Steakhouses may share some DNA with the chophouses of London, which date back to the late 17th century. While they’re widely copied around the world today, at heart steakhouses are uniquely American. Developed in New York and other big cities in the 19th century as outgrowths of taverns that served a few basic dishes, they celebrate abundance, culinary simplicity, dependability — and meat.

For decades, steakhouses across the country, wherever they were, tended to offer similar menus. This was one of their virtues — you always knew what you were going to get. Dinner would begin with things like oysters, shrimp cocktail, steak tartare, Caesar salad, or an iceberg wedge. Main dishes, of course, were mostly steaks — ribeye, filet mignon, New York strip, porterhouse, sometimes chateaubriand or skirt steak. Veal and lamb chops, roast chicken, and a limited selection of seafood (typically lobster, salmon, and swordfish) were offered, and side dishes inevitably focused on potatoes in various forms, creamed spinach, and asparagus.

In the late 1990s, though, something else began to happen: Celebrity chefs, who had made their reputations for creating dishes far more complex and refined than meat and potatoes, began turning their attention to the steakhouse genre.

A pioneer in this development was Larry Forgione, one of the first “new American” chefs, who opened “a modern steakhouse melded with an oyster bar” called the Grill Room Chop House in lower Manhattan in 1997. It has long since closed, but many other chefs followed, and today some of the most famous culinary personalities in America — Bobby Flay, Wolfgang Puck, Tom Colicchio, José Andrés, and more (including Forgione’s son Marc) — oversee restaurants devoted to steak.

Why would chefs known for their innovative cooking devote time and energy to an old-fashioned restaurant style that doesn’t seem to offer much opportunity for creativity? Some years ago, I asked a number of them exactly that, and most replied that it was somebody else’s idea. A real estate developer, or hotel, or casino operator came to them and asked them to open a steakhouse and was willing to make it profitable for them, and they thought it might be fun. Other chefs, though, like Wolfgang Puck, were attracted to the steakhouse idea simply because it posed a challenge: How could they take this venerable institution and make it theirs?

Steakhouses obviously have to deliver great steak above all, preferably in some variety, and a great steak doesn’t need a lot of enhancements. Where the chefs’ skills and imaginations come in tends to be with the appetizers, the non-steak choices, and the side dishes. These reflect the culinary personalities of the chefs — not just the big names behind these places but the people who actually cook the food day to day — and often also the tastes and traditions of wherever the steakhouse happens to be located. The result can be memorable, a delicious combination of the surprising and the reassuringly familiar.

Click here to see the 23 best celebrity chef steakhouses in America.

American Cut (Marc Forgione)
City: New York City, NY

Son of “new American” pioneer Larry Forgione, Marc was the youngest American-born chef to win a Michelin star (for his Restaurant Marc Forgione). He has competed on “Iron Chef America” and “The Next Iron Chef.” His American Cut steakhouses — there are two locations in New York City and one in Atlanta — don’t stray too far from tradition, but they offer some interesting twists. There’s a “hot and cold seafood tasting,” for instance, that includes Diamond Jim Brady oysters gratineed with champagne, black truffles, and cheese, as well as raw ones, chili lobster, littleneck clams, shrimp cocktail, crab cocktail, poached lobster, and tuna tartare. Steaks include both wet- and dry-aged offerings, including a 30-day-dry-aged pastrami-cured ribeye and a porterhouse or tomahawk chop for two, flambéed tableside. There is also wagyu beef from both Oregon and Japan, plus a Glatt Kosher Delmonico ribeye. Potato choices include Joël Robuchon’s notorious purée, which is approximately half butter.

