The downtown RingSide is stuck mid-century. It looks like just about everything we want from an old steakhouse, dark and clubby, with deep padded booths. A large fireplace dominates the center of the room, creating an especially comforting warmth in colder, wetter months. Sardi’s-style, while tuxedo-clad waiters scuttle around, seemingly unaware that the whole place smells unmistakably like mildew.

Normally, we find overdressing to be a problem in steakhouses, but these salads are practically buck-naked—which might be okay if the leaves had any natural flavor, but in the case of a Caesar, the dressing is the thing. The anchovies are a dried-out afterthought, lying sadly among plasticky shards of parmesan.

Steaks fare scarcely better. A 14-ounce New York strip is cooked to a proper medium-rare, but gets a crust that tastes more burnt than charred. Both this and a 24-ounce Porterhouse will provide more gristle than flavor.

In a move that is boldly outdated and out of touch, sides include your choice of garlic mashed potatoes (okay), baked potato (old and petrified), french fries, jasmine rice pilaf (really?), or cottage cheese (really??). For an additional charge, RingSide’s “famous” onion rings are expertly cooked (they ought to be after over 60 years of practice), but the accompanying blue-cheese-and-ketchup sauce tasted, on one visit, like it had gone bad.

Unlike at El Gaucho, you won’t get a zany tableside show with your bananas Foster, just a sad, withering plate of ice cream over bananas. Desserts, in general, are of the bake-sale variety.

The wine list is spectacularly ambitious, but completely unaffordable. You can get your Château Pétrus ‘66 for $8,500, but inexcusably the cheapest French red on the list is $49. Think domestic wines are cheaper? A quick Excel analysis reveals that the average price of a California Cab on the list is $231, and the median $210. Incredible. We do, however, appreciate the vintage Port wines and Madeiras from the 1980s and ‘90s, which are under $15 per glass.

We’re all for preserving old-timey standards of service and décor, but RingSide just feels careless, like by including all the perfunctories, it will somehow stay alive and well. But Portland’s dining scene has been growing up around these walls, and the once-mighty steakhouse is now dwarfed.