Foodie Fridays: Morton's vs. Lawry's

Mention "steak" and "ambience", and a few places come to mind, of which I think the two most "famous" restaurants would be Morton's and Lawry's.  Both hubby and I are suckers for a decent, succulent slab of beef, so we've managed to visit both places once each (yes only once, since both are costly, and we made sure we redeemed vouchers using our credit card points first!).  [Not much photos for this post since both were candlelit dinners and the photos turned out pretty grainy.]  

We went to Morton's last year to celebrate my birthday, and I must say we came back throughly satisfied.  Hubby had made a reservation beforehand, and was asked if we were celebrating any special occasion (of which he mentioned that it was my birthday).  Upon reaching the restaurant, I was wished "happy birthday" by the waitress, and we were given personalized menus (which had my name, the date and a birthday wish printed on it).  Talk about making good first impressions!  We ordered our steaks, along with the recommended creamed spinach and five onion soup, of which everything was really yummy.  The waitress, noting that I was 7 months pregnant, said she would tell the chef not to char the steak too much as it would not be good for the baby.  Once we finished our dinner, they served a molten chocolate cake for my birthday, and snapped a photo for me and hubby... and the photo was passed to us at the end of the meal, in a card bearing signatures from all the staff!  Needless to say, we were really impressed with their service and attention to detail!

Ah, and then it was Lawry's this year, which I blogged about briefly some time ago.  We ordered their famous ribs, which comes with mashed potato, yorkshire pudding and their "spinning bowl" salad, which is tossed and spun in a bowl on top of a bed of ice.  They served us two types of bread first, and we mentioned to the waitress then that I was on a no-dairy diet for breastfeeding, explaining that I could not eat anything with butter, milk or cream in it, and hence she said that they would not serve the potatoes and pudding to me.  The bread was yummy, but it was when we were almost done with the bread that the waitress came over and told me that the white version had milk in it... (Well, ok, but I've eaten it already!)  The food in general was pretty good, and the salad was particularly refreshing since it was chilled.  However, their lack of attention to detail was obvious, since hubby had to remind them that we were celebrating my birthday, after which they served a cake (which I of course, couldn't eat on my non-dairy diet!).  We took the usual birthday shot and had to fill up a form for them to post us the photograph.  All in all, the food is not bad, but for that price, and given the service, I think we probably would not go back there again.

So if you ask me, Morton's wins hands down, in terms of food and service... but I must add a disclaimer that Morton's is slightly more costly compared to Lawry's!