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Bazaar Meat by José Andrés
City: Las Vegas, NV

There’s no stopping Spanish-born José Andrés. In addition to being the proprietor of more than 25 restaurants in five states plus Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and Mexico City, he is also a anti-hunger and immigration activist and the leader of grass-roots disaster recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, California, Hawaii, and elsewhere. His knowledge of Spanish food both avant-garde and traditional is encyclopedic, and his imagination seems to know no bounds, so it’s hardly surprising that his steakhouse menu is by far the largest and most unusual of any chef’s. Nine kinds of caviar, foie gras in a cloud of cotton candy, raw thin-sliced bison “Buffalo style” with pickled celery, blue cheese, and Buffalo wing sauce, a giant pork rind with Greek yogurt, braised lamb neck with fried oysters, blood sausage with sea urchin, whole roast suckling pig — by advance order, at $540 per animal … Oh, and a dozen different steaks from around America and Japan, cooked in a specially constructed fire pit.

BLT Prime by David Burke
City: Washington, D.C.

“Iron Chef” star and prolific restaurateur David Burke stepped into this restaurant space in the Trump International Hotel after José Andrés pulled out to protest then-candidate Trump’s remarks about Mexican immigrants. The dining room is spectacular, overlooking a bright atrium lobby spanned by Eiffel-Tower-like girders, and Burke’s menu is appropriately over-the-top. Russian (!) imperial ossetra caviar goes for $250 an ounce here, the Caesar comes with crab cake croutons, and the 10 assorted steaks include A5 Miyazaki Kobe beef at $65 an ounce — and you can add an ounce of black truffles for $165. There are other BLT Primes in Miami and New York City, but while Burke is a partner in the company that runs them, he is not directly involved.

Bobby Flay Steak
City: Atlantic City, NJ

This colorful dining room in the Borgata Hotel & Casino “honors the traditions of classic steakhouse fare, incorporates New Jersey’s fresh produce, and pays tribute to its neighbor, the City of Brotherly Love,” according to its website. That translates to such menu items as gorgonzola ricotta fonduta with grilled toast, lobster and crispy squid salad with sweet peppers and chiles, pan-seared halibut with white clam sauce, Philadelphia-style strip steak with provolone cheese sauce and caramelized onions, and five steaks, spice-rubbed, with Bobby Flay Steak Sauce.

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CarneVino Italian Steakhouse (Joe Bastianich)
City: Las Vegas, NV

The proprietor of this Italian-accented steakhouse, Joe Bastianich, isn’t exactly a celebrity chef. He’s a celebrity restaurateur, son of chef-restaurateur and television personality Lidia Bastianich, and until earlier this year a partner in a number of restaurants, including this one, with a genuine celebrity chef, albeit now a tarnished one, Mario Batali. There are five USDA prime steaks rubbed with sea salt and fresh rosemary on the menu, as well as a classic Florentine-style porterhouse. Other Italian references include top-quality prosciutto di Parma, fried calamari with marinara sauce and pickled hot peppers, 14 pasta dishes ranging from classic tagliatelle bolognese to non-classic stinging nettle gnocchi with morels and favas, and such side dishes as mascarpone and guanciale mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus with tomato-olive tapenade.

Charlie Palmer Steak
City: Washington, D.C.

Charlie Palmer, who is best-known for his Michelin-starred Aureole in New York City — there is another one in Las Vegas — presides over 17 restaurants and bars, in New York, California, Nevada, and D.C., half a dozen of them branded as Charlie Palmer Steak. Appetizers here include little gem lettuce Caesar with prosciutto, a quail egg, and Spanish anchovies; grilled asparagus with a 62-degree egg, toasted brioche, pecorino, and black garlic; and grilled Spanish octopus with fingerling potatoes and avocado purée. There are six steaks, provenance not specified, along with a Mishima “Manhattan cut” American wagyu strip steak and an A5 Miyazaki steak from Japan, served with red-veined sorrel and soy-wasabi dipping sauce.

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Craftsteak (Tom Colicchio)
City: Las Vegas, NV

Tom Colicchio might be better known today as a TV personality — for his role as head judge on “Top Chef,” among other appearances — than as a chef, but he is a five-time James Beard Award winner and helms an empire of half a dozen restaurants, including this one and another Sin City meat emporium called Heritage Steak. He doesn’t overcomplicate things with his menu, but offers straightforward appetizers like Persian cucumber salad with watercress and ginger, shaved fennel with Castelvetrano olives, and Maine lobster bisque with tarragon. The impressive beef selection includes 15 different steaks, among them both domestic and Japanese wagyu and a 22-ounce dry-aged T-bone, as well as 24-hour-braised short rib with cipollini onions.

