Steak for steak: Shanahan’s vs. Elway’s
Would you eat a steak served by this man?
Ah, the sports celebrity steakhouse—that peculiar and distinctly American occurrence wherein our most beloved meatheads attempt to dispel the notion that they are meatheads by opening restaurants that serve primarily meat. It’s a baffling phenomenon, one as old and as reliable as time. It is rumored that the first caveman to discover fire became so immediately famous that the barbarous throngs felt compelled to flock to him; he in turn served them overpriced slabs of mastodon meat in a cave that provided complimentary valet parking. And all the cavemen were like, “If it’s complimentary, how come I still have to tip? What’s the social etiquette here?” It was kind of like a prehistoric episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, yet they still found the food delicious, marinated though it was in a jus of their own insatiable star-fuckery.
Here in Denver, we’re no different. We have two Elway’s restaurants (one in Cherry Creek and the other at the Ritz-Carlton downtown); both serve as popular upscale steakhouses named after the man who won this city two Super Bowl titles while simultaneously shooting terrorists in the dick and saving babies from a flaming orphanage. Before that, there was Dante’s Sports Grill And Roadhouse on 17th Avenue, the catastrophic culinary failure of former Rockies slugger Dante Bichette. There’s apparently nothing very appetizing about the thousand-yard-stare of a chigger-pickin’ right-fielder from Florida.
Elway’s, it seemed, would rule the land forever.
But wait, there on the horizon! Is that little Mikey Shanahan opening a Death Star-sized steakhouse at I-25 and Belleview? It couldn’t be. He’s not even the coach of the Denver Broncos anymore! And isn’t he rumored to be meeting with Washington about coaching that team next season? Why would he open a steakhouse in Denver when he’s about to leave? Besides, he’s not really a meathead, is he? More of a luminescent face. Is having a fluorescent scowl and coaching a team to two Super Bowl victories enough to attract the masses to shove beef into their jowls in some sort of misguided act of idolatry?
“It’s a total money-pit,” a local cab driver—an obvious authority—theorized to me. “Think about it. Guy like that? With as much money as he has? He wants the place to tank. That way he can write it off as a loss and catch a tax break.”
An interesting take, but one that was immediately disproved upon my first visit to Shanahan’s (5085 S. Syracuse St., 303-770-3600): There was no mistaking that Shanahan had gone all out and clearly did not want the place to fail. As I sat at the wide bar at the front of the house, sipping a $16 merlot I’m not qualified to appreciate and marveling at the red-blazered geriatric across from me and his wife (who had make-up job that could only have been applied with a shotgun), I wondered why it is that some people, the richer they get, the less taste they seem to have, while others, like Shanny, seem to have the balance figured out.
The curved, mahogany walls, the futuristic fireplace that warmed both the space and the patio—sure, it was probably picked by some consultant, but it was downright elegant, and Shanny ultimately approved it. And, yes, parts of the dining room felt like the conference hall of a Radisson, and the restaurant is located in the central holy suburban hell that is the Denver Tech Center, but those thoughts all went away when my $39 USDA prime grade New York strip appeared.
“If the steak is too rare, you can cut it open, and the heat from the plate will cook it more,” my overzealous server informed me three times, as if the concept had been invented that very night. She hovered over me and waited for me to cut open my steak. I cut. She spoke.
“The heat from the plate will cook it more.”
Blink, blink. Smile, smile.
She also brought me a football-sized skillet of garlic mashed-potatoes and a blue cheese wedge salad big as a playbook, and I left happy and stuffed, breezing past encased Vince Lombardi trophies. I wondered to myself: Is this place maybe even actually better than Elway’s? Did the “mastermind” just pull one over on good ol’ No. 7? Regardless, though, after one meal at Shanny’s new joint, I won’t be able to afford to dine at either there or Elway’s for a long, long time. Fortunately, I hear Josh McDaniels is thinking about opening a Chick-Fil-A.
