McCormick & Schmicks is one of those dark beefy places serving strong drinks with irrelevant descriptions and lighting too dark to see what you’re eating or what your date looks like.  One of those places that you can expect to find career waitresses with low cut white collared shirts a size too small. It is not one of those places where you can expect to order your drinks via iPad.  Tasty food, as one would expect of a restaurant with a $40 steak and a $50 lobster, but one of the only issues you may ever have with this place is that you really can’t pronounce the name of it while drunk. 

We ordered steak, ’twas fine, and ‘twas done properly. No prime on the menu cuz 100 years ago when they opened this place the best you could get was Choice, also they’ve been too cheap to print new menus. We ordered the lobster mashed potatoes side dish, and an almond crusted trout- it was as tasty as one would expect, was as pretty on the plate as one would expect and was about as expensive as one would expect.  The dessert was the chef’s specialty- a chocolate bag. Naturally I would have to order anything advertised as a sinful sack of chocolate.  Hopefully the bag was edible cuz I tore right through it.

The martinis? Normal and girly, as one would expect. Over-salted salad and unsalted butter, which any real food veteran will tell you is the mark of overpaid chef’s everywhere.  so McSizlak & Schmucks doesn’t really surprise you, which can be bad if your seeking something exciting and new, but can be a welcome relief when you’re entirely too exhausted to deal with anything too mind-blowing.  And as Americans with a certain Matrix-like ‘everything must be great but not too great or we get suspicious’ mentality, I have to admit that good can be great, and great can be annoying. And what they lack in innovation they make up for in alcohol.

With 30 locations all over our giant meat-lovin’ country, McMuffin & Shvitz knows a thing or two about upselling you on drinks and giving you that whole BS about how the steaks are better with the bone in…  These places are brilliantly located next to hotels and convention centers to get that super hungry and not-so-picky captive clientele that can either eat here or the non-sanctioned Starbucks inside the Hilton.