Morton's of Chicago @ The Oriental

Our spread at Morton's...

As a meat lover who absolutely loves her steaks, this is one place that i have always wanted to try. And I finally got to last night. Ck was in town for the weekend and we decided we will have something really special. Special meaning this is by far the most expensive dinner I have ever eaten in my life (!) with the steak alone costing a whopping $86 +++ (note that price doesn't come with any sides) and you got to experience real impeccable service.


We were greeted warmly when we walked in to the restaurant located at the 4th floor of the oriental hotel and I was surprised by the bustling atmosphere inside the restaurant. For the kind of moolah this restaurant charges, i thought the ambience would be more sedate and formal. Nevertheless, we were ushered to our seats and were promptly given the drinks list.



Dinner commenced with their signature onion loaf seen above. Look at the massive size, i swear it's like a bowling ball. Anyway the loaf went really well with the butter with its subtle onion aroma and light crust. I was tempted to have more but stopped myself from becoming too stuffed as the servings at Morton's were well known to be huge.

CK ordered a martini to start off while I went with a very nice Chardonnay. Meanwhile, Tina, our server came by with the well known 5 minute talk through on Morton's offerings. We were shown a 'collection' of steaks, ALL raw, and taken through the different cuts.. from its famous double porterhouse cut to the bone in ribeye to the double cut filet mignon, etc. We were also introduced to the non-steak items such as yellowfin tuna, salmon and maine lobster.

Eventually we settled on the following items:
1) A bone in ribeye steak, done medium rare
2) A double cut filet mignon, done medium rare
3) Sauteed wild mushrooms
4) Fresh brocolli with hollandaise sauce
5) Jumbo crab cake as appetizer
6) Molten chocolate cake for dessert
7) Additional 2 glasses of reds to go with the meat



This is our appetizer which was pretty good. Real fresh crab meat and roe were used to make this. The flavours were brought out beuatifullly with some added lemon zest on the side. So much so that CK craved for a taste of some fresh oysters. The two would have complemented each other very well.



Moving on, our steaks arrived and boy was it massive! Above is the double cut filet mignon which was excellent. It was like tataki in steak form. It was succulent, tender, aromatic, flavourful..... perfect. It was very very good. I told CK that perhaps if the steaks were charred it would have been even better and CK thought so too. So when one of the managers walked by to check on us, we casually mentioned the steaks were good but could have even be better if it were charred.

The excellent service meant that our steaks were promptly taken away from us and sent back to the grill to be charred. It was like done immediately so we didn't have to wait long at all. In fact when the steak returned perfectly charred, with no effect on my doneness of the meat, I was duly impressed with the speed and quality of the remarkable service and understanding of their product.

While the charred quality worked wonders for my filet mignon, it kinda brought down CK's ribeye slightly as for his steak, it seemed to make the steak much more chewy with the strong charred taste being a tad too overpowering. But not to say the least, both were still excellent in their own right.

To be continued...