Restaurant Review: John Howie Steak

John Howie Steak
11111 NE Eighth St., Suite 125, Bellevue
425.440.0880
Lunch and dinner daily $$$

Friday night at John Howie Steak, the new upscale restaurant in the Bravern, Bellevue’s new, ultra-high-end shopping destination: We are eating deviled eggs, mounded with truffled yolks whipped into submission, at a lighted onyx-topped bar in the lounge. Behind me, a group of well-shod women spoon ahi into their mouths, wine glasses perched on the glass-topped baby grand piano, a design that allows it to also function as a table, thereby squeezing 10 more diners into the clubby space. To their right, a table of Microsoft employees bite into the Happy Hour burger—a half-pound USDA Prime beef monstrosity, its brioche bun struggling to contain strips of crisp bacon and molten cheese. The din is deafening, and there is a palpable energy in the room.

Of all the big-name restaurants opening in Bellevue in the past two years—Monsoon East, Pearl, Artisanal, Wild Ginger and El Gaucho, to name a few—John Howie Steak is clearly the place to be seen.
Yet, with four swank restaurants under his belt (Steak; his Seattle and Bellevue Seastar restaurants; and his upscale sports bar, Sport, near the Space Needle), owner/chef John Howie hardly has the air you’d expect of the man behind this scene. He greets me a few days after my Steak visit for our morning interview clad in jeans, a well-loved fleece and with a hearty smile. He has the easygoing nature of the nice dad on the block—the one all the kids want to throw a football with (big surprise—he has two sons, and coached and managed their sports teams for many years).

Like most successful chefs, Howie didn’t just wind up on top of the local restaurant scene overnight. The restaurant bug bit early—his first job, at 15, was busing tables at the Refectory, a now-defunct Bellevue restaurant. He honed his culinary chops on the job, bouncing around from restaurant to restaurant in his 20s, until his star turn at Palisade, where he spent 10 years, almost tripling sales and introducing the city to planked salmon. For a man who’s tied to his Eastside roots, it’s no shock that he opened his first restaurant in Bellevue—Seastar, in 2002—arguably the Eastside’s first seismic movement toward an interesting local dining scene.

Howie knows his Bellevue market well, having lived on the Eastside for the past 19 years, and calls it home. “I want to be able to drive to any of my restaurants within 30 minutes,” he says. His commitment to the Eastside is especially evident at Steak, a showpiece of a steakhouse—minus the usual old-school, men’s club vibe. Meyer Wells, an Interbay furniture company that utilizes reclaimed woods, handcrafted many of the pieces at the restaurant, giving the room a modern sensibility. The tables in the lounge show off the reddish patina from their previous lives as wine barrels, and the 14-seat communal dining table, located in a sectioned-off private room, is fashioned from a reclaimed fallen red elm found in Seattle’s Highlands neighborhood. “My team and I did a lot of research in creating Steak—we asked people what they liked and didn’t like about the more traditional steakhouses. Invariably, the feedback we got was that people craved intimacy, lots of light, less dark wood.”

Given its location in the Bravern, Steak was also designed to appeal to the upmarket, female shopper. The “runway” entrance to the dining room, a dimly lit walkway flanked by cozy booths, gives seated diners a close-up glimpse at the sartorial standards of others strolling by. In the airy dining room, an entire wall of pecan wood ripples and weaves, undulating toward a wall of capacious windows, their steel frames softened by a graceful fall of gold fabric.

Howie’s formula in Steak and Seastar—sprawling, and edging toward prosaic in design—seems right for Bellevue. But it would also not be out of place in any metropolitan city. And that’s a markedly different approach from two other local chefs whose multi-restaurant empires seem more a reflection of Seattle.

Ethan Stowell’s neighborhood restaurants have a slightly industrial, hipper-than-thou feel, whereas Tom Douglas has strategically stationed himself as the king of the Seattle downtown core and of Pacific Northwest cuisine (with the exception of Greek-influenced Lola). Howie, however, has an accessible, mass market appeal: The well-appointed room at Steak is just comfortable enough, just stylish enough for wearers of both Patagonia and Giambattista Valli to tuck into a Delmonico without feeling alienated.

Where the three chefs find common ground is in their commitment to using choice ingredients and preparing them with finesse. Howie speaks about food with the palpable zest of a man who truly enjoys eating, detailing the custom 42-day aging process he uses for New York strips and prime ribs (later turned into ribeyes). “We are the only steakhouse in the Seattle area with a tiered steak program, offering everything from 28-day USDA prime up to and including true Japanese Wagyu.” Except for the velvety and succulent Wagyu, which is prepared simply in a pan to preserve its exquisite flavor, every steak is cooked on the mesquite grill. The food at Steak is recognizable, with a twist: Howie’s luxurious potatoes come with a plentiful portion of sweet, steamed Maine lobster chunks on top, pooling with a rich lobster cream sauce ($16). A side of wilted spinach salad ($10) comes flecked with chewy-smoky Kurobuta bacon crowned with a sunny egg, soft yolk waiting to be pierced. A recent meal wasn’t without misses—the Meyer lemon pie ($8) for one, arrived with far too much whipped cream, a paltry layer of lemon curd, and a graham crust that was too thick; a better choice was the tableside cherries jubilee ($18 for two), a fab retro dessert made with tart cherries, cognac, Chambord, all flamed in a lagoon of melting brown sugar and butter and served over vanilla ice cream.

For serious wine lovers, Steak employs the Enomatic wine preservation system, which allows bottles to remain open for 28 days without compromising quality. It is the only restaurant in the Seattle area that hooks up its personal wine lockers (available for rent) with this system.

With every imagined extra attended to, Howie’s restaurants—at once plush, tasteful and familiar—pinpoint and incorporate the strategies that make Bellevue’s most thriving restaurants a success, with Howie himself providing the local element savvy Pacific Northwest diners demand. The food on the plate may not be cutting edge, but that’s just how the chef behind the stove wants it to be.