Prime: cute or clichéd name for a restaurant, depending on how you look at it. I’d say the same for the menu at this relatively recent Windsor Arms restaurant, dedicated to offering steakhouse fare with a sense of seasonality at white-topped table prices.

Right off the bat, special mention should go to the hotel’s über update of the two-room space, which now captures the best aspects of the room in alternating tones of tan leather and dark woods. Designers have thoroughly explored the space, giving slick and shiny vigor to the square footage that was previously the ignorable Club 22 - a burning fireplace and a display of paintings by Canadian artist Charles Pachter - to create a modern steakhouse look and feel.

In the kitchen, Chef Stephen Ricci does his part to steer his efforts in the opposite direction of Windsor Arms’ disappointing past, concentrating less on hotel-restaurant-friendly noshes and embracing a more complete steakhouse mindset, right down to preparing steaks in an 1,800° infrared broiler.

How does it hold up? When it's good, it's great. You can't be displeased by tender, subtly spiced tuna sashimi on a soba noodle salad, or the cool, nicely plump, kataif wrapped jumbo shrimp with celery mayonnaise. Nor the appetizer plate of organic beets with watercress and chèvre; tossed together haphazardly, this dish is business-class airline food. Arranged in Ricci’s fashion, it is close to art.

One evening, with several friends in tow and nearly every seat in the restaurant occupied by suspiciously regal-looking types, it was generalized that the kitchen, with this much hype, must do a great steak. And of course they do, in particular a killer Porterhouse ($52.00). This bad boy is 24 ounces of rare tender beef with the as-requested toasted peppercorn sauce, mashed potato and mound of the classic creamed spinach.