As you follow the hostess to your table at The Ruxton, Baltimore’s trendiest, spendiest new steakhouse, you’ll likely see diners digging into Fred Flintstone-sized tomahawk steaks or mammoth pieces of porterhouse aged in a meat locker for some 70 days.

While the market for plant-based meat might be booming, our carnivorous cravings have not dimmed, if this Harbor East steakhouse is any indication.

The Ruxton comes courtesy of the Atlas Restaurant Group, the culinary conglomerate that’s given rise to the swankiest spots in Charm City. It’s their 26th restaurant in Maryland and the 18th project Patrick Sutton has designed for the restaurant group. While Atlas founder Alex Smith won’t say exactly how much he spent, he will say it’s their priciest project yet. From the looks of the place, that’s not surprising.

Here Sutton imagines a world that feels far away from the borders of Baltimore, with its luxe leathers, illuminated onyx columns, forest-green velvets, ribbons of glass that sway from the ceiling, gleaming brass, and tiny table lamps that cast a sultry glow and evoke the Jazz Age. When you dine here, you’re not sitting in the space—you’re enveloped by it.

And while The Ruxton, whose name was inspired by a 1920 car company (not the north Baltimore neighborhood), checks all the boxes for an extravagant steakhouse experience, the real appeal is less about the food and more about the place itself, which offers a kind of theatricality rarely seen in Baltimore restaurants. This is how a steakhouse might look if it was designed by filmmaker Baz Luhrmann.

This stagecraft is brought to life by the highly dedicated servers who arrive with the lengthy cocktail menu within seconds of your seating, then continue to dote and decrumb throughout the meal; the parade of white-coated runners who march in lockstep as they balance sky-high seafood towers and platters of raw oysters; and, of course, the diners themselves, bedecked in sparkles and sequins (or sportscoats and Italian loafers), who serve as their own decoration in the dining room.

The Ruxton manages to be both a throwback and thoroughly modern at the same time—a place with old-school martinis, but one that also features non-alcoholic offerings. It’s a steakhouse with red meat—from a mineral-tinged, dry-aged bison rib-eye to a gorgeously marbled Japanese Wagyu—but the vegetarian at the table can enjoy a butternut squash steak and the seafood lover has a wide wealth of options, too.

Regardless of what you order, you’re here to indulge in the notion that for at least one night, you’re as rich as the food. Waste no time in splurging on an order of tater tots as soon as you sit down. Peeking out of a caviar tin, the oversized spuds are crowned with crème fraîche and a heap of Russian caviar. Pair your tots with the Grand Ruxton martini, which comes complete with a sidecar, then contemplate the other enticing offerings.

Be sure to order at least one wedge salad—a half-sphere of baby iceberg doused with blue cheese dressing and dotted with roasted tomatoes, candied bacon, burnt onions, and walnuts scattered across the surface. And don’t miss the shellfish salad—a generous portion of shrimp and jumbo lump crab resting in a pool of citrus vinaigrette. The whole affair includes an avalanche of greens, providing more opportunities to enjoy that vinaigrette.

As for the entrees, the main event is those steaks—a whopping 720 pounds of meat are sold on any given night. Seasoned with salt, pepper, and a hit of butter, the meat (sourced from a premium purveyor in Chicago) is seared on the surface of a molten hot charbroiler to create a crust, then rested for optimal succulence.

Over a couple of Saturday nights in March, I demolished a gorgeously seared six-ounce filet, and the Australian Wagyu, which was served sliced and as easy to cut through as butter. For an additional fee, steaks can be embellished with ingredients like truffle butter or a blue cheese crust or a variety of lovely side sauces, including an herbaceous chimichurri, though no additional seasoning is necessary. The steaks taste expensive—and they are. But then again, no one ever went to a luxe steakhouse to bank on a bargain.

If you prefer surf to turf, there are a host of noteworthy options, including a Maryland-style crab cake served with waffle fries and a refreshing corn salad. There’s also a branzino filet resting on a bed of sunchoke purée, plus some fried sunchokes on the side. The tubers provide a nutty counterpoint to the sweet flesh of the fish.

