I must admit, I feel a bit vindicated here!

Seriously though, downtown DC has at least 8 of these steakhouses that I can think of off the top of my head:
2 Mortons, RC, a Cap grille, Smith & Wollwnsky's, Prime Rib, San & Harry's, The Caucus Room, and The Palm.

Chicago and New York each have dozens and dozens of them. Dallas Atlanta, Atlanta, Miami, DC all have a bunch. In fact most major cities have at least 4 or 5 of the "chains", plus a few local places too.

Baltimore aint THAT small! And I do have to believe that the expanding convention business does play a role in it to an extent. Baltimore (believe or not) does a pretty decent tourism business, and as someone who travels a lot to major cities around the country, it's refreshing to come to a town and know you have number of options.

I'm surprised there hasn't been much interest in this thread. Based on my personal experiences with each one, I'd rank the steakhouses here in Bmore this way-

1) Capital Grille
2) Ruth's Chris (Water Street)
3) Ruth's Chris (Pier)
4) Shula's
5) Prime Rib
6) Sullivan's
7) Flemings
8) Morton's

Capital Grille- steak is great, service is top notch. on a cold rainy night, instead of forcing me to run out to an ATM to get cash so i could tip the valet, my waiter gave me cash out of his wallet. smart move b/c obviously i was going to make up for it and then some in his tip, but still classy.

Ruth's Chris (both locations)- my wife doesnt care for butter on her steaks, but we've always had good food, good service, and when she asks, they dont put butter on her steak. I ask for her butter. Most consistent of the chains.

Service at Sullivan's is still a work in progress. nice outfits on the waitresses- basically an upscale Hooters. steak quality is ok, not the best- actually, their seafood is better, which is sad for a steakhouse.

Shula's is really friendly service and good meat, but a bit depressing- seems like no one other than hotel guests actually eat there. their prices are high even for a steakhouse, if that makes any sense. I finished the Shula's 48oz steak challenge in 18 minutes.

Prime Rib- good food, good service- my complaint is actually the other customers. I love dressing up to go to dinner, but I dont like fighting past cougars prowling at the bar to get to the bathroom. I am also annoyed by snooty old white men. Do they have carryout?

Flemings- wonderful wait staff, so-so food, terrible experience. our experience was sad- waited 40 minutes to get our apps (waitress smartly comped us extra apps), then another hr for our steaks (manager comped us a bottle of wine as we waited). Finally, when steaks came out, mine had hair on it. they apologized profusely and comped the meal, but at that point, meal was ruined. doesnt help that their steaks are obviously not prime beef. i really wanted to love the place b/c they tried so hard, but their meat quality is inferior to others, and well, almost 2 hrs to get a steak with hair on it just isn't getting my business.

Mortons- WORST SERVICE EVER. I went in college with my finacee (now wife) and another couple 10 years ago, we were treated so poorly, it was absurd. Yes we were in college, but we were well dressed and well behaved- instead of making it a nice experience, they basically told us, "get out of here you poor students, you deserve no respect b/c we assume you wont tip well." I will NEVER spend another $ there.

I just had a chat with the hostel owner here in Akureyri about American steaks. He was telling me how much he enjoys the huge steaks we have, even if he can't finish them any more (sucks getting old, eh?).

Perhaps an odd breakfast conversation. It started with skyr, ended up at steaks.

I heard the strangest steak fact recently. In the U.S. the tenderloin is considered un-kosher. But in Israel, because meet is scarcer, they are able to remove the tendon and render it kosher. However, U.S. kosher beef eaters cannot order it imported from Israel. It's only kosher there.

Lissa - are you in Iceland again?

That kosher issue is easily explained by economics. Kosher laws in general can be explained by economics as can most of the bible.

Yep, Joyce, I'm in Iceland again. Had an amazing lunch today at the library. Even took a picture.

There has never been complete agreement on what is and isn't kosher. Look at the different ideas of kosher for passover that Ashkenazim and Sephardim have.

Lissa - hope the weather's nice. Eat some fresh cod for me!

Yes, there in Judaism (as in every religion, I suspect), not much agreement on much!

Ah, but Judaism institutionalizes disagreement. That is one of the reasons I love the religion so.

Cod...if I can find a nice piece. I had a seafood soup yesterday for lunch that was pretty dreadful. Just had an Icelandic hot dog, and it was great.

Dan, you have it wrong. Flemming;s IS indeed USDA Prime beef. Capital Grill on the other hand uses USDA Choice.