CUT (Wolfgang Puck)
City: Beverly Hills, CA

Having revolutionized the American restaurant scene with Spago and reinventing Chinese food with Chinois on Main, Wolfgang Puck, probably the best known chef in the country, turned his attentions a few years back to steakhouses. The sleek minimalist decor by architect Richard Meier is anti-steakhouse in feeling, and the menu provides plenty of tasty surprises. To begin with there items such as American wagyu sashimi, sunchoke soup with smoked trout, Dungeness crab with Louisiana shrimp and horseradish. Then, there is an impressive catalogue of steaks, 17 in all, including Illinois corn-fed, dry-aged Nebraska corn-fed, Australian grass-fed, Idaho wagyu, and Japanese wagyu. Among the sides are celery root with parsnips, turnips, and wildflower honey, and Canadian cheddar mac & cheese. Puck now has CUT steakhouses in New York, London, Las Vegas, Bahrain, and Singapore, as well.

Delmonico Steakhouse (Emeril Lagasse)
City: Las Vegas, NV

This “Creole steakhouse” takes its name not from the fabled New York City restaurant that introduced the city to fine dining in the mid-19th century but from another famous Delmonico, opened in New Orleans in 1895. That place was revived in 1998 by Emeril Lagasse, the immensely popular “new New Orleans” chef and TV personality. He later christened this steakhouse after that establishment, giving it plenty of NOLA flavor — such as barbecue shrimp with rosemary buttermilk biscuits, bigeye tuna tartare with Louisiana caviar, traditional gumbo — as well as a good selection of steaks. The seemingly inevitable Japanese wagyu is available, but the showpiece is a 20-ounce Angus chateaubriand for two, carved tableside.

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Dorona (Fabrizio Aielli)
City: Naples, FL

Fabrizio Aielli was a star of the Italian restaurant scene in Washington, D.C. with his Goldoni restaurants, but he moved to this affluent Florida community in 2008 to open Sea Salt, quickly hailed as one of the region’s best. Today, he also owns a more casual place called Barbatella here as well as a Sea Salt in St. Petersburg, but he added this “Modern Italian Steakhouse” to his portfolio earlier this year. He is so serious about meat that he offers a whole separate steak menu, with some 20 choices, counting different cuts and sizes. And perhaps because he sometimes gets an older clientele, four steaks are offered in modest five-ounce portions. Nebraska Black Angus, grass-fed North Carolina ribeye, and Florida wagyu are among the choices. The “Italian” part comes in with such dishes as crispy calamari with brussels sprouts and pizzaiola sauce, eggplant parmigiano dip, half a dozen pastas, and burrata whipped potatoes.

Gordon Ramsay Steak
City: Las Vegas, NV

“Shouty chef” (as Eater.com calls him) Gordon Ramsay promises a “chic, swinging London ambiance” at his extravagant steakhouse, whose website lists the average entree price at $100. British-style onion soup and the Union Jack hanging overhead are presumably expressions of said ambiance. Maine lobster stuffed with chorizo, Kurobuta pork belly with smoked tomato grits, and both beef and lobster Wellington are on the menu. The steak selection is heavy on the wagyu, both American and Japanese, and available garnishes include foie gras, lobster tail, and king crab legs.

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John Howie Steak
City: Seattle, WA

One of the city’s best-known chefs since the early 1990s, John Howie takes his steak extremely seriously. According to his menu, the restaurant offers “A veritable panoply of steaks…7 tiers of the world’s best beef, from our 28 day, 35 day, 42 day and 70 day custom aged USDA Prime beef, single sources from Omaha, Nebraska; American Wagyu beef from Snake River farms, Boise, Idaho: Australian Wagyu beef, Sher Farms, Ballan, Victoria, Australia and Japanese A5 Full blood Wagyu beef from the Miyazaki and Kagoshima Prefectures, Kyushu, Japan.” In case that’s not enough, Howie also lists, among other menu items, spicy habanero butter shrimp, lobster bisque with caviar cream, applewood-grilled wild king salmon, and six kinds of potatoes, including lobster mashed potatoes and duck-fat-roasted Yukon golds with cipollini onions.

