Mike Sutter review: All that glitters isn’t gold at Ace of Steaks

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A 44-ounce tomahawk rib-eye comes with frisee salad and a salt cellar at The Ace of Steaks, a steakhouse in Stone Oak in San Antonio.

The menu includes a burger gilded with gold leaf at The Ace of Steaks, a steakhouse in Stone Oak in San Antonio.

In addition to a 16-ounce prime rib-eye steak with an optional side of asparagus, the menu includes bordelaise sauce, a Caesar salad and macaroni and cheese at The Ace of Steaks, a steakhouse in Stone Oak in San Antonio.

The nighttime lights change colors from red to purple to blue at The Ace of Steaks, a steakhouse in Stone Oak in San Antonio.

The menu includes a burger gilded in gold leaf and served with a live sparkler at The Ace of Steaks, a steakhouse in Stone Oak in San Antonio.

A crabcake comes with remoulade and a salad at The Ace of Steaks, a steakhouse in Stone Oak in San Antonio.

The Stone Oak steakhouse The Ace of Steaks opened in San Antonio in February, featuring a full bar, a covered patio and the option of adding gold leaf to any steak.

Cocktail options include a 24K Black Martini (vodka, black cherry syrup, cranberry juice, gold sugar rim) and an applewood smoked old fashioned at The Ace of Steaks, a steakhouse in Stone Oak in San Antonio.

The Stone Oak steakhouse The Ace of Steaks opened in San Antonio in February, featuring a full bar, a covered patio and the option of adding gold leaf to any steak.

The Stone Oak steakhouse The Ace of Steaks opened in San Antonio in February, featuring a full bar, a covered patio and the option of adding gold leaf to any steak.

Emits Showers of Sparks.

Those are the words on the plastic sparkler tube after the rocket's red glare fades from the airspace above your $100 gold-plated burger at The Ace of Steaks.

What's the sparkler for? To light your money on fire, near as I can tell. Because that's such an easy thing to do at this aspiring Vegas-style steakhouse in Stone Oak, opened in February by San Antonio real estate investor Michael Llanas and entrepreneur Skylar Moon of DZĪR Nightclub near Six Flags Fiesta Texas.

The burger's $100, a completely ordinary thing with a top bun wrapped in gold foil as sticky as stripper glitter, with one wilted leaf of lettuce. Sounds cheesy, no? Well, no. Cheese is $3 extra.

Review: Sugar Factory makes a mess on the River Walk

But the setting's all about the cheese, from the "Kiss My Ace" neon Insta-wall up front to the gold-tone "Rocky Horror" lips to the mood lights that faded their way through the nightclub color wheel. As the beats throbbed along at EDM decibel levels, the disco lights turned red meat the same shade that cartoon characters turn when they’re about to hurl.

The Stone Oak steakhouse The Ace of Steaks opened in San Antonio in February, featuring a full bar, a covered patio and the option of adding gold leaf to any steak.

Nightclub meets restaurant. Clubstaurant. Copyright that.

★

20626 Stone Oak Parkway, Suite 103, 210-446-4600, theaceofsteaks.com

Quick bite: Stone Oak steakhouse with a nightclub vibe; gold leaf optional

Hours: 4:30-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 4:30-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday

Price range: Appetizers, $13-$25; soups and salads, $8-$39; entrees $27-$100; steaks, $41-$150 (gold leaf for an extra $100; 44-ounce tomahawk and Ace of Spades Champagne $1,000); sides, $8-$12; desserts, $10-$20; brunch, $14-$32

Alcohol: Cocktails, wine and beer

★★★★★ Excellent

★★★★ Good

★★★ Fair

★★ Poor

★ Bad

Express-News dining critics pay for all meals.

On a Friday night, a red carpet and velvet ropes led to the front door, ropes with no one to rope off. There's a dress code: "Business casual to business elegant." What that means is up to you, but in San Antonio on this particular night, that included River Walk shorts and sneakers. Me, I tend toward something more formal when my date is dressed in a $350 credit-card bill.

If you’ve got a thousand bucks, they’ve got a gold-plated tomahawk rib-eye and a gold-tone bottle of Armand de Brignac Ace of Spades Champagne waiting for you. If not, a 16-ounce rib-eye for $62 will have to do, listed as prime on the menu but not really interested in living up to it, instead lying there as stiff as the day after, with an off-note whiff like it slept in its clothes.

Lobster tacos come with habanero salsa, avocado and pickled onions at The Ace of Steaks, a steakhouse in Stone Oak in San Antonio.

The passive turned aggressive when a tenderloin tartare tasted like it was ready to turn on me, wearing a poached egg that turned the raw red meat a whiter shade of pale on its way down. I’ve never seen a cooked egg on a tartare. It throws off the taste, the texture and the look of the whole thing, like a candle-wax toupee you can't stop staring at.

At a steakhouse, the little things count. A strong drink, a good Caesar salad, impressive sides, something extra. I got none of that. Just grocery-grade asparagus, runny mac and cheese, an apprentice-level crabcake and a sad little Caesar with ranch-and-lettuce lassitude.

Best restaurants: Mike Sutter's Top 25 Restaurants in San Antonio

The gold fetish kicked up again with a 24K Black Martini, rimmed with gold sugar in service of a drink that looked and tasted like Red Bull. Seeking the comfort of a bourbon old fashioned, I paid extra for a whiff of smoke hidden under a wooden cap, an unimpressive tableside display made less impressive when the waiter said the ice cube was too big to really let the smoke soak in.

That same waiter didn't have the tools to fix that problem, really. The staff here, what happy few there were, seemed out of their depth to represent a menu so ambitious, which really just means expensive. Not much salesmanship, not much encouragement, and on one visit, not even a question about drinks before dinner.

The Stone Oak steakhouse The Ace of Steaks opened in San Antonio in February, featuring a full bar, a covered patio, Ace of Spades Champagne for $750 a bottle and the option of adding gold leaf to any steak.

My guy talked up one thing: lobster tacos. Turns out he was right, and it was the best $25 I spent at Ace of Steaks, money that went for pearls of coral-rimmed meat with bounce and sweetness contrasted with creamy habanero salsa. No gold, no sparklers.

The sparkler came again for me, this time with a 44-ounce tomahawk rib-eye, the same one from the $1,000 deal, minus the gold leaf and the bubbles. What my $150 bought was a war club of a steak cooked rare through the middle, with an inch-thick unrendered fat cap across the top and an uneven sear of crosshatch grill marks. And a sparkler. Call it bone-in bottle service.

Emits Showers of Sparks. At The Ace of Steaks, it's not just a warning label, it's a cautionary tale.

[email protected] | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking