Brass Ram

Brass Ram sits above National Anthem in the East Quarter, and short of small gold lettering on the door opposite National Anthem’s entrance, there’s little in the way of signage to let you know you’re at the right spot.

Brass Ram is a take on the prime rib steakhouse, and where Town Hearth offers the cut only on the weekends, it’s front and center of Brass Ram’s menu every evening of service. Servings come in four different sizes, and Brass Ram dry cures their prime rib with salt and pepper for 24 hours with spectacular results.

Brass Ram offers other steaks and chops if prime rib isn’t your thing. Try a tender 8-ounce filet that arrives cooked perfectly to her request. We rounded our meal with two of the a la carte sides. The creamed potatoes are topped with a delicious sage pan jus that added the perfect touch to the potatoes. On the night of our visit, the vegetable of the day was a roasted cauliflower served in a browned butter sauce ($12); it shouldn’t be skipped if it’s offered during your visit.

If you can stay away from steaks and chops, it’s possible to dine more affordably at Brass Ram, although affordable is a relative term. Naturally, there are meatballs, here dressed with a blue cheese frisée salad. The rock shrimp casino get basted in butter and a Parmesan gremolata that had us sopping up the sauce with bread.

Brass Ram still leans heavily on the upscale Dallas steakhouse motif of many of its forbears, but there’s a playfulness — similar to National Anthem, Town Hearth and Desert Racer — that keeps the pretentiousness to a minimum. Yes, it’s a splurge, and one that most of us will save for special occasions.