Kevin Rathbun Steak
City: Atlanta, GA

Of course there are Coca-Cola baby back pork ribs on the menu here — this is Atlanta, after all. But one-time Food & Wine Rising Star Chef Kevin Rathbun, who also runs an Italian steakhouse in town called KR SteakBar (and whose brother, Kent, is a well-known chef in Texas), admits many other influences to his menu, too. Eggplant fries and Sonoma jack cheese-pecan fritters are among the first courses. There are six different steaks, including a prime ribeye Diane — an old-school Continental classic that involves a sauce of brandy, mushrooms, mustard, and shallots — and a Colorado rack of lamb with a North African-style garnish of chermoula, harissa, pomegranate, and raisin yogurt.

LT Steak & Seafood (Laurent Tourondel)
City: Miami, FL

Laurent Tourondel is the “LT” in the BLT restaurant chain, but he and his partners had a falling out some years ago and he is no longer involved with the company — though he has retained ownership of BLT Steak locations in Charlotte, North Carolina, and in Hong Kong and San Juan. His stylish Miami restaurant, as its name suggests, pays more attention to fish and shellfish than most steakhouses do, with a good selection of sushi and sashimi, lemon-poached lobster salad, Japanese tuna taquitos with mint-yuzu guacamole, grilled Florida snapper, and such. Meat-lovers needn’t worry, though, as there are also nine grilled steaks, all either USDA prime or Certified Black Angus. On the side, possibilities include hand-cut parmesan fries with truffle aïoli, steamed Chinese garlic eggplant, and hen of the woods mushrooms with spring onion purée.

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Mr. B.’s – A Bartolotta Steakhouse (Paul Bartolotta)
City: Milwaukee area, WI

At two suburban Milwaukee locations, “Iron Chef” competitor and two-time James Beard Best Chef award winner Paul Bartolotta serves a steakhouse menu that verges on the classic: lobster mac & cheese, oysters Rockefeller, Maryland blue crab cake, shrimp scampi, shellfish bisque…. There are seven steaks, with, unusually for steakhouses, where everything is usually à la carte, the prices include potatoes — for instance, salt-crusted baked potato or bacon-roasted potatoes — and a sauce included in the price. Among sauce choices are bourbon peppercorn cream and béarnaise sauce.

Nick & Stef’s (Joachim Splichal)
City: Los Angeles, CA

German-born but trained in some of the best restaurants in France, Joachim Splichal — a James Beard Best Chef winner — gained fame with his Patina restaurant, which remains one of L.A.’s finest after almost 30 years. He was also co-founder of the Patina Restaurant Group, which merged with Restaurant Associates in 1999, and which now operates about 60 restaurants around the country. Two of these, Nick & Stef’s in L.A. and New York City, named for Splichal’s sons, are steakhouses. Ten different steaks are available at the L.A. original (the New York menu varies slightly), including USDA prime dry-aged on the premises, Certified Black Angus, and American and Japanese wagyu. A couple of unusual add-ons are bacon confit and giant Madagascar shrimp. The Caesar salad is tossed tableside, and the sides include hand-cut russet fries with garlic and parsley, Szechuan long beans with pink peppercorns, and creamed spinach with bacon and a breadcrumb crust.

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Prime (Jean-Georges Vongerichten)
City: Las Vegas, NV

Jean-Georges Vongerichten has two Michelin stars at his Manhattan flagship, Jean-Georges. He runs almost 40 restaurants in all, in the U.S., the Caribbean, Mexico, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, and several parts of Asia. At Prime, Vongerichten’s French training and penchant for Asian flavors come together nicely, with menu items like crispy salmon sushi with chipotle mayo and crispy rice, soy-garlic-glazed New York strip — plus eight other steaks, among them genuine certified Kobe from Japan — broccoli with jalapeños and cheddar, and one of the great French potato dishes, gratin dauphinois, luxuriating in melted Comté cheese. Vongerichten has a second Las Vegas steakhouse called simple Jean-Georges Steakhouse.

