Fleming's Prime Steakhouse - Chicago - Chicago
Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar is the downtown Chicago steak house that serves some of the very best steak and wine in the city. A classic steak house that specializes in the finest in prime steak and wine, as well as seafood, Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar nonetheless varies the time-tested formula just a little here and there to keep things interesting. For instance, the appetizer menu offers the obligatory seafood tower and colossal shrimp cocktail, but also sweet chili calamari (itself a variation on Rhode Island-style fried squid with banana peppers) and housemade burrata with charred grape tomatoes, which we’re pretty sure we’ve never seen on any other Chicago steak house menu.
As the Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar website explains, “At Fleming’s we deliver an indulgent steak experience customized for you; we serve the finest available hand-selected USDA Prime and Certified Angus Beef® expertly aged a minimum of 21 days; your steak will be prepared to your exact preferences, seasoned with kosher salt and black pepper, then broiled at 1, 600⁰ and finished with butter and fresh parsley.”
Indeed, the steak offerings stick to the standards – filet mignon, rib eye, strip, some aged – but Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar tweaks the standards with some toppings that are truly unusual. For instance, you can get a rub of genuine Kona coffee made from the rare and much vaunted beans from Hawaii, adding a slightly bitter and delicious dimension to the meat. Or you can get a sauce of porcini mushroom and gorgonzola cheese, which along with the meat itself represents a triple-threat umami flavor explosion.
Read More
Phil Vettel in the “Chicago Tribune” is an enthusiastic supporter of Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar, writing “Prime steaks are aged 21 days, cut on the premises (so it's easy to order an extra-thick cut) and consistently excellent. Clubby good looks and plenty of sound baffling contribute to an extremely pleasant atmosphere.”
“Chicago Magazine” placed Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar on their listing of the 20 Best Steakhouses in Chicago, and of course where there’s good red meat, there’s going to be good wine.
Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar offers The Fleming’s 100, a collection of 100 wines by the glass, curated by their Director of Wine, and designed to match the palate of every guest and the flavor profile of every dish served at the restaurant. Annually, wines from all the world’s wine producing regions are selected – including exclusive, limited-allocation boutique wines, as well as local wines – to be a part of this by-the-glass group. Every guest at Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar receives a WINEPAD, a proprietary and award-winning app that diners can use, if they choose, to select the perfect wine for the perfect steak. Of course, there’s also an experienced sommelier available to fine-tune wine-making decisions to make sure every selection is exactly what the customer is looking to pair with a world-class meal.
The wine menu, as you might expect, is extremely broad, and it’s divided into both traditional and non-traditional categories including sparkling wines, reserve wines, sweet whites and reds (!), white wines and blends, chardonnay (it’s that popular, it gets its own sub-menu), pinot noir (ditto), merlot and merlot blends, cabernet blends and cabernet, and global wines.
In addition to the large dining areas praised by the “Chicago Tribune,” there is also, predictably for a restaurant of this quality, secluded and well-appointed rooms where Private Dining Directors work with you to create a unique experience. This one-of-a-kind experience includes customizable menus as well as special equipment like video conferencing systems. There are also a series of set menus, designed specifically for the private dining rooms, including the Classic Lunch, Signature Lunch and Reserve Dinner, each designed to offer a special series of dishes to match the preferences of the guests. These private dining rooms are favored by visiting celebrities as well as business groups that need to close the doors and get down to serious work after (or even during) some serious dining.
For dessert, the chocolate lava cake seems to be the local favorite, a blend of renowned Callebaut Belgian chocolate, nuts and ice cream. If your tastes tend to go a little less rich after a meal of some of the most luxurious red meat in the city, you might prefer the wild berry sorbet or just a bowl of fresh berries. Like all truly fine dining restaurants in Chicago, Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar is all about making sure you eat and drink exactly what you want…and then leave happy, ready to come back for more.
