Best Classic Restaurant: Christy’s Restaurant

Some Coral Gables restaurants become popular. Christy’s became part of the Gables. Since 1978, the Ponce de Leon Boulevard institution has been a destination for the dinners that matter: anniversaries, birthdays, business dinners, family celebrations and those evenings when the occasion calls for a proper steak, a good bottle of wine and service that understands the difference between attentive and intrusive.

Christy’s has stayed remarkably true to the kind of restaurant it set out to be. This is classic steakhouse dining, beginning with the restaurant’s signature Caesar salad and continuing through USDA Prime steaks, filet mignon, New York strip, ribeye, prime rib and Chateaubriand for two. Seafood remains an important part of the menu as well, with selections such as shrimp cocktail, escargot, sea bass and the restaurant’s long-running surf-and-turf combinations.

The room is part of the experience. Deep red tones, white tablecloths, dark wood and traditional steakhouse details give Christy’s the atmosphere of a restaurant that knows exactly what it is. There is a full bar for cocktails before dinner and a substantial wine selection for the table. It feels polished without losing the familiarity that comes from serving the same community for nearly half a century.

And that history matters in Coral Gables. Plenty has changed along Ponce since 1978, but generations of Gableites have continued walking through Christy’s doors to mark important moments. Parents who once celebrated there bring their children back. Business relationships have been formed over lunch and dinner. Birthdays become anniversaries, anniversaries become traditions, and eventually the restaurant becomes part of a family’s own Gables history.

A classic isn’t simply something that has been around a long time. It earns that description by giving people a reason to keep coming back. For its steaks, traditional service, special-occasion atmosphere and nearly five decades as a Coral Gables dining institution, Christy’s Restaurant is the Coral Gables Gazette’s selection for Best Classic Restaurant.