Fleming's offers great steaks

On special occasions — such as, say, my 19th wedding anniversary, which occurred this past week — there's really only one type of restaurant that all but guarantees a great evening for both my husband and me.

Fleming's Prime Steakhouse is that type of restaurant.

First of all, it's fancy, dark-paneled walls and white tablecloths and long-aproned servers who descend on each table in well-mannered flocks.

Second, it's surprisingly casual, with a brisk babble of conversation, music wafting from the direction of the kitchen and diners dressed in everything from suits to T-shirts and flip flops. If places like Donovan's are the hushed and elegant cathedrals dedicated to the ritual of eating fine steak, Fleming's is that church's annual picnic.

Third, and most importantly, steak is involved. Though I delight in the culinary discovery inherent in haute cuisine restaurants and ethnic eateries, my husband spends much of his time at such places looking through the menu for something he might not hate — or for the steak, which is rarely as well-cooked at a fine-dining restaurant as it is at a place like Fleming's.

We both like steak — in fact, I might like it even more than he does. And I love giving him endless grief about preferring filet mignon to the more robust ribeye. If we're going to pay absolute top dollar for a meal, it might as well be for steak.

Our waiter did a fabulous job making recommendations and keeping things moving at a luxurious, but not lagging, pace.

We started with the crab cakes, which I thought too small until I took my first bite of their ultra-tender, ultra-flavorful richness. A little went a long way with these crab cakes, particularly with the addition of the succulent puddle of buttery red pepper-lime sauce in which they rested.

We also had salads, my husband a standard but excellently rendered Caesar with wide shavings of Parmesan and house-made croutons, and me a superlative wedge salad, fresh crispy iceberg surrounded by ruby-red halved grape tomatoes, paper-thin slices of red onion and wonderful bleu cheese dressing.

If you've been paying attention, you already know what we had for dinner: my husband the "main" filet mignon and me, of course, the ribeye. Both were dressed simply with salt, pepper and a little butter. And both were superb, the filet moist and surpassingly tender even considering my husband's sacrilegious practice of ordering steak medium well.