I celebrated Valentine’s Day with my boyfriend at Morton’s. I made a reservation on OpenTable about a month in advance. As a steakhouse, the ambiance was naturally upscale. Plenty of couples were here, dressed in red dresses and handsome button downs. Given the holiday, they were quite busy. Upon check in, we were told that there might be a delay, but we were seated at 8pm on the dot. Our server, however, did not take our order until 20 minutes after we had sat down. There was also a Prix Fixe menu available for Valentine’s day, but we found it odd how our server didn’t bring it up. We had to ask for it ourselves.
The Valentine’s Day Prix Fixe menu will set each couple back $179. It comes with your choice of appetizer, a 28 oz bone in “Empire Cut,” twin lobster tails, two butters/sauces, and your choice of dessert. We also opted for three accompaniments, which cost around $10-20 each.
I also had a cocktail from the bar - the “Cherry Blossom Martini.” Sweet, floral, and delightful.
Our appetizer of choice was the lobster bisque, served in two mini cups. It was delicious. Rich, creamy, with robust lobster flavor. Our server advised us to dip our bread into the soup, and it was amazing. The bread itself was flavored - I believe it was some sort of onion loaf - which went very well with the soup. Somewhere between our second loaf of bread, I had to stop myself because we had a humongous meal still on the way. In hindsight, I wish I kept eating the soup and bread because that was probably the best thing we had all night.
The steak was pretty good. I liked the black truffle butter, but the garlic butter was just ok. The sides were bland. I think the entire meal could have benefited from a good, hearty pinch of salt all around. For accompaniments, we opted for the jumbo grilled asparagus, lobster macaroni shells & cheese, and black truffle & lobster mashed potatoes. The asparagus was fine. I was especially disappointed by the lobster mac & cheese. I found it ironic that shells were the pasta of choice for this dish. Shells are a popular choice for mac and cheese as their grooves are able to catch and hold the cheese sauce, creating little pockets of bursting cheesy goodness. In the case of the lobster mac, there was not much cheese to catch. The saucy was thin and runny, barely coating the pasta at all. The black truffle & lobster mashed potatoes were underwhelming as the black truffle flavor was faint.
For dessert, we chose “Morton’s Legendary Hot Chocolate Cake,” which, surprise surprise, was just a molten lava cake. Pretty good, honestly. Fun fact, when I was 8 years old or so, I watched an episode of Arthur where Arthur’s dad attempts to bake a souffle. After watching the episode, I really wanted to try a souffle for myself, so my dad looked up where he could get me one. We settled on Morton’s. So he took me, t-shirt and all, to the Morton’s in Anaheim so that I could try a souffle. I really liked it. For a grade-schooler, it was such a fancy experience. I learned the word “sabayon” that night. “Would you like some more sabayon on your souffle?” the waiter asked the 8 year old me. Fast forward to about a year ago, I took my dad to the Santa Ana Mortons for Father’s Day. I was saddened to hear that the souffle was no longer on the menu, but it would have been so nice if it was still available for dessert.
Overall, Morton’s is ok. My past couple of visits have been lukewarm… nothing compared to the magic I felt that one day after watching Arthur. I don’t think I would come back unless I heard the souffle made a surprise reappearance.