AFTER DESCENDING the steps into London Chop House’s dark-paneled, dimly lit dining room, diners step into a moment frozen in time. For decades, the restaurant has served juicy steaks, creamy mashed potatoes and oysters Rockefeller to A-listers and power brokers, including endless VIPs at its famed Booth One. Live entertainment provided the soundtrack.

It’s a scene that springs to mind when one imagines the classic steakhouse experience, and that original charm is part of what has kept the doors open at London Chop House, said General Manager Bjorn Lagerfeldt. “I think we’ve really done a great job of keeping things the way they used to be,” he said.

To many, the steakhouse represents the pinnacle of luxury dining. Institutions like London Chop House, which first opened in 1938, have long been a go-to destination for diners in search of a high-end experience, so a steak dinner paired with a chilled martini is nothing new.

But in Detroit, newer hot spots serving up theater and glam made for Instagram have opened their doors, combining more modern tastes.

Steakhouses continue to thrive despite persistently high beef prices, which have risen faster than most other items in the consumer price index. And in the era of QR-code menus, shareable plates and fast-casual, the idea of a buttoned-up white-tablecloth meal may seem from a bygone era.

However, the appeal of the steakhouse endures.

“I’ve been cooking at a high level for about 22 years,” said Nick Janutol, managing partner of Chickpea Hospitality, which runs Wilder’s in Birmingham. “I’ve worked at a lot of Michelin three-star restaurants and worked in big cities, and after doing tasting menu after tasting menu when all you care about is the garnish work, I realized that when I go to a restaurant, I just want to eat what I want to eat.”

Newer places like Italian steakhouse Sexy Steak in downtown Detroit are taking the traditional steakhouse concept to a new level.

Located in the historic Grand Army of the Republic Building, the unapologetically bold restaurant with a dining room awash in bright pink and teal colors and artful chandeliers is “redefining dining” by creating an experience from the moment people walk in, says General Manager Alec Kanno.

“We want people to feel like they’re in a movie. They’re part of something special, not just having dinner at a nice restaurant,” Kanno said.

He adds Sexy Steak wanted to elevate the experience beyond the traditional steakhouse experience. The restaurant’s core values are food, service, atmosphere and people. “If we can achieve all four of those, and the guests are happy, then that’s what we’re here for.”

While it’s not exclusively a steakhouse, Wilder’s in Birmingham is heavily inspired by Midwest supper clubs and classic East Coast steakhouses.

“[Wilder’s leans] more a little more Americana than we do steakhouse,” Janutol said.

That Americana feel is inspired by Thomas Keller’s Michelin-starred restaurant The Surf Club in Miami. Janutol and Chickpea Hospitality owner Sammy Eid ate there a few years ago when they were in town doing a Leila pop-up and “it was just something that we fell in love with, Janutol said.

“It wasn’t quite like a Capital Grille steakhouse, I say a little more Americana, and that’s kind of something that we were looking to do, … a place where we can get a good Caesar salad, shrimp cocktail, great steak, nice piece of fish and pasta somewhere that was upscale, but still wasn’t stuffy.”

That’s when they found the space that would become Wilder’s. It was small, and “we kind of love the idea of just a small, intimate steakhouse.”

Whether it’s London Chop House or Sexy Steak, the steaks are a focal point. Sourcing is a key component of any steakhouse. Many local steakhouses source from Fairway Packing Co. Two of Kanno’s personal favorite steaks are 29-day dry-aged Porterhouse.

“You get the filet and you get the New York Strip to get the best of both worlds,” he said. His other favorite is Australian Wagyu “that just melts in your mouth. It’s not overly fat, where you feel like you’re not eating anything, but it gives a nice balance between fat content, marbleization and still being able to enjoy the steak.”

Australian Wagyu is also a draw at Wilder’s in Birmingham. “We tried so many different Wagyu: American Wagyu, Japanese Wagyu, Australian Wagyu. And our favorite that we found is this Black Opal Australian Wagyu,” Janutol said.

“We’re about quality, not exorbitance,” said London Chop House Executive Chef RJ Scherer. “You can come to the Chop House and you can have a steak experience, something that you wouldn’t be able to get on the regular. And then we also have some awesome products in there for any budget, any experience level, any steak-and-potato kind of guy too.”

Dry-aged steaks are a fixture on steakhouse menus. Sexy Steak dry-ages steaks in-house in a room that’s lined with pink Himalayan sea salt, which enhances the dry-aging process by tenderizing the meat and boosting the flavor.

The process is laborious and some chefs and owners leave it to places like Fairway Packing. “We buy our prime beef, Wagyu and dry-aged steaks from them,” said Kevin P. Gudejko, president and CEO of Mainstreet Ventures Restaurant Group, which includes Chop House in Ann Arbor.

“We have in the past done some inhouse dry-aging, however the challenges of space in a 120-year-old building combined with the volume we needed, I decided to leave that up to Fairway as they are great at doing 45-plus-day dry aging. With Fairway being a local company, it allows us to visit their production facilities and work closely with them on our standard cuts of beef trimmed to our standards.”

At a steakhouse, steaks aren’t the only thing on the menu.

As an Italian steakhouse, the steaks and pasta go hand in hand at Sexy Steak, Kanno said. All of the pastas, which are made in-house, are a “premium side,” an alternative to a vegetable or other starch.

Some of the most popular dishes at Wilder’s aren’t the steaks but are familiar sights on steakhouse menus. The Caesar salad is extremely popular as is the zucchini fries. One of the top sellers is the Dover sole au meunière with brown butter, capers and almonds.

Drinks are another important component of the steakhouse experience.

At Wilder’s, “we wanted to make sure we had an amazing martini,” Janutol said.

The martini menu has as many iterations of the cocktail as the classic cocktail menu.

Sexy Steak’s wine list includes more than 200 bottles of wine, some of which can only be found at the vineyard and are exclusively available at the restaurant, Kanno said. “We really took some time to curate our cocktail and wine list based around the food, so that way they do complement each other at any given table.”

Amid the openings of newer steakhouses with a twist, a place like London Chop House has the unique challenge of catering to regulars who have been loyal to it over the decades while trying to reach a new generation of diners who lean more toward shareable snacks than hefty steaks.

“It was a focus to get a younger crowd in, because the restaurant had been around for 75 years and was so well acclaimed that it was the younger crowd we had to get exposed to. That really enabled us to raise the bar,” Lagerfeldt said.

Scherer said the team “didn’t flip the London Chop House on its head. When we did the reopening, there was a lot of homage paid to what was done in the past, and we wanted to modernize it a little bit because it had been 20 years, and we wanted to be able to do things our way that we knew would be sustainable. But we didn’t mess with a lot of the stuff that was already correct.”

Scherer said the biggest challenge to maintaining the legacy of a place like the London Chop House and to be around in another 75 years is consistency.

“Being able to find people that have the same vision and being able to execute the food on the same level, day in and day out, holding those expectations that the clients have and exceeding them, that’s the hardest thing to do.”

Known in the past for its famous clientele, London Chop House serves “a mixed bag” of guests today.

“We’ve had people celebrating 60 years of marriage. We’ve had people celebrating three months of dating. Then we have quite a handful of individuals that just come down because that they like it, no reason to celebrate either,” Scherer said.

Scherer wanted the menu to be accessible and familiar to diners.

“Fine dining has a little bit of a stigma. And I would rather have somebody feel comfortable in their surroundings, with what they’re eating and with the service that we provide, than somebody that feels as though maybe it’s a little out of their reach, out of their level.”

Some dishes have been around since the first incarnation, such as the braised beef short ribs with celery root purée, baby carrot, red wine demi-glace and crispy leek, and the steak tartare. The oysters Rockefeller recipe is from the 1970s.

“We do have a few things that have been around for a long time, but … we have a lot of regulars that come in frequently. And if there’s something that the clientele says, ‘This is great, we come down here for this every time,’ I’m probably not going to mess with it too much,” Scherer said.

London Chop House has entertainment six days a week, giving it a “very unique, dimly lit supper club feel,” Lagerfeldt said. “I think that really adds so much charm to the dining room.”

The entertainment side of the steakhouse has evolved in recent years to embrace the demand for more socializing. London Chop House also has a cigar bar and billiards, and the Chop House in Ann Arbor has the adjacent La Dolce Vita where diners can end the night with a cocktail.

Adapting to changing tastes has helped steakhouses survive and thrive.

“We have seen an increase in people that want to enjoy a lighter meal or some appetizers that take advantage of the bar seating at our high-top banquette or the bar itself,” Gudejko said.

For Janutol, the enduring appeal of the steakhouse stems from “the simplicity of the menu and knowing that I can get what I want to get and be happy.”

Dorothy Hernandez is a freelance journalist who frequently writes about food at the intersection of culture, entrepreneurship and social justice.