Like most steak houses, side dishes are a highlight. My favorites include the jalapeño grits—they’re an appealing chartreuse hue that’s achieved by puréeing peppers and spinach—and a lavish lobster mac and cheese that pair perfectly with any steak on the menu.

If you’ve saved room for dessert, consider the butter cake coated in turbinado sugar, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and showered with strawberry crumble and macerated berries.

Sometimes it can be hard to get away from it all, but thanks to a fusion of fun, good food, and fantasy, The Ruxton will truly transport you.

THE RUXTON 720 Aliceanna St. HOURS: Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 4-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 4-11 p.m. PRICES: Appetizers, salads: $12-26; entrees: $29-62; steaks: $46-220. AMBIANCE: Posh.

As is fitting of a restaurant tucked inside Baltimore’s Horseshoe Casino, Gordon Ramsay Steak is a bit of sensory overload, especially sight and smell.

There’s a meat trolley with 360-degree mirrored views showcasing the marbling of various cuts of raw meat. There’s also the Union Jack mural splayed across the ceiling of a dining room that smells like seared steak and broiled bacon. It’s equally impossible to ignore a wall of white steel knives at the entrance to the kitchen, a sly wink to Ramsay’s rapier wit and sharp TV persona.

But what else would you expect from the in-your-face, Michelin-starred celebrity chef, who, with his perfectly deadpan delivery, once famously commented to one of his cooking-show contestants: “For what we are about to eat, may the Lord make us truly not vomit?” Having gorged on one too many all-you-can-eat buffets while on various visits to Atlantic City casinos as a kid, I know the feeling.

Fortunately, on a recent evening outing to Gordon Ramsay Steak, my experience left me feeling satisfied, not sick. Baltimore has no shortage of steakhouses, but most of them are places for deal-making over dinner. Not so at Gordon Ramsay Steak. With its playful plaid motif in the bar area and colorful cocktails, this carnivore’s den feels fun and festive. Here, the chef offers signatures from his sister spot in Vegas, while also adding regional products—Maryland blue crab, for instance, and Monkton’s Roseda Farm beef dry-aged with local Sagamore Rye.

Follow conventional wisdom—when you’re in a steakhouse, stick to the steaks. The menu features every conceivable cut, as well as American and Japanese Wagyu. Start with the beef tartare topped with a quail egg. The tartare, dramatically smoked under a bell jar at the table, is paired with house-made potato chips, adding a nice salty component.

A less successful appetizer was the grilled romaine salad, which, oddly, was served cold, though all was forgiven with the arrival of the chorizo-stuffed lobster luxuriating in a brandied cream sauce.

As for main courses, the eight-ounce filet, which arrives sitting zen-like surrounded by a swoosh of red wine demi-glace on the plate, is truly terrific and a relatively affordable option at $52, considerably less than the triple-seared Japanese Wagyu at $30/ounce. (Casinos pretty much have their own currency.)

Ramsay’s Beef Wellington is reason alone to go. The dish is paired with mushroom duxelles framed by a flaky puff pastry and sits on a buttery bed of potato purée. Alluring sides such as mac and cheese with truffles and English peas, and a loaded baked potato with smoked Gouda béchamel, sour cream, and bacon are also excellent complements to the beef. We went with the sautéed shiitake mushrooms, whose chewiness nicely mimicked the meat.

Finish your repast with Ramsay’s signature toffee pudding sided by brown-butter ice cream. The rectangular-shaped ice cream is disguised as a stick of butter and comes with—what else—a knife for cutting. With his first steakhouse on the East Coast, Ramsay has not lost his edge.

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Gordon Ramsay Steak: 1525 Russell St., 443-931-4254. Hours: Sun.-Thurs. 5-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 5 p.m.-12 a.m. Prices: appetizers: $18-26; entrees: $30-110; desserts: $9-18. Ambiance: Modern steakhouse chic.

