Year of the Cow

The story of the steakhouse, like that of so many business booms, is one of modest beginnings accelerating into frenzy. First there was Grill 23 & Bar, which opened in the ’80s, when the local economy was high on real estate and what were then quaintly known as microcomputers. Morton’s arrived a few years later, and in the mid-’90s, as dot-coms raised the tide once more, the suits welcomed spots like Capital Grille, Plaza III, Abe & Louie’s, the Palm, and the Oak Room. It has long been the case that steakhouses follow bull markets, and now Boston had a respectable smattering of places to entertain a client over a decent cut of beef.

All the same, these new steakhouses remained background players—comfortable destinations for diners with conventional tastes and cash to spend, but most assuredly not the sort of place any respectable foodie would pay any mind. And as the ’90s gave way to the ’00s, the chowhound crowd (as well as their rich friends) turned their attention to star chefs like Oringer, Barbara Lynch, Todd English, Lydia Shire, and Ming Tsai. Restaurants became galleries of edible art, shrines to the artist’s vision; eating at the spot of the moment was a notch on your belt. “People began experimenting,” says Chris Haynes, a restaurant publicist who started his firm, CBH Communications, during that time. “We’re a city that likes to learn, and all of a sudden, eating out was like a hobby.”

Fleming’s opened in 2000, followed by English’s Bonfire in 2001 and Smith & Wollensky in 2004. While the trio’s Park Plaza locations made them a convenient choice for conventioneers, the restaurants themselves weren’t important. That changed in late 2004, when the swanky, conspicuously younger-feeling Metropolitan Club, a steakhouse-lounge in Chestnut Hill, got creative with the usual salad/meat/sides formula and became the restaurant that everyone was talking about.

People were eating meat again, partly due to Atkins and partly to the post-9/11 craving for comforting, familiar—and ultra-American—fare. Meanwhile, the celebrity-chef fad was showing signs of peaking (remember Emeril’s doomed NBC sitcom?). In stepped the steakhouses to woo all those diners who’d wearied of being challenged. As momentum built, even the chains had an easy shot at success: When Ruth’s Chris took over the old Maison Robert space in 2005, it was an instant hit.

Now we’re reaching critical mass, with no signs of slowing. This year’s wave has had KO Prime and Mooo (née Spire and the Federalist) joining Boston Public in swapping tasting menus for slabs of protein. Add to that the suburban outposts, including a planned Ruth’s Chris in Dedham; the lesser chains, like Houston’s; and the countless Outbacks and Bugaboo Creeks, and you can’t help but wonder: Can one city really eat that much beef?

The answer, it would appear, is yes. Of the most popular Boston restaurants listed on the website OpenTable, steakhouses typically occupy three of the top five slots. Last year, Ruth’s Chris cleared about $10 million. And according to Grill 23 owner Ken Himmel, his restaurant, which made $3.2 million in its first year in operation 24 years ago, “has a good shot of doing $16 million” by the time the books close on 2007.