Folsom's Sutter Street Steakhouse is a breath of fresh air in a restaurant category filled with hot air. But before reaching that conclusion, I had to realign my expectations, to re-examine my biases.

First, there is no such thing as a perfect steakhouse. I'm convinced of it.

Maybe perfection eludes this kind of restaurant because the whole concept seems too easy, the degree of difficulty too tame for the big leagues.

Epicures – those who seek out cooking technique, style, substance and perhaps daring – don't generally flock to steakhouses.

On the list of the world's 50 greatest restaurants, compiled annually by San Pellegrino, I did not succeed in locating the word "steak" or "house." The No. 1 restaurant serves things like pork neck with bulrushes, snails with moss and musk ox with milk skin … but more on that another time.

In my search for a steakhouse doing something special, I have come up short more often than not. Steakhouses, by and large, copy one another, apparently because it would be unacceptable to be original. These places are usually not funky, edgy, elegant or, to borrow a word coined in Sacramento's midtown, janky.

With that in mind, I started my assessment of Sutter Street. Will this place serve "USDA prime" and make a big deal about it? Yes.

Will we be enticed to get oysters on the half shell? Of course.

Will there be wood paneling? Check.

Will we feel gouged, depleted and defeated by the time we leave? No, actually, we won't.

Sutter Street's location is excellent, right in the thick of nightlife-rich and charming Historic Folsom.

The room is attractive, in a new building made to fit with the surrounding old stock. It's a big, bold room, but there's a feeling of elegance, and a sense of fun instead of pretentiousness, from the lively open kitchen to the stylish bar. You'll fit in fine wearing a suit or a dress, but you'll also be OK in a casual shirt and jeans.

And the food? If this were America's pastime, the chef would be Mr. Baseball, making solid contact most of the time. One of our steaks was superb, the rest were quite good, and those oysters were rich and firm and full of flavor.

But our boneless chicken breast had about as much sizzle – if I may abuse my baseball metaphor for another minute – as a Barry Zito fastball in the sixth inning. But only a troublemaker orders chicken at a steakhouse anyway.

Why steakhouses continue to serve the culinary travesty in which a head of iceberg lettuce is doused with blue cheese dressing is beyond me. I added cheddar cheese and bacon because I was in a self-loathing mood. The next person I meet who says he loves this salad will be the first. Our spinach salad was only marginally better – bland and lukewarm, it was about as limp as Dustin Hoffman in "Midnight Cowboy."

On an evening when four of us ordered appetizers, dinner, dessert and a bottle of wine, the bill was a respectable $235. On another occasion, for two, it was just under $100 before tip.

There was plenty of value for the money, even if we encountered minor missteps along the way.

We loved the mole-crusted rib eye ($28.95). It had that bold, dark, deep and exotic spiciness, paired with a quality cut of beef. It was topped with battered and fried onions, and came with cheddar mashed potatoes. Something green on the plate would have balanced the starchy additions.

And though the steak was brimming with flavor, it was not for the faint of heart. The last few bites tended to overwhelm the palate. The waiter could have intervened and made another beverage recommendation for this otherwise enjoyable dish. It did not work well with the acidic red wine we were otherwise enjoying, a bottle of Scott Harvey Barbera. A nice craft beer would have been better.

The hazelnut-crusted halibut ($23.95) with snap peas and garlic mashed potatoes was pleasant enough if you're looking for a mild but still meaty alternative to red meat. I could say the same for the surf-and-turf ($31.95), which featured fresh prawns and a tender filet mignon that was lacking in the exceptional tenderness and smooth flavor associated with this cut.

The chicken ($18.95) was so tough and boring that it really should have been sent back, but I was enjoying the butterball potatoes, corn and Calabrese chili so much that I toughed it out with the bird.

My companion on the second visit, truth be told, can be demanding. She likes wine made by pro golfers and, oddly, expects it to come in a clean glass. Since she couldn't find anything produced by Duffy Waldorf or David Frost, she went with the Greg Norman pinot noir by the glass. I never order anything by Greg Norman, nice guy that he is, because I don't like to associate wine with choking, but I digress.

The glass arrived at the table with a giant lipstick stain on the rim. We sent it back. No big deal. It was dark in there, they were busy and, hey, clean stemware is overrated. But the staff made a big deal about it. So many people came by to tell us they were sorry and would make amends that I wondered if they were part of a 12-step program.

Our main waiter then stopped by and said, "That never should have happened." Then he added, "It has been taken care of."

Maybe I've seen too many Scorsese movies, but I assumed they took the bartender down to the parking garage and roughed him up. Turns out, he meant they removed the charge from our bill.

In general, our servers were friendly and professional, and one good buffing away from polished. Questions about the food were answered, though not always correctly. When we asked what "Painted Hills" was, since it appeared on the menu with the flat iron steak ($24.95), our waiter replied, "It's a farm."

Wrong. It's actually a pretend farm made up of individual farms that follow the same standards.

Once he saw we kinda-sorta believed that one, our waiter added that the meat was organic and grass-fed. Wrong again, cowboy. Still, that steak was pretty good.

Sutter Street is certainly not perfect, but with the beautiful setting, impressive food and well-meaning customer service, it's already a place to have a good time with good food.

Once those rough edges are smoothed out, it's poised to become one of the best steakhouses in the Sacramento area.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

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

• Read more articles by Blair Anthony Robertson