Sleek Steakhouse
Chic Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse restaurants offer an alternative to the traditional steakhouse.
Susan Fishman

Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse’s Columbus, Ohio, restaurant

The Hyde Park Group includes Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse, Blake’s Seafood Restaurant & Bar and The Metropolitan Café, totaling 11 Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio-area locations. Owners Joe Saccone and Rick Hauck opened the first Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse in 1988. With great success in Cleveland and Columbus (it is regularly voted “best steak” by guests and critics in both hometowns), the company felt ready to take the concept beyond Ohio.

“We picked Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Detroit because, geographically, they make the most sense,” says Saccone. “They are within driving distance and match our trade area, and they are markets we have been looking at over the past 10 to 15 years in trying to find the right locations and the right mix.”

Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse is opening two to three restaurants over the next few years.

The company has rolled out a new prototype with a sexier, sophisticated design that appeals to a younger and more female clientele.

“Five years of research went into this,” notes Saccone. “The biggest emphasis for us is not only the social clientele, but the corporate clientele. We believe that from a corporate perspective, the traveling person of the future is becoming more female. So we think this design goes in that direction.”

The design and décor of each Hyde Park will complement the market it’s in, but with edgy twists one is not accustomed to finding in the typical steakhouse, from the color red splashed throughout the restaurant to tufted material in the booths and on the ceiling.

“It has typical steakhouse features — uniforms, menu items, a lot of wood — but it’s the steakhouse of the next 20 years, not the past 20 years,” Saccone says. “It’s geared toward women and a slightly younger clientele, but it also appeals to and satisfies the needs of an older clientele. Our menu portions are smaller, but we still have large steaks, too. We’re more of a chef-driven steakhouse.”

Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse has rolled out a new prototype with a sophisticated design that appeals to a younger and more female clientele.

Scheduled to open next winter, Buffalo Hyde Park will be part of a new 300,000-square-foot addition to the Walden Galleria. Buffalo-Niagara’s finest center for restaurants, retail and entertainment will add several new attractions, including the prime steakhouse.

“In downtown, urban locations, we like to be near hotels, sporting arenas and convention centers — we like that urban feel and that type of energy,” notes Saccone. “In the suburbs, we like household incomes above $70,000 or so and we also look at the drawing demographics of the center.”

The Detroit restaurant will be a lifestyle center location in Bloomfield Hills, and the Daytona Beach location will be located on the oceanfront of a 700-room Hilton Hotel. Its convention facilities, hotels, tourism, beach setting and population influx (more than 800 people move to Florida each day) make Daytona Beach a natural fit for Florida’s Hyde Park. Scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2007, the steakhouse will provide ocean views, access to the beach and easy accessibility for hotel guests and local residents.

“Since 9/11, it’s taken us until now to gear back up with the proper prototype, and we saw the right opportunity to go into Daytona Beach and then expand and open up more restaurants in that state,” says Saccone.

Saccone is optimistic about the company’s new locations since developers have expressed a need for something “hot and different that the general public has not seen.” The Hyde Park team plans to open two to three restaurants over the next 2 to 4 years, targeting locations east of the Mississippi from Boston all the way to Florida.