Louis' Chop House New Baltimore Michigan

Why Louis’ made the SteakMap list

Louis’ Chop House still carves Chateaubriand tableside and still flames Steak Diane in the dining room. That is close to extinct in America, and it is the reason to drive out to Gratiot Avenue.

It is also one of the most thoroughly Detroit menus in the state. The prime rib is sold in three sizes named for the city’s streets — the Petite Cut, the House Cut, and The Woodward Cut. The sirloin is called The Detroiter. And zip sauce is on nearly everything.

The Greek immigrant who built it

Louis Sboukis was born in a small village in Greece in 1929 and came to Detroit at twenty-six. By 1957 he was an operating partner in the Riviera Restaurant inside the Riviera Theater, then Detroit’s principal house for Broadway shows. He opened a second Riviera in East Detroit in 1959 and reached Chesterfield by the mid-1970s. In 1999 his sons rededicated the restaurant as Louis’ Chop House. He died in 2014.

The Greek thread never left the menu: saganaki made with imported Divanis Kasseri, flamed at the table.

The beef

The unusual cuts here are the Piedmontese steaks — a 12oz ribeye and an 8oz filet. Piedmontese cattle carry a natural muscling mutation that produces beef that is exceptionally tender while staying lean, so it eats nothing like a heavily marbled Prime ribeye. Very few American steakhouses stock it.

The conventional board is deep: a 26oz bone-in ribeye, a 16oz bone-in New York strip, a 24oz porterhouse, a 20oz T-bone, and filets at 7 and 9 ounces served with zip sauce. The Cadillac is a 16oz New York strip sent out on a hot skillet and finished tableside with Cadillac sauce.

The tableside room

Chateaubriand is carved for two with Bouquetiere vegetables and sauce Marchand de Vin. Steak Diane is two 9oz tenderloins seared at the table with brandy, wild mushrooms and red wine, finished with veal demi-glace and cream. Caesar salad and a warm bacon spinach salad are both built tableside for a minimum of two.

Great Lakes fish gets real attention too — Michigan yellow belly lake perch and Lake Superior whitefish, plus frog legs, which tells you exactly how old-school this room is.

Menu prices

From the Louis’ dinner menu: bone-in ribeye 26oz $68, Woodward Cut prime rib $58, Piedmontese ribeye or filet $54 each, bone-in New York strip 16oz $52, boneless ribeye 12oz $49, porterhouse 24oz $47, 9oz filet mignon $44, The Cadillac $44, House Cut prime rib $43, T-bone 20oz $41, 16oz ribeye $41, 7oz filet $39, New York strip 12oz $36, The Detroiter $31 and petite prime rib $29. Chateaubriand runs $118 per couple and Steak Diane $110 per couple.

Read the guide to the best steakhouses in Michigan.