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon—the birthplace of Shakespeare—is known to be a total drama king in the kitchen with his fiery temper and profanity-laced language. But in person, he’s as affable as they come. Ramsay, who has 32 restaurants all over the world (and TV shows all over Fox including Hell’s Kitchen, MasterChef, and The F Word with Gordon Ramsay) has been in Baltimore getting ready to open Gordon Ramsay Steak at the Horseshoe Casino. This is his first steakhouse on the East Coast, and a sister spot to his Las Vegas eatery. We caught up with the multi-Michelin starred chef to talk about steak, Baltimore, and The Bard. 

Have you visited Baltimore before?
I’ve been four times. It’s a lot like London, hardworking, not over-glamorized. It’s just one of those vibrant cities that has a real passion to it. You sense that just walking to the stadium. I didn’t go to the game, but I watched it on TV and visited the stadium this morning. 

I know you worked in an American steakhouse early in your career. What did you learn?
It was just this feeling of warmth and generosity, and it was that kind of hustle and bustle of the place that I loved. It was absolutely jam-packed. Everyone was snug in the booth, and the food was exceptional. The standard of the meat was the most important thing to me, just the quality of the beef, whether it was grass-fed or dry-aged, the quality was second to none.

You’ve said that you know whether a restaurant is going to be good or bad in seconds. What are you looking for when you dine out?
I send my wife to the bathroom. I want to make sure that the bathrooms are immaculate before I sit down. If the hygiene isn’t right, I leave immediately—that sets the tone. And then there’s the lighting. Lighting needs to be an enhancer. The lighting needs to make you feel welcome and not frigid. And then that first welcome is critical, whether there’s someone in the reception area, a maître d’ or even a server, you need to be made to feel welcome.

To what do you owe your success?
I owe it to my mum. She taught me manners and hard work. Mum had two jobs. She was a nurse at night and a cook during the day. We got to eat the food that didn’t sell. I got that determination and hunger from watching her.

Did you cook with her at home?
She’d never let me cook. I did prep. I’d peel the parsnips. Peel the carrots. The only thing I was allowed to do then was bake. I did a couple of cooking courses at school, but my main interest then was sports. I would go fishing on the river Avon and play soccer. After soccer, I’d go back and help my mum clean and cook. 

Growing up in Stratford-upon-Avon, what was your relationship with Shakespeare?
I used to live next to Mary Arden’s house [Shakespeare’s mother]. Throughout the summer and fall, I was in and out of theater. I was super shy about expressing myself in drama. But I understood that boisterousness and that passion from watching the plays and studying the literature. I wasn’t interested in it, but we had to do it. It gave me insight for theatricality. 

You’re this nice guy. Is what we see on TV for show or is that really a part of who you are?
I don’t parlay bullshit. We’re having a chat because I’m not even in service. But when we step into that arena where you’re paying $60 or $100 for a meal, it’s important to me. I’m not two-faced, I’m not hypocritical—I just call it as I see it. 

What do you think of food critics?
It’s something you have to live with. I’m 51, I’ve been cooking since I was 19. I’ve been judged by individuals who know less about food than I do. I call it rhino skin, because of the beat-ups and the jump-ons and the negativity—you have to skin like a rhino that stretches. And every time [one of my cooks] is upset because someone didn’t like something, I say “rhino.” You have to build that character. I respect the critics when they know what they’re talking about, but I don’t respect the critics when they haven’t got a clue. I had a Russian critic in the U.K. who got so drunk at one of my restaurants once, he phoned me the next day to find out what he had eaten. 

Other than the Union Jack on the ceiling of the dining room, what other British touches have you brought to your steakhouse?
This meat trolley is my Rolls Royce. I wanted to bring a little touch of British-ness to the dining room. Pushing one of these carts is like pushing a Rolls Royce through the dining room. This gets rolled to every table. We spaced the tables and booths purposely far apart. The grade and the marbling of the meat are apparent in the reflective surfaces of the cart. Twenty years ago it used to be a soufflé that would pass through the dining room—now it’s this baby. We have a GPS on it in case it goes missing. It’s good enough to cart the crown jewels. 

Speaking of the crown jewels, are you excited about the upcoming royal wedding?

I’m very excited. We know Prince Harry very well. I’ve seen him at events and had the pleasure of cooking for him. What an amazing match—and what a fantastic time to do it. America and Great Britain are becoming even closer. How cool is that?