Steakhouses in this region may be a dime a dozen, but you'd better start saving your pennies if you want to eat at one. Fine aged steaks don't come cheap, and once you factor in the cost of a la carte dining, you're in for a bill as hefty as the slab of meat on the plate. But if you've got a bit of cash to burn and feel like upping your iron intake, there's nothing better for a red-blooded American diner to do than break out the steak knives and go for the gusto. Take Bascom's Chop House, owned by Fred Bullard. Expensive? Check. Dinner at Bascom's is a pricey affair, one you might want to reserve for taking your significant other's folks out to dinner, indulging a Father's Day fantasy or celebrating the clearance of the hurricane insurance check. Traditional? You got it. Wood paneling, brass fixtures, and oil paintings evoke the sort of old-school flavor so lusted after by cigar-smoking businessmen and the kind of guy who inspires storylines on The Sopranos. One unusual touch is the giant aquarium gracing the entrance. Tropical reef fish flit about in lighted blue water, giving a wide berth to the tank's centerpiece, a glorious lionfish that parades about waving its venomous dorsal spines in warning and pride. In this meat-eating warrior territory, even the fish have machismo to spare.
The staff is generally younger than some of the white-haired dignitaries serving at, say, Bern's, but give Bascom's half a century to catch up, and the staff will be as finely aged as the steaks they serve.
The menu teems with the sort of lusty descriptors so vital to the genre: tender, wood-grilled, slow-roasted, center-cut, blue cheese-encrusted, doused with béarnaise or hollandaise sauce, porterhouse, peppered, filet mignon. Hungry yet? The standard array of a la carte sides (jumbo asparagus, creamed spinach, potatoes au gratin, etc.) holds down the fort, though Bascom's has one trick up its sleeve: the seafood list is every bit as impressive as the steaks.
An additional draw to the fish side of the menu is that the dishes aren't a la carte. Unlike the steaks, each seafood dish (ranging in price from $17.95-$20.95) is served with steamed broccoli and spinach orzo or rice pilaf. The fish menu is subject to change due to availability, but the wood-grilled mahi mahi and Atlantic tuna and salmon are worth a taste if available. I especially enjoyed the Chesapeake Bay crab cakes ($18.95), which were chock-full of sweet lump crab meat and remoulade. The crab cakes are also available in a half-size appetizer portion for $9.95. Other seafood appetizers are satisfactory, if not spectacular. The oysters casino ($8.95/half dozen) were tasty, if overpriced, and the sesame-crusted, rare seared tuna with wasabi and a thick soy vinaigrette was indistinguishable from similar dishes in every restaurant in town.
The steak menu is a tad more dear, but the meat comes with quite a pedigree. Each of Bascom's steaks is made with certified Angus beef, aged for at least 28 days and priced up to $27 a plate. I know it's tradition, but at that price, aren't they splitting hairs a bit by charging an extra $1.50 for béarnaise sauce? Butter and eggs are cheap, and nowhere did the a la carte nature of the restaurant irk me more. Still, it's tough to argue with your taste buds, and mine thought the slow-roasted queen's cut of prime rib ($19.95) was an invitation to hearty, luxurious indulgence. Another steak option, the filet mignon ($21.95 for the petite cut), had a thick, spicy pepper crust that complemented the grilled meat to perfection. It goes without saying that every steak in the place was cooked to our exacting specifications.
But Bascom's really shows off its chophouse chops with a list of non-beef items. Veal chops ($29.95), lamb chops ($28.95), pork chops ($16.95) and baby back ribs ($18.95) round out the "turf" menu, and give folks a choice aside from red meat.
Of the sides, the most interesting (and, surprisingly, the cheapest) option by far was the blue cheese soufflé ($2.95). Savory and bursting with the sharpness of blue cheese, the soufflé was better eaten alongside a steak than independently. Undiluted, its flavors were too pungent. Most of the other side dishes had nothing special to recommend them, and $3.50 for a baked potato (especially on top of a $20-plus entrée) had my Midwestern friend across the table wide-eyed and slightly faint.
I know I keep harping on the a la carte issue, but, in its defense, I will say that Bascom's is only following a grand steakhouse tradition, and those monster steaks fill up the plates awfully well on their own. However, I humbly suggest that the restaurateurs take a note from the businessmen that comprise so much of their clientele: gift with purchase. Throw us a potato or two to go with our bones. I can't imagine it would cut too much into the profit margins, and think of the trend you could start! A steakhouse with free broccoli! Veal chops and au gratin! (Note: Bern's, the great-granddaddy of all Tampa Bay steak joints, does offer free sides as an option to its pricier a la carte selections — and it hasn't seemed to hurt their business any.)
For dessert, we sampled a heavy Belgian chocolate torte ($4.95) accessorized with enough whipped cream and raspberry sauce to mollify the bitterness of the unsweetened chocolate. It was a rich dessert to finish off an equally rich meal, but the real benefit to choosing the torte over the cheesecake ($3.95) or key lime pie ($2.95) was that the dark chocolate was an excellent complement to the dregs of the cabernet we'd ordered with our steaks.
We apparently haven't reached a critical mass of steakhouses, and Bascom's is far enough away from the center of the epidemic in Tampa to draw a slightly different crowd. Its quality and old-school style are easy to appreciate, and a few slight alterations would raise it above its area counterparts.
Freelance writer Diana Peterfreund dines anonymously and the Planet pays for her meals. She may be contacted at diana.peterfreund@weeklyplanet.com. Restaurants are chosen for review at the discretion of the writer, and are not related to advertising.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2004.