David Burke Prime
City: Mashantucket, CT

In addition to running BLT Prime at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., noted chef-restaurateur David Burke maintains this warmly furnished dining room at the Native American-owned Foxwoods Resort Casino. The menu focuses on an array of steaks dry-aged in the restaurant’s pink-salt room — the salt helps absorb moisture — some for as long as 75 or even 100 days. Appetizers range from a surf & turf tartare, which includes dry-aged filet, ahi tuna, wasabi, avocado, and pickled quail egg, to extra-thick-cut candied “clothesline” bacon. The seafood menu includes several preparations of Maine lobster, as well as the region’s famed Stonington scallops, served with sweet pea purée and more candied bacon.

Porter House (Michael Lomonaco)
City: New York City, NY

Michael Lomonaco ran the kitchens at Windows on the World in the World Trade Center when the towers went down on 9/11. He was picking up a pair of glasses at the time, and so survived the tragedy. A cooking teacher and television personality as well as a chef-restaurateur, he opened this attractive restaurant overlooking Central Park in the Time Warner Center in 2006. His appetizer menu includes roasted bone marrow with chanterelles, New York-cured thick-cut slab bacon, and a salad with bacon and blue cheese that substitutes tender butter lettuce for the usual iceberg. There are nine steaks, mostly dry-aged prime, including a chili-rubbed rib eye with roasted chiles and agave. Slow-roasted prime rib with bone marrow is a special on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Potatoes include black truffle mashed and crispy hash browns.

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Queenie’s Steakhouse (Tim Love)
City: Denton, TX

Best known for his Lonesome Dove Western Bistros in Fort Worth, Austin, and Knoxville, Tennessee, Tim Love named this Texas-flavored steakhouse in Denton, the outer Fort Worth suburb where he was born, after his mother. You know you’re in the Lone Star State when you look at the menu: wild boar ribs with Lonesome Dove bbq sauce, Texas red chili, chicken-fried quail legs, and more. There are only four steaks on the menu, but these include a buffalo ribeye and a 32-ounce wagyu tomahawk with truffled mushroom orzo and grilled langoustines. And here’s something no other steakhouse offers: On Friday and Saturday nights, from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., fresh-made doughnuts are sold out the back door.

Roast (Michael Symon)
City: Detroit, MI

Familiar to food lovers from his appearances on “Iron Chef America,” “The Chew,” “Food Feuds,” and other shows, and to Ohioans for his popular restaurants in his hometown of Cleveland, Michael Symon opened Roast in the Motor City in 2008. In 2009, the Detroit Free Press named it Restaurant of the Year. The food here is gutsy: beef cheek pierogies, lamb neck risotto, chicken livers with polenta, duck confit, skate wing with peas and shiitakes, and more. The steaks, slathered in “dry-aged butter” are six in number, including a filet mignon with crabmeat béarnaise and a hanger steak with pickled shallots and chiles. Spinach and feta au gratin, roasted carrots with pistachios, and asparagus with a poached egg are among the accompaniments.

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Stripsteak (Michael Mina)
City: Las Vegas, NV

Roughly a quarter of Michael Mina’s 40 or so restaurants around America and in Dubai are steakhouses. Besides this Las Vegas entry, there are Stripsteaks in Miami Beach and Honolulu and Bourbon Steaks in Miami, Scottsdale, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and Orange County. The first course selection here is one of the more unusual for a steakhouse, encompassing Maine lobster tacos, prime Angus beef satay with green papaya salad, Thai calamari ceviche, and housemade Spaghetti O’s with mini rigatoni and wagyu bolognese. The steaks are both wagyu and Angus in various forms — including a 10-ounce Angus flat iron — and the menu offers a “World Wide Wagyu” tasting (for $162) that combines portions of Japanese A5 New York steak, American rib cap, and Australian short rib.

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