Pass through the entryway to a vantage point that overlooks a sea of white-linen-topped tables, booths, and banquettes, all of it anchored by a gleaming horseshoe-shaped bar. Steak 48 looks so glamorous you half expect to see Lauren Bacall leaning in to ask Bogie for a light. That’s not happening, but a pretty dramatic evening of dinner and drinks is. You will be shown the raw bar—for a seafood tower of your own making—and the open kitchen, bustling with tall toques pulling hunks of prime aged meat out of 1,800-degree infrared ovens. A well-trained staff ministers to you with Steak 48’s version of monkey bread (think sea salt and butter, or garlic and Parmesan, instead of cinnamon and sugar), ice buckets, and showy cocktails shaken tableside. The 18-ounce bone-in Kansas City strip ($57) lives up to its reputation as the signature steak, but if a rib-eye cap ($98, above) is available among the specials, it’s worth the splurge, as is the side of seafood mashed potatoes ($28). (Hey, you don’t visit a steakhouse to spend like a coupon clipper.) Desserts go overboard trying to impress—cookies-and-cream popcorn sundae?—but it’s all so breathlessly enjoyable it’ll seem par for the course.

Tip:Request one of the glassed-in booths next to the kitchen for some secluded voyeurism.