OLD-TIMER, NEWCOMER CATER TO STEAK EATERS

I belong to a beefsteak-eating club. We’re serious about it. Our bylaws state that a member who orders anything but beefsteak at our meetings must “be banished to invisible status until the alien meat is consumed,” a punishment known as “being sent to Sausalito.”

But I hardly ever write about steak houses. I’m sorry. What can I say? Mostly I’m on the lookout for new restaurants, and most steak houses are old-timers.

The Barn Steakhouse--not to be confused with a Barn in Tustin that also serves Mexican and Italian dishes--is truly an old-timer, a fixture in Costa Mesa for more than a quarter-century. Three weeks ago it reopened after a move into a rather peculiar location, a curious, lumpy sort of space that used to be a Chuck E. Cheese fronting on the back parking lot of a shopping mall. It’s the last place in the world I’d put a restaurant, but the Barn’s loyal customers seem to have found it. Count on a wait of 45 minutes to an hour on a Saturday night.

This is an all-American steak house--in fact, the old location used to be a stop for Japanese tour buses. The prices are reasonable, the portions sizable (half the customers walk out swinging doggie bags) and the style country-casual. The servers actually dress in bib overalls. It’s a working man’s sort of place, where a lot of guys wear string ties and about half the parties include kids or grandparents or both.

At dinner, steak is about all there is except for rather plain fried scallops or shrimp. They’re all charcoal-broiled, though not particularly charcoaly, and include a 24-ounce porterhouse, claimed to be the largest served in the West, which overlaps the edges of the plate. It’s a lot of steak, but it tends to be generous in the gristle department as well, and I’d always go for the sirloin steak, the thick New York or even the teriyaki steak in its unusual thick, sweet sauce.

The best of all, for my money, is a fist-sized portion of tender filet wrapped in bacon. There is also a serious, beefy burger, made of meat ground on the premises. It’s made with plain meat or farm style, which means mixed with seasonings including good old down-home country garlic.

You can get a steak at lunch, but lunch also features several sandwiches, such as breaded veal cutlet served on buttered bread with pickle chips and sweet onions--greasy, but American. At lunch the sandwiches are $1.39 to $3.89, a couple of small entrees such as shrimp $4.39 to $5.39, steaks $8.89 to $12.59. Dinner entrees run $7.95 to $15.95.

The Charthouse, a chain that largely made its name with steaks, four months ago opened a Newport Beach branch that is not like any Charthouse I’ve ever been to. No dark woody murk here. This is a bright, jazzy environment with lots of windows on the bay and truly extraordinary decor. The ceiling columns are punctuated every couple of inches of their height by indirect-lighting structures sort of like window planters, and combined with the low ceilings, they give the room an intense, overwhelming horizontality.

No grandmas or little kids here. This is a steak house for fish eaters, for young, slim, fashionable people, for women who eat fried Brie and wear backless dresses. Opulent salad bar territory, with peeled melons and papayas and all the hearts of palm you can grab. Great smoked salmon and terrific, anise-heavy oysters Rockefeller in the appetizer department, which is where a number of people stay--appetizers can be ordered at the lively bar, which takes up about half of this striking room.

There are only three steaks, but they’re mostly good ones, grilled to a stylish charcoaly condition. The biggest is the sirloin, but the best is a tender New York. I find the teriyaki steak curiously dull. The teriyaki sauce works a lot better on the teriyaki chicken breast.

Mostly, though, this Charthouse is long on fish, including some unusual ones. Fortunately the waiters, who run to beachy types in Hawaiian shirts, are knowledgeable. One gave a description of spearfish that turned out to be quite exact: like swordfish, but a little softer and sweeter. There’s a cioppino that comes in a big tureen with a very good fresh tomato sauce with bell peppers and onions and a hot pepper bite, though big eaters may be expecting a little more seafood in it.

They still have the famous Charthouse mud pie for dessert, of course (you can get a copy of the recipe at the counter): a huge mass of coffee ice cream in a rock-hard chocolate-cookie crust with a fudge topping. Or so says the recipe--I’d swear it’s caramel on top. They also serve a model of an old-fashioned hot fudge sundae with rich vanilla ice cream and no stinting on the almonds and fudge sauce. Appetizers run $1.95 to $9.95, steaks $11.65 to $17.95 (combo platters $15.95 to $23.95) and fish $16.95 to $21.95. Desserts are $2.95 to $3.25.

Steak eaters are an opinionated lot and in our club we’ve had to pass a law forbidding one member to “question, chide, mock or heap coals of abuse on a fellow member’s choice of steak.” That understood, my final word is: The best steak here is the filet at the Barn, unless I’m in a charcoal mood, when it’s the New York at the Charthouse. I have spoken.

THE BARN 2300 Harbor Blvd. No. 31, Costa Mesa

(714) 641-9777

Open for lunch Monday through Saturday, for dinner nightly. All major credit cards accepted.

THE CHARTHOUSE

2801 W. Coast Highway, Newport Beach

(714) 548-5889. Open for dinner daily. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted.