one of six sauces for the meat, if desired.

Hot, tasty cheese biscuits were the prelude to the steaks, a 12-ounce New York strip and a lofty, 8-ounce filet mignon ($17.99 and $19.99, respectively). Both cuts of meat were expertly cooked, juicy and tender and branded with char-grilled flavor, thanks to a live charcoal fire.

A house salad was crisp, fresh and unfussy, with mixed lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and croutons. Onion rings were neither brittle nor soggy, but had a just-right crunchiness that satisfied our craving.

Another surprise: We gambled and won on the sauteed spinach. Leaves of fresh, baby spinach were barely wilted, with bits of garlic throughout to make this side sing.

Another side of baked mac-n-cheese was disappointing, at least that night. The dish had been overcooked or sat too long, and was on the dry side.

The wine list is respectable and varied, especially considering 30 are offered by the glass and all are priced from $5 to $8.

Oak Steakhouse

17 Broad St., downtown

722-4220

www.oaksteakhouserestaurant.com

$$-$$$$$

You should judge a steak by its cover, at least in part, since the crust sets the bar for the flavor and succulence below.

At Oak Steakhouse, the house seasoning is a Tuscan rub. It's a blend of espresso coffee beans, black pepper, kosher salt, fennel seed and other herbs, red pepper flakes, dried porcini mushrooms, garlic and onion powders. It caramelizes into a burnished mahogany crust that intensifies the richness of, say, Oak's perfectly cooked filet mignon.

Ditto for the seasoning on the Cajun Blackened New York Strip, which comes with a Creole crawfish compound butter that descends softly over the steak like a Louisiana night. The "blackened" taste is balanced, neither too spicy nor too charred.

Sides are a la carte, but generous enough to share with two or more people. We loved the potato au gratin, a tall, cheesy stack of impossibly thin potato slices baked to a golden brown and sealed with the kiss of fresh rosemary.

Service is well-paced, efficient and thoughtful — the Baby Spinach Salad was split into two servings without asking. The salad was simple but outstanding, dressed with a truffled bacon vinaigrette and topped with a fried, still-warm goat cheese ball and crumbles of prosciutto.

Oak, in a beautifully renovated historic building, is much more than a steakhouse, though. Steaks may be the headliner, but Italian cuisine carries the show, and chef Brett McKee's cast is large and diverse. Dishes are as down to earth as spaghetti and "Brett's Famous Meatballs" or loftier, such as the Wild Mushroom Risotto on the vegetarian and vegan menu. It's a nice dilemma to be torn between so many temptations.

Grill 225

225 East Bay St., downtown

266-4222

www.grill225.com

$$$-$$$$$

Call it chocolate seduction: The deep-brown wood decor — walls, floors, virtually everything — in the dining room of Grill 225 primes the tastebuds for luxurious food. Executive chef Demetre Castanas doesn't disappoint.

Grill 225 prides itself on serving prime-graded beef that's been slowly wet-aged, a minimum of 42 days for the tenderloin and rib-eye and 50 days for the New York strip. The devotion to quality shows.

Tender to the knife's touch, the 18-ounce rib-eye brims with beefy flavor. The double-cut lamb chops, which are top-of-the-line "hothouse" (youngest) grade, are cooked to a "T" — rosy pink and luscious.

Choices abound in vegetable and potato sides that are served family-style for sharing. Flush with grated Parmesan cheese, the creamed spinach is nutty, rich and extraordinary. The Truffled Potato Chips, drizzled with a warm buttermilk-blue cheese sauce, are seriously fun to eat.

Castanas pays homage to steakhouse classics such as escargot, oysters Rockefeller and an iceberg wedge with Roquefort and bacon, but diners won't feel bound by tradition. Globe-trotting dishes appear throughout the menu, and there are even a few nods to Southern specialties, such as fried green tomatoes with a Creole crawfish remoulade. A number of seafood entrees are offered, including an Asian-style grouper fillet. A simple yet appealing list of pastas rounds out the main fare.

Nothing on the menu is overwrought at Grill 225. It's sophisticated food that's always in good taste.