OUR REVIEW OF DEL FRISCO'S DOUBLE EAGLE

You just don’t see many double eagles anymore – unless you frequent cafes favored by extremely old Russian royalists waiting for the Romanovs, like the Old South, to rise again. The double eagle was a symbol of a European royalty both genteel and intermarried, before World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution brought that world crashing down around their heads.

As we see clearly at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House, the latest entry in Houston’s upscale carnivore wars, royalty loved nothing better than watching other people work. At this sparkling, two-story palace in the Galleria’s growing Restaurant Row, this is accomplished by having the kitchen downstairs and the dining room up – not the best idea for your own house but a fine notion for watching waiters slog plates full and then empty up and down a wide, thoroughly regal staircase. In another doff of the hat to royalty, Del Frisco’s subscribes to a style of service called “swarm,” in which any waiter near enough to help at your table is expected to. The result for diners is feeling pampered and privileged, as though at your manor surrounded by lots of servants. The result is feeling, well, royal.

How Del Frisco’s got to this point is as an odd story, even by restaurant standards. The first Del Frisco’s opened in New Orleans in the early 1980s. Despite some success there, we imagine it ran up against the fact that New Orleans had room in its heart for only one local steakhouse, Ruth’s Chris. As a result, after several years, the place gave up on the Crescent City (as homebase, anyway) and decamped for Dallas – a place with a bigger heart, thicker wallets and a greater sense of dining curiosity. Nothing is worse for restaurant diversity, after all, than too much customer loyalty. Del Frisco’s flourished and flirted, as people, places and things tend to do in Texas, finally arriving at a liaison with Sullivan’s that allowed it to “marry money.” As a result, there are now Double Eagles going gangbusters in dining and convention destinations like Las Vegas, Orlando and New York City. And now… Houston.

There is, without a doubt, a certain sameness in what each major steakhouse can do, whether it’s national chains like Del Frisco’s, Fleming’s or Ruth’s Chris, or proud local upstarts like Pappas Bros., Vic and Anthony’s or Perry’s. USDA Prime steak is a great start, built out with the now-mandatory seafood, plus indulgent and hopefully varied appetizers and side dishes, plus decadent, usually gargantuan desserts. It’s not their fault so many steakhouse menus look alike – it’s ours. We know what we want when we go, more than with most other restaurant concepts. If it wants to win a place in our rotation, a new place in town had better serve what we want.

In some places, appetizers represent the kitchen’s only chance to get wild and crazy. At Del Frisco’s, starters couldn’t be more traditional, but they are wonderful. Shrimp cocktail and New Orleans-style shrimp remoulade (the first of several references to Del Frisco’s long-ago hometown) are first-rate but blown away by the same jumbo shrimp simply marinated Italian-style in olive oil, garlic and onion. Speaking of onion, the rings are thick and lightly batter-fried, and deliriously pumped up with flavor. For soup lovers, the lightly creamed seafood broth is better than the New Orleans turtle. And for salad lovers, there’s a nifty iceberg wedge with homemade blue cheese, or a less fattening tomato and sweet onion that’s as satisfying as it is sprightly. Everything, of course, comes in large amounts on even larger plates, so be prepared to share. Personally, we don’t think non-sharers (you know who you are) should be allowed to dine out anyway.

Del Frisco’s is a steakhouse, and that means it had better serve great steaks. It does, though the art and science of doing so has made that achievement more commonplace now than ever before. Buy prime meat is the start of the mantra, then cook it in high-tech, high-heat broilers that no home chef could afford in a million years, then serve it with panache on large platters with very large knives. Del Frisco’s does that. In the Panache Dept., it offers several cuts familiar with the bone out with the bone in. For all the predictable jokes about eating like Fred Flintstone, cooking meat bone-in is a wonderful play for maximum flavor, even more than it’s a bit of tableside theatrics. We like the bone-in ribeye, strip or porterhouse best, but we’re sure the anti-chew brigade who prefer filet mignon will be happy at Del Frisco’s too.

Lobsters are of the Australian cold-water variety, thick and succulent tails broiled just until a bit caramelized on top. The halibut with citrus vinaigrette is a seafood winner, along with two thick medallions of sushi-grade tuna offered with the perfect interplay of sweetish soy and tiger-stripes of pungent wasabi mayonnaise.

There are more side dishes offered here than the law ought to allow, so just dig in and order your favorites from childhood. In addition to some great (huge, naturally) baked potatoes for sprinkling with Del Frisco’s apple-smoked bacon, get at least the creamed spinach and the incredible creamed white corn. You’re allowed onion rings at this point only if you didn’t have them as your appetizer. Since by now there’s never any room for dessert, have some anyway and cart the rest home. Best bets are the lemon “dauberge” cake (lemon pound cake meets the French New Orleans favorite) and the whipped, air-filled cheesecake with strawberry sauce.