The Dish: I went to this Baltimore strip club for the steak. Really.

There was a woman dancing topless onstage, but Eddie Suqi didn’t seem to notice. He was more excited by the food.

“This is one of the best steaks I’ve ever had in my life,” he shouted over the thump, thump, thump of the music at The Penthouse Club.

The longtime downtown nightclub reopened this month after a $5 million, nine-month renovation. Its New Orleans-based owner, Kirkendoll Management, hopes its steakhouse and other amenities will entice guests as much as the promise of gorgeous women who seem to really like you for you.

Before we sat down to our feast, Suqi, the corporation’s executive vice president for operations and biggest cheerleader, led me on a tour of the remodeled building. With a high-tech lighting and sound system, prominently featured DJ booth and upgraded dining area, the 9,000-square-foot, two-story Penthouse Club aims to draw visitors from Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere on the East Coast, said co-owner Caroline Kirkendoll.

“This is something the entire Eastern Seaboard doesn’t have,” said Kirkendoll, whose company purchased the club in 2022.

In addition to the Baltimore venue, Kirkendoll Management owns Penthouse Clubs in Louisiana, Florida and, soon, London, where Kirkendoll lives. Many team members, including Suqi, were flown in from Florida and elsewhere for the opening in Baltimore.

Good food at a gentleman’s club isn’t a new concept. Even Scores, which occupied the 615 Fallsway space before it became Penthouse, offered filet mignon. Baltimoreans, for our part, take pride in our pit beef stand by a strip club parking lot. And the nachos at the old Penthouse were good enough to be included in a roundup of some of the city’s best by Banner contributor Chris Franzoni.

But the revamped Penthouse is another level. Culinary operations are overseen by Pete Montecino, a veteran of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, who fussed over every detail during a grand opening this month, presenting me with a succession of courses as thrilling as a striptease by burlesque star Blaze Starr.

Whoever says size doesn’t matter hasn’t tried Penthouse’s shrimp cocktail. The club’s version featured two shrimp that were as large as they were juicy, served perfectly chilled in a martini glass with ice and a cocktail sauce that zinged with a fresh horseradish bite.

The filet mignon was generously seasoned and grilled to medium rare perfection, with bright red flesh so tender that it didn’t require a steak knife. All the steaks are sourced from South Dakota’s DemKota Ranch, where Suqi says he personally visited and was impressed by the humane conditions of the slaughterhouse. “I never heard the cows moo the entire time I was there,” he said, adding that mooing can be a sign of distress.

Equally impressive was the crab cake: fresh flakes of jumbo lump crab held together with just a whisper of filler and Old Bay. I was even willing to overlook the zigzag of tartar sauce on top of it. (Note to Penthouse staff: Baltimoreans are so committed to our broiled crab cakes that we prefer to let them just sit naked on the plate.) Dessert was a not-too-sweet crème brûlée, its crunchy sugar crust crackling beneath my spoon.

When it comes to food, Penthouse has something for everyone. High rollers can throw their dollars toward a $225 Tomahawk steak or $160 caviar service. Once lunch service begins this Friday, more modest diners will be able to partake in a $5 wagyu hot dog or burger. The company is banking that guests will spend more cash elsewhere in the venue.

The restaurant’s cocktail menu pays homage to the city, with options like the nonalcoholic “Druid Hill press,” made with blueberries. There’s also a variation on the French 75 called the Mount Vernon. Or splurge for a $600 bottle of Opus One cabernet sauvignon.

The Penthouse Club’s focus on food, beverages and other changes differentiates it from a faltering strip club industry in Baltimore. The Block, the stretch of East Baltimore Street that once housed the city’s bustling red-light district, has seen a number of its establishments close, including another national strip club chain, the Hustler Club.

At Penthouse, guests can order food — and lap dances — in the newly refurbished private rooms upstairs. The spacious restrooms, including a pink-accented women’s room, are a particular point of pride for Kirkendoll, who, as the lone woman