One of life’s cruelest predicaments is when you’re flying on an empty stomach while laying eyes on those luscious steakhouse ads in the in-flight magazines. With only a miniature bag of complimentary pretzels at your disposal, you begin lusting over filet mignon so gorgeously photographed that you practically start licking the pages.

After a recent flight home from back east, I waited less than 24 hours to get my juicy steak fix, taunted specifically by an ad for Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Since I’d eaten there before (and came away satisfied), I decided to sample the slaughters elsewhere, which lead me to the downtown location of Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar.

Fleming’s falls under the Goliath corporation, OSI Restaurant Partners Inc., which also owns Outback Steakhouse, Roy’s and Blue Coral. There are currently 57 locations for Fleming’s nationwide, each featuring huge and variant wine lists, which in my opinion, shine brighter than the chain’s duplicated food menus.

A wood-clad interior set off by soft, muted lighting fits the mold of most American chophouses, with the exception of decorative vases and china strewn throughout. On this particular evening, my companion and I walked into a full house brought on by San Diego’s second Restaurant Week of the year. For a place famous for its steaks and wines, it’s beyond my comprehension why parents would tote their kids in here. Apparently the price of babysitters has spiked with the cost of gas, as the place was crawling with munchkins.

Despite the circus, the restaurant was well staffed with a good ratio of servers to customers. Our waiter was particularly upbeat and knowledgeable about the menu, as well as the infinite choices of wines by the glass – nearly 100 in all. The food, however, suffered a bit.

Among a trio of appetizers we ordered, the tenderloin carpaccio would’ve been our favorite had it not been over-sauced with Creole mustard aioli. In fact, the restaurant’s prolific use of heavy sauces became the bane to a few other dishes we tried throughout our meal.

Jumbo lump crab cakes lacked sweetness – the cakes jangled by a vast pond of roasted red pepper and lime-butter sauce. Over-adorned, they reminded us of TGI Friday’s fare. More enjoyable were portobello steak fries, thickly cut ‘shrooms encased in herbed panko crust and stacked like Lincoln Logs alongside a feisty smoked jalapeno aioli.

About 99 percent of the menu originates from corporate headquarters. The chefs at each location basically devise the day’s “mixed grill” – top sirloin and grilled portobello the night we visited. If their ambitions run stronger, they must submit to the hierarchy their creative input. When I asked a manager if the nameless chef at this location authored any of the dishes on the current menu, he answered, “no.”

Which brings me to the à la Carte side dishes, most of them tasting generically fabricated by company big guns; The Fleming’s potatoes, for example, was a dense brick of scalloped spuds cemented together by cream and cheddar cheese. Jalapenos added interest, but the dish was so weighty that it didn’t matter. Creamed corn gratinee could have withstood about 100 more kernels and a pint less cream, although we enjoyed the Parmesan and Gruyere cheeses melted into the recipe. Grilled asparagus brushed with olive oil and butter was unfortunately served to us at room temperature.

But who goes to steakhouses for the side dishes anyway? They’re always mediocre at best if we start analyzing the hash browns at The Palm, the creamed spinach at Morton’s or the giant onion rings at Donovan’s Steak & Chop House.

From the entrée menu we ordered two different steaks, skipping over Australian lamb chops, double breast of chicken and several sauce-laced seafood items. We were here for one reason: to devour thick, bloody steaks with the gusto of German Shepherds.

Fleming’s steaks are all hand-cut, USDA prime grade and aged up to four weeks. My companion chose beef Flemington, a takeoff on beef Wellington involving filet mignon wrapped in puff pastry with mushroom duxelle tucked inside. Augmented also by a silky Madeira sauce, we were indifferent to the trappings, as the medium-cooked meat tasted joyous only when we scraped it bare. He regretted not ordering it plain.

I opted for a 20-ounce bone-in New York strip, which yields the same amount of flesh as its 16-ounce cousin. The bone adds the extra weight and obviously more of a classic steaky flavor, which I indeed detected after battling through a jungle of gristle and tendons – an aberration I’m told by fellow foodies who are devout fans of Fleming’s. The entrée came with three sauces: peppercorn, Madeira and béarnaise, with the latter offering smooth consistency and a titillating essence of tarragon.

Other steak choices include boneless or bone-in ribeye, filet mignon in eight or 12-ounce cuts and prime rib available only on Sundays.

Should I ever return, my preference will be for a naked filet or ribeye, sans any sauces or side plates, as I loll over a few glasses of wine, or perhaps a bottle from the reserve wine list featuring more than 80 labels of limited availability.

In a final lure, dinner at Fleming’s costs about 10 percent less compared to other big-name steakhouses like The Palm, Ruth’s Chris, Morton’s or Rainwater’s on Kettner, all of which assert in one form or another that their steaks are “the best anywhere.”