I think Cap Grill is a great restaurant overall, but their steak is not as good as the places who do use USDA prime. No one should charge that kind of money for USDA Choice. But the service there is off the hook, as are is their calamari. Whenever I go there, I get seafood. Sometimes I'll even do a either a ceaser or spinach salad, and the calamari, and just have that as my meal. But I simply do not like their steaks.

I feel for you about your experience at Fleming's. I've never had a bad experience there, but then again, I've never gone on a weekend.

I am so with you on The Prime Rib, though. It's the other people who go there that I have a problem with. I can only take so much smugness at once. But their staff is top notch, no doubt about it, and their food is incredible. Again, their non-steak offerrings are amazingm (seafood, crab cakes, soft shells, etc..)

Again, I'm sorry you had a mbad experience at Morton's as well. I've been to Morton's in 7 differrent cities including Baltimore and never once have had any problem at all. in fact it's bene nothing but enjoyable. That is a shame you had such a bad experience there. But if I were to have had your experience, I must say I would probably hold the same opinion as you.

Lissa, did you get a look at the ingredients in that Icelandic hot dog?

Lissa - oddly enough, as with the last time you were in Iceland, the Travel Channel re-ran the Andrew Zimern in Iceland show. He doesn't really eat anything too revolting in that episode except (maybe) the blood pudding. He also eats puffins (after explaining that the Icelandic people control their population by hunting and eating them), skyr and icelandic (lamb) hotdogs. The thing that really got my attention though was that although a huge amount of the worlds cod (and other seafood) are caught in Iceland, the majority of it is exported.

BTW, he also went to a restaurant where all of the cooking was done geothermically which I thought was totally brilliant use of a natural resource.

Dahlink, I haven't seen the ingredients on an Icelandic hot dog (although the wrapper came with nutritional information), but my guess would be that it goes something like fat, salt, fat, weird lamb bits, fat.

Joyce, I'll have to see if I can find a torrent of that show. The swimming pools and most houses are heated geothermically here, too. Veggies are grown in geothermically heated greenhouses.

Haven't found puffin yet to eat. I tend to only eat out at lunch, to keep expenses down. Restaurants come in two flavours here, fast food (there is a Dominos a block away) and Brass Elephant. The only other kind you get are gas stations, bakeries and convenience stores, where you can get simple food and salad bar, sometimes.

Lissa,
Are your trips to Iceland for business or leisure?
I was reading an article in Nat'l Geographic not long ago about Iceland, and how aluminum smelting plants are being built there. And some people don't want them, to put it lightly.

I've always wanted to visit there. It is a beautiful place. I believe BWI used to have direct flights to Reykjavik.

Ruth Chris may be the most over rated restaurant in America. They pack people in like sardines. The service is okay, but nothing like the Prime Rib. There is nothing special about the atmosphere, again nothing like the classic look of the Prime Rib. Finally, the steaks that are served sans steak knife simply don't have the well marbled flavor you get from other top tier steakhouses, like say the Prime Rib.

I think Ruth Chris is kind of like Starbucks in that it represents mass luxury. These places project an image of being high end but still accessible. So some couple from the burbs or some guy on a convention can go to Ruth Chris and on Monday morning they can tell everyone where they went. If they told everyone they went to the Prime Rib, a lot of the people wouldn't know what that was, so the impact of impressing one's peers would be limited. But when you say you went to Ruth Chris, everyone knows that is a high-end place. In essence some of the status of Ruth's Chris is transferred to its patrons, and the value of that for many people is higher than the value of the actual dining experience.

Oh, and as to Iceland and the aluminum plants, I believe they've had a presence in that industry for a while. The reason is cheap energy from hydro and geothermal sources. It ends up being cheaper to ship in the bauxite and take advantage of the low cost energy. If you go to Iceland, you'll notice just hom many of the buildings are aluminum.

Is the RC there really dark? The one here is really dark. I don't like that, so I've only been there once. (And it's crowded, like RoCK describes. Too many tables squeezed into too little restaurant.)

PCB Rob, I come to Iceland for vacation.

The latest proposals for more aluminium plants have been voted down, but the huge plant in the east of the country that destroyed a large chunk of pristine land is still being built.

RoCK is right about the cheap energy. Aluminium production takes a boatload of energy, and hydro is plentiful here (mainly because it is danged wet and pretty danged vertical here).

Icelandair flew into BWI until about 18 months ago. I'm still a bit ticked off they stopped. Flying to Boston to fly to Reykjavik adds a lot of time and hassle (and expense) to visiting the home of great hot dogs and tender lamb.

Lissa,
Thanks for the info!

When I was in the Navy, I looked into getting stationed there (Keflavik) after my Scotland tour, but there were no open spots at the time.