My company offices just moved to Fan Pier in Boston, right on the waterfront. I'll be starting a new, ongoing series on the Seaport District of Boston as I begin exploring all the restaurants in this new neighborhood!
Bryan travels a lot for work and it comes in waves. Fall is typically bad. The spring has pockets of intense travel as well. It's during those times that I tend to hunker down at home, cooking random stuff alone since I don't really enjoy eating out by myself.
It was at the end of one of these long business trips that Bryan told me he really wanted steak. He had been traveling all over the world, visiting many foreign countries where steak (or meat, for that matter) was not really a part of the local diet. By the end of his two week trip, he was craving a good steak.
One of Bryan's co-workers had kindly given him a gift card to Morton's, a well-known high-end steakhouse chain based out of Chicago. So the day after stepping off that plane, we headed into Boston to check out one of the last few remaining steak houses in Boston that I had yet to ever try.
For years Morton's was located in Boston's trendy Back Bay neighborhood. Bryan had eaten there numerous times for work dinners and such. More recently, Boston's Seaport area has slowly become more and more developed. The Boston Convention Center opened up a few years ago, bringing in many restaurants to the area. In early January 2014, even my own workplace moved out to that area.
Morton's is now in the Seaport area as well. In fact, the Seaport area seems to be filled with many expense-account friendly restaurants that are safe for business dinners. Other businesses in the area include Legal Harborside, Del Frisco's, and Smith & Wollensky.
We started with their signature loaf of onion bread, which is huge (especially for two people), but a great way to curb the growling hunger pangs.
We had the Jumbo Lump Crabmeat Cocktail as an appetizer, which was highly recommended by our server. The crabmeat was fresh and high quality, though the overall dish itself was not particularly exciting.
Bryan got his favorite - the bone-in ribeye. A signature steak preparation at Morton's is the use of butter on the steaks. You can choose from a variety of flavors. We both chose the black truffle butter, which was very nice.
All the steaks at Morton's are USDA Prime and are dry-aged 23-28 days. Our steaks were cooked a perfect medium rare (check out that grilling in the photo above!) and tasted great with the butter sauce.
We were pleased to find that they offered wine from Jarvis Estates, one of our favorite wines from Napa Valley (the tour of their winery is super fun and the wine is delicious!). Because Jarvis wine is so hard to get here in Massachusetts, we decided to order a bottle to go with our steaks.
For fun we ordered a basket of Parmesan and Truffle Matchstick Fries, which was pretty good, but still not the best truffle fries in the city.
The sauteed Brussels Sprouts with bacon were solid, a nice healthy counterpoint to everything else we were eating.
Their desserts are huge and can easily be shared. Even though I'm always a sucker for key lime pie, we decided to go for their signature item, Morton's Legendary Hot Chocolate Cake (the sacrifices I make for this blog!).
It was like a classic molten chocolate cake, and it was well executed.
To celebrate his return to Boston (or may just to celebrate life?), Bryan ordered a nice scotch for dessert (I believe it was a MacCallan 25).
All in all, it was a fun outing. The steaks are definitely high quality, the service was good, and the overall experience is pleasant. This is a good, safe place to have a work dinner or a client meeting. I can totally see why it would thrive in this location, right next to the convention center.
The menu basically never changes, so if you want creative, innovative cuisine, this is not the place for you. This is the type of place you go to for familiarity, comfort, and safety. You come here after you've been traveling the world and just want to feel like you're home again.
For Bryan after that crazy international trip, this was just the thing he was looking for.
Morton's Steak House
Seaport Ln
Boston, MA 02210
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