I’m a huge fan of high-end steak houses.</p><p>My paycheck is not. My visits to expensive restaurants are rare, usually on someone else’s dime, and it has been a long time.</p><p>When the assignment came to visit 801 Steak & Chop House in the Power & Light District, I checked it out online, found the menu and saw the prices.</p><p>“Whoa.”</p><p>High-end for sure, and mostly a la carte. The steaks range in price from $38 to the $55 24-ounce porterhouse. Vegetable and potato sides range from the $6 lobster corn chowder to the $17 oysters rockefeller.</p><p>But wait. Clicking around on the site, we found a prix fixe menu: a three-course dinner for just $29.95 from 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday.</p><p>More my style.</p><p>We park and walk through the Power & Light District to the restaurant, which sits under a giant retro neon sign, just across the street from Ted’s Montana Grill.</p><p>The 801 Steak & Chop House opened last October, the third site in a chain with a location in Omaha and the award-winning original in Des Moines. Chef Christopher Dennis and general manager Sheri Osborn both came to Kansas City from Des Moines.</p><p>Walking in, we’re greeted by an impressive floor-to-ceiling wall of wine bottles.</p><p>We’re led to a booth in an empty dining room. The room has light hardwood floors, a towering ceiling and white tablecloths. High windows provide bright but diffused light, showing the sky and the H&R Block building soaring overhead, while dark wooden shutters keep out the late afternoon glare. The walls are decorated with photos and paintings of cows.</p><p>We get a stack of menus: one for the 2,700 bottles of wine on hand, one for drinks, a main one and one called the “Fresh List,” which highlights the week’s specials.</p><p>Our server soon appears, introduces himself as Mark and takes our drink orders while we sort through the paperwork.</p><p>Mark is soon back with the drinks and appears again, this time pushing a cart covered with what looks like 50 pounds of meat, each cut wrapped tightly in cellophane. He picks up each piece and describes its marbling, how it’s aged and how it’s prepared. Mark tells us that of all the beef produced in the U.S., less than 2 percent is certified as USDA Prime, and that 801 Chop House uses only USDA Prime.</p><p>It’s a seven-minute lesson in meatery … steakology … steakery? It’s educational, and it’s evident Mark knows his stuff.</p><p>While he’s talking, I’ve noticed the knife on the table in front of me. It’s heavy and long, with a large wooden handle. It looks like it could’ve been mounted on the end of a rifle.</p><p>They don’t mess around here. This is serious meat business.</p><p>Other tables in the room are now occupied, and I see another server giving the meat presentation.</p><p>We order from the Sunday prix fixe menu and also order up appetizers.</p><p>The pancetta-wrapped scallops come atop a deep red, slightly sweet roasted red pepper glaze and disappear first, and fast. The kids like the lobster corn dogs. They are interesting and fun, with a rich shrimp/lobster sort of mousse hidden inside what looks like regular county fair corn dogs.</p><p>The shining star of the starters is the “Down Home sautéed jumbo shrimp,” entirely underplayed on the menu, which simply says, “garlic and herb butter.” It’s way more than something that mundane.</p><p> Four giant shrimp nestle atop a large pile of mashed potatoes (yes!) with a garlic and butter sauce, for sure, and rosemary and flecks of pepper … but there’s something else that makes this special, and I can’t figure it out. It’s revealed to me a few days later in a phone call with Osborn, the general manager: The mystery ingredient is Guinness stout.