Venue Review: Steaksmith

SERIOUS STEAK

(no rating)

By NATHANIEL GLEN, THE GAZETTE

Steaksmith does meat right, but sides could use updating

If locals have a long-term love affair with any restaurant in Colorado Springs, it’s Steaksmith. When the Gazette staff suggests others for “Best Steakhouse,” readers always correct us. They also heap “Best Wait Staff” and other laurels on the Academy Boulevard mainstay. The parking lot is reliably full, even on typically slow week nights.

But sometimes in a longterm relationship, the spark starts to fade. Whether it’s husbands and wives, or diners and their favorite restaurant, it’s easy slip into a comfortable but dull routine. Such, I think, is the case with Steaksmith.

It doesn’t have to happen that way. Recent brain and behavior studies delving into how long-married couples can keep the spark alive have found that the most promising strategy is constantly injecting novelty.

Rather than relying only on long-term feelings of attachment, researchers suggest that couples can ignite the same neurons that lit up when they fell in love by trying new and different experiences together that stimulate the brain. It can be anything — a pottery class, a trip, a new restaurant — just as long as it isn’t the same old, familiar, safe, boring thing.

This immediately struck me when I walked into Steaksmith on a recent Friday night. The relationship is solid as a rock. But little has changed in almost 30 years. If Steaksmith wants to keep the spark alive, it’s time to jazz up date night.

Steaksmith is known, above all, for good steak. Its Black Angus beef is aged in-house and hand-cut in the back, then cooked to order with nearly scientific precision. The 12-ounce rib-eye ($26) is so flavorful you don’t need to add the available extras, such as crabmeat and béarnaise. The 8-ounce petite filet ($25) is so tender you could practically eat it with a spoon. The burger ($7) — paradise on a bun. Beef like this never gets old.

But other things Steaksmith once wooed customers with seem to have grown stale.

To see what I mean, call for a reservation — you’ll need it — and stroll through the groovy 1970s blacksmith dining room and past a row of awards on the wall.

Among the awards is a 1981 Gazette Telegraph review touting the unique wonders of the deep-fried avocado appetizer. The writer who penned the review retired years ago, but the battered and deep-fried avocado strips are still here, just as unique as they were a generation ago — mainly because no other restaurants chose to copy the somewhat bland and mushy strips. They could use updating, or maybe the hook.

Next on the “The Thrill is Gone” tour is the salad bar. It’s OK to hold onto a salad bar, even if salad bars have lately become the restaurant equivalent of pleated denim mom jeans — woefully unhip no matter how comforting they are. If customers like it, that’s all that matters. But Steaksmith is a fairly high-end place, and the salad bar can’t match my high school lunchroom’s. Salad trends have moved toward spring greens and house-made vinaigrettes. Steaksmith hasn’t. The bar has a romaine mix, standards including carrot salad and marinated mushrooms, and no dressing that isn’t woefully opaque.

Steaksmith increasingly seems like your father’s steakhouse. It’s the old, well-kept Oldsmobile he rolls around in — comfortable, dependable, but out of date. The clearest place to see the need for change is the bar. On tap, the place has Moosehead and Foster’s, two light imported lagers that taste like every domestic lager. There is no locally brewed Laughing Lab or Red Rocket to mark the microbrew revolution that swept Colorado during the past 15 years. Time for a change.

These throwbacks certainly aren’t enough to end the relationship. Steaksmith is a toptier independent place with commitment to quality, local ingredients and not cutting corners. The service, which uses an amazing team approach, is unbeatable. The homemade cheesecake ($6) and chilled mocha torte ($5.50) prove that they not only do everything from scratch, they do it well. And skewers of broiled scallops ($22) with simple grilled vegetables and a dish of clarified butter on the side are enough to remind diners why they fell in love in the first place.

There wasn’t one thing on the menu beyond the avocados that didn’t rise to the highest standards. But I’m not the only one who thinks it’s time to try something new.

On a recent Sunday night, the bar was packed with jovial baby boomers as a jazz trio played. I scored a corner table in the bar and ate what may be the best burger I have ever had — a house blend of Steaksmith’s own steak trimmings topped with real cheddar between thick, homemade slices of hearty wheat bread.

Over the thump of the standup base, I eavesdropped on a server having a beer after work with two regulars. The subject was the future of Steaksmith.

Clearly, the place needs to evolve, the server said.

“Right, but how do you evolve without alienating regulars?” the regular said.

If psychologists are correct, it should be pretty easy. Just start trying new things together, little by little. It could be a lot of fun.