La Jolla Steakhouses: One Sizzles, One Fizzles

Many epitaphs were written in the 1980s for the all-American steak and for the all-American steakhouse, but as yet the demise of neither seems imminent.

Two new steakhouses recently opened in the La Jolla area, the consummately beefy P.J. Wolf in the Golden Triangle’s trendy Aventine development and the more modest Prime Steakhouse in a La Jolla Boulevard location that over the last few years has been occupied by a succession of eateries.

P.J. Wolf--a compound of the names of proprietors P.J. Macaluso and Bill Wolf, who also operate the brand new Paparazzi next door and La Jolla’s hugely successful Manhattan--may do the best job yet of defining for San Diego the nature of the traditional, big-city steakhouse.

Although it hardly needs mentioning that the beef at this sort of place is expected to be excellent, the steaks form the centerpieces of meals that must include other simple but hearty foods. Potatoes prepared with great attention are essential, and the menu also should include creamed spinach (only fresh spinach need apply), robust salads and desserts rich enough to knock out any appetites still left standing after so Brobdingnagian a dinner. P.J. Wolf meets these requirements quite handily and adds several refinements of its own, including a good daily selection of fresh fish and a few preparations that leaven traditional steakhouse lavishness with Italian kitchen sense.

Macaluso contributes the Italian accents to the cooking and has even gone so far as to swab the prime, aged, Iowa-fattened steaks with melted garlic butter, which may seem an outrage to those raised under the impression that the best steaks are susceptible to salt and pepper only.

Actually, the butter adds a velvety richness to meat that--in the case of an exceptional New York strip--already is so tender that it seems to melt between the teeth. This particular cut is the restaurant’s grandest, with the exception of a Porterhouse served for two. This steak should be a good challenge to almost any appetite, and there is victory in defeat for anyone unable to finish it, since the leftovers translate into fine sandwiches.

The menu does not list many steak choices; besides the New York and Porterhouse cuts, there are top sirloins, rib eyes and small and large filets mignon. Rather daringly for these parts, the menu excludes prime rib, and declines to list items such as lamb, veal and pork chops. There may be a beef special of the day, however, such as a recently offered variant on pepper steak that doused a pair of small, buttery filets with an excellent brown sauce flavored with green peppercorns and brandy.

Among seafood offerings are crab-stuffed shrimp; a Mediterranean-style stew of lobster, shrimp and clams in tomato; such daily fish as salmon and halibut and Australian lobster tail, something of an aberration for this menu, since beasts from Maine would better suit the P.J. Wolf style.

Another requisite for the big-city steakhouse is that it be expensive, a requirement that takes some of the fun out of the experience but is nonetheless inescapable. P.J. Wolf meets this criterion just as successfully as it does the others; starters run from $4 to $8.50, and steaks and seafoods from $16.95 to $29.95. The strictly a la carte menu also requires that garnishes be ordered separately, but softens this rule by serving portions that in most cases can be shared.

Garnish choices include a massive platter of mixed steamed vegetables, sauteed or creamed broccoli or spinach, sauteed mushrooms and several kinds of potato preparations.

The kitchen takes a particularly nice approach with the creamed spinach, cooking the leaves as briefly as possible to leave a toothsome texture, and adding a jolt of freshly chopped garlic. The potato list includes baked and French fried, as well as the more interesting au gratin --very American, very rich and served in a great, steaming heap--and the thoroughly successful potatoes lyonnaise. This classic dish appears virtually nowhere these days, although it is relatively easy to make, and calls simply for cubed potatoes to be sauteed in one pan while sliced onions sizzle and melt in another. The two are then combined, and bound into a kind of savory hash with a drizzle of vinegar and a sprinkle of thyme.

Starters are equally grand, and include such niceties as the DiMaggio salad--a table-tossed jumble of spinach and other greens with chopped egg, bacon, mushrooms and such--and the definitive shrimp cocktail, a pile of cold, chopped prawns enrobed in a sauce that seethes with horseradish. A novel house carpaccio combines paper-thin slices of raw beef with slices of lobster tail, the whole drizzled with olive oil; more typical are the oysters on the half shell, the oysters Rockefeller and the baked mushroom caps stuffed with shrimp and crab.

Macaluso and Wolf have hired an Italian baker from New York to service their three restaurants, and the cart includes several richly indulgent offerings, among which the chocolate cannoli may rank as the most outrageous, and the langousta (“lobster”) as the most clever. This last consists of overlapping crisp pastry rows that imitate the armored plates of a lobster’s tail; when the crust is broken, it yields a smooth cream filling.

New York designer Debra Natsios gave the restaurant an angular, thoroughly contemporary interior that is quite unlike any in San Diego, and, except for the fact that the tables could be better spaced, the restaurant is luxurious in a rather casual and modern way. A wine room hangs suspended over the dining room, and, besides forming a certain focus, it holds the bulk of the extensive list, which features good depth and a few affordable bottles in addition to the vintages priced for the expense-account set.

Dinner for two with a glass of wine each, tax and tip will cost about $70 to $100.

La Jolla’s Prime Steakhouse takes a more traditional and local approach to the steakhouse theme, and offers a basic, moderately priced menu that begins with chopped sirloin at $6.95 and progresses through top sirloin, New York strip, Porterhouse, filet mignon (at $15.50 the top-priced item), pork chops, barbecued back ribs, chicken and prime rib.

A menu note mentions that the restaurant serves nothing less than 1-pound cuts of “quality cornfed beef.” It had a strange way of interpreting this 1-pound cut in the case of a recently sampled filet, however, which unexpectedly arrived in the form of two broad, thin steaks. The meat was tough and unappealing, whereas a thick steak of the same weight might have been good.

The accompanying french fried potatoes, conversely, were the thick-cut, skin-on variety, which do appeal to some diners. However, the waiter would have done well to issue a warning that the skins had not been removed, since these sort of potatoes fry up tough and are quite disagreeable. Western-style chili beans also garnished the plate.

The barbecued baby back ribs, served in a generous slab, also had been dealt with in a perfunctory manner, and the meat was not nearly as tender as it might have been.

This menu also offers several pastas, Australian lobster tail, Alaskan king crab and a fish of the day. A meal for two, including a glass of house wine each, tax and tip, should cost $25 to $45.

* P.J. WOLF

The Aventine, La Jolla Village Drive at Interstate 5

452-9653

Lunch weekdays, dinner nightly.

Credit cards accepted.

* PRIME STEAKHOUSE

6737 La Jolla Blvd., La Jolla

454-4555

Lunch and dinner daily.

Credit cards accepted.