We work on clearing the restaurant review queue this week with a look at a special occasion kind of place (or for those with fat wallets). Our wedding anniversary is in late October, and I always let my wife Prita pick a fancy place for dinner. She lives and dies for seafood, so if we’re in town, she usually picks Truluck’s, the semi-national semi-chain. (I say “semi-chain”, since it only has 10 locations nationwide.) Don’t get me wrong, I like Truluck’s and all, but the closest location to us is in Uptown Dallas, and with our anniversary falling on a weekday, I really didn’t want to schlep all the way back home from Uptown after a heavy meal, so I was secretly hoping to convince her to pick a place closer to home.
We briefly looked at trying Steve Fields’ Steak & Lobster Lounge during DFW Restaurant Week, but ended up not going. With an innocent enough “hey, check out the menu at this place”, she spotted the king crab on the menu. That’s all it took to get her approval without further prompting. Good for me, since it’s only a few miles from home, and a chance to try a new restaurant for blog material.
Steve Fields’ Steak & Lobster Lounge
- 5013 West Park Blvd., Plano, TX
- Hours: Dinner only; M-Th 4:30-10 P.M.; F-Sa 4:30-11 P.M.; Su 4:30-9 P.M.
- Reservations recommended, especially Thursday through Saturday
- Price: $75-100 per person, including 2 glasses of wine
Website: http://www.stevefieldsrestaurant.com/
Directions: just west of Preston Road (SH 289) on the north side of Park Blvd. From the Dallas North Tollway, exit Park Blvd., go east, and restaurant is on your left. If coming via US 75/Central Expressway, exit Park Blvd., go west, and restaurant is on your right just past Preston. From the President George Bush Turnpike, exit Preston, go north, then turn left at Park; restaurant will be immediately on your right.
Steve Fields’ bills itself as “a little city in the suburbs”. I don’t really get it, considering there’s not much particularly unique about it compared to all the other steakhouses a couple of miles down the Tollway. I also find the idea of a lobster-themed restaurant in Plano a little weird, as we’re a good 300 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, and besides, the Texas coast isn’t even home to lobsters. Anyway, we made reservations for 7:45, but showed up about 15 minutes early. At first, the hostess told us we’d have to wait, but a couple of minutes later, we were shown to our table. It was suprisingly busy for a Wednesday night.
The most unique feature of the restaurant is the “Lobster Lounge”, which features a large, open, semi-circular bar area awash in red light, a color meant to simulate that of a lobster. I couldn’t get a picture inside, but trust me, it’s big.
If you do choose to eat at the bar, they have a couple of nice specials on Sunday and Monday – prime rib with baked potato for $27 on Sunday, and whole Maine lobster and a baked potato, also for $27, on Monday. That’s a pretty good deal, given the general prices here.
To start off our sumptuous meal, I ordered the crunchy lobster pizza, and my wife had her favorite soup, lobster bisque.
This is going to sound weird, but the lobster “pizza” is similar to a Mexican pizza at Taco Bell, in that the base appears to be a crispy fried tortilla, and it’s smothered in cheese, diced tomatoes, and chives. I liked the pizza. I’m not sure that I loved it, though. The chunks of lobster meat were fresh and sweet, and of course I love lots of cheese. The chunks of red onions were a bit much, though. An interesting dish, to say the least. Here, the lobster bisque is made right in front of you; the creamy bisque is poured on top of lobster chunks sitting in the bottom of the cup. I tried just a little bit of it; it was very good, though it needed just a little more cream. My wife still enjoyed it just the same.
For the main course, I ordered the 8 oz. peppercorn coated filet, and my wife had the steamed Alaskan king crab.
The steak was nicely prepared, very tender with a nice sear and crust on the outside, and cooked medium/medium-rare. I enjoyed the heat of the peppercorn crust – but boy, did they go heavy on the salt. Peppercorns tend to be naturally salty, so the steak could have used about a 1/3 less than it had. There’s not much to say about a baked potato, but it was tender on the inside, and they provided a healthy dose of butter and sour cream, just the way I like it. The crab legs come pre-cracked, making them a little easier to eat. My wife enjoyed them, though even this relatively reasonable portion resulted in leftovers for lunch the next day. The star of the dish, though, was the Bearnaise sauce. I tried a little, and it was yummy, chock full of clarified buttery goodness.
Despite being thoroughly full, we wanted to splurge for dessert. Hey, if you’ve already run up a $150 tab, might as well go all the way. I went with the key lime pie, and my wife went with the chocolate caramel butter cream cake.
While any key lime pie in Texas can’t compare to the real deal in Florida, Steve Fields’ imitation is a decent one, with the half sweet/half tart flavor you want in such a pie. If you’ve never had key lime pie, the best way to describe it is like a lime Sweet Tart candy, so if you liked those as a kid, you’ll like the pie. I have to say, I wasn’t a fan of the butter cream cake. While the chocolate cake was moist and had a robust dark chocolate flavor, the icing tasted like…eating butter. Very, very heavy, even for dessert.
If you’re a wine drinker, Steve Fields’ has an impressive wine list. At the suggestion of our waiter, I tried the Smashberry red blend; although it’s one of the cheapest on the list, kudos to the waiter for a good suggestion. It paired nicely with the steak. If you like to experiment, the restaurant also offers a “Wine Flights” tasting menu, where you can choose three mini-glasses of reds or whites off a select list for $18.
Even though the restaurant was busy, we were well attended to by our waiter. Our orders were taken promptly, he took his time explaining the night’s specials, and as mentioned above, kudos to him for suggesting a reasonably priced wine instead of trying to stick me with an expensive one (or most maddening of all in a high-end restaurant, when a waiter professes no knowledge of the wine list).
Rating: 4 stars, a solid member of the crowded Dallas-Ft. Worth steak scene. If you’re trying to compare to other Metroplex steakhouses, I’d say Steve Fields’ is a little behind Al Biernat’s and Perry’s, and about on-par with Del Frisco’s and III Forks (yes, both chains, but Dallas natives).
