Overall: 1 1/2 stars

Service: 2 1/2 stars

Ambience: 2 stars

Food: 2 1/2 stars

Value: 1 star

Noteworthy: Of all the steaks, the Cajun ribeye is the most interesting. The wine list is massive. Morton's still does a solid martini.

I am about to show you how to have the "Morton's experience" and save $200.

Go to the back wall of your local grocery store. Look over the steaks. Avoid the ones that appear to be an appropriate size for a healthy adult. Grab one that is excessively large – stupid large is ideal.

You will pay $14. If you pay $16, you are showing off and probably getting gouged. Both of those things are also part of the Morton's experience. Grab a bottle of Pellegrino sparkling water for $1.49. At Morton's, the same vintage is $9.

Take the steak home and remove it from the package. Put it in a casserole dish with soy sauce, vegetable oil, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, garlic and pepper. That's a marinade. Put that in the fridge.

Call your friends and tell them you paid $50 for your steak and that your baked potato weighs 2 pounds. Decorate your dining room with randomly placed heads of broccoli.

Turn on the broiler. Call your friends again and inform them that your broiler reaches 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit and that it's hotter than anybody else's broiler. That silence you hear is nobody caring.

Pull out your meat tenderizer from the back of the drawer. It looks like a mallet. Put your left hand on the kitchen counter.

Now, in not so many words, we're going to replicate the part of the Morton's experience called the verbal presentation of the menu – the one where every server at all 80 Morton's in 28 states says the same thing while holding a platter of raw meat wrapped in cellophane and, at times, gesturing with a hapless live lobster.

Swing the hammer with your right hand and strike your left thumb, not super-hard but hard enough to cause swelling.

That's what it's like to sit through the verbal menu.

If you want to enter my glamorous world, repeat.

Actually, on our second visit, we started off with a request: Don't bring the lobster.

The speech is a bizarrely detailed rundown of the menu and the aged meat, a script somebody wrote and others test-marketed that was then approved by corporate and OK'd by legal.

Morton's is a divisive place. There are those who love it and return for special occasions. Many gravitate toward it for those expense-account dinners. I'm not here to insult those people.

But there are others who are appalled by the prices and unmoved by the food.

There are few dishes requiring more than basic cooking skills. I make a pretty mean steak myself, as good as any at Morton's. Its macaroni and cheese is quite good, but costs $11. Mine, using a recipe from Cooks Illustrated, is better.

Let's use a car analogy to illustrate Morton's.

You're on the sales lot and you look at the sticker on the window of the Honda Civic. The salesman tells you it costs $75,000.

If you're Morton's material, you'll think nothing of paying E-Class prices for a B-team car. If you think it's far too much for a car that is nice and reliable and nothing more, you'll wonder what all the fuss is about.

Morton's has relocated, from the hidden spot at the Downtown Plaza to a prominent, glossy locale on a prime block on Capitol Mall.

When you enter, you'll notice wine lockers with names on them. One of them belongs to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. If that impresses you, you're Morton's material.

As a steakhouse, Morton's does all the things we expect. It's big and muscular, with lots of dark wood, reminding me of a high-end cigar shop.

Once you get past the talking menu, you'll notice the wine list is extensive, starting in the $40-to-$50 range and climbing all the way over $1,000. At your grocery store, there must be a clearance sale – many of Morton's $50 wines are $15 there.

We asked to see a list of beers but were told by our server there wasn't one. We were looking for a full-bodied beer, and the server suggested a Chimay from Belgium. He said it came in a liter bottle.

Call The Bee's Blair Anthony Robertson at (916) 321-1099.