Mastro's UPDATE - Thousand Oaks

A zillion steakhouses in LA, but it's hard to guarantee what you're getting or predict what you'll get. I'm all about creativity, but there's not much room for failure at this price. 

Mastro's never fails. It never lets you down, it never leaves you hanging, and it delivers the same quality every time, in service, in flavor, in a fail-proof, fool-proof feeling of greatness that some places just can't give. 

We start small because none of the entrees are, but we soon see that the Oysters are not. They are medium in size, and the butter:brine ratio is his. The flavor explodes into sweet seawater. 

We surfed and now we turf. Bone-in Porterhouse again because how pick one steak when you get all three with a capital T? It blows the mind and it's as searing as it is salivating. Brussels Sprouts are still an awesome side, bitter and crisp with a deep-roasted char. 

We missed the Butter Cake last time and OMGWTFOMFG, never again do we skip out. It's a shortcake except it's just a giant stick of butter baked until it turns solid only to melt again when you scoop it up with ice cream and berries. 

I whine a lot about inconsistency, but THIS is the quality control I'm talking about. We could go a hundred times, and it would always be this good. No snooty servers, no overcooked-undercooked-overseared-underaged. It is every perfect cut of steak, made perfectly, and it's worth every penny every time we go. 

Mastro's Steakhouse - Thousand Oaks

It is really hard to find a man who is okay with me eating more steak than him. Good thing I'm marrying him next August.

Okay, fine. So maybe it's not a sexist thing. It's not unnatural for a woman to eat a 24-ounce Porterhouse in one sitting; it's unnatural for ANYONE to eat a 24-ounce porterhouse in one sitting. But this porterhouse is perfect, a steak the way a steak should be, the god of all cuts. It sizzles seductively on a hot plate, cooking just the tiniest bit while you eat to end at a barely medium rare.

It would have been way more acceptable if I'd had just the steak. But I had two rolls of their freshly baked bread on top of those creamier-than-cream, breath- busting Garlic Mashed Potatoes and brightly bitter, palate-cleansing Roasted Brussels Sprouts.

It takes a confident man to eat his 22-oz Ribeye while I put away that porterhouse. Size matters when it comes to meat, and every morsel of that toe-the-line-between-marble-and-gristle cut is too good to be true. Every bite floats in your mouth and barely touches your tongue before melting and spreading the gooey fat across every nook and cranny inside your mouth.

The taste of meat may linger sweetly but not nearly as sweetly as the special occasion Chocolate Layer Cake. Each layer is rich and moist, brushed with citrus vodka and Frangelico to keep it light with the subtlest bite. It must be laced with crack because it's addictive no matter how much steak you've had.

So my ability to consume steak may be just the tiniest bit disturbing. But give me some credit - No one in their right mind would let a steak sit in a take-home box, and anyone who throws a good steak away is dead to me. And honestly, so is anyone who can't appreciate the quality of the steak at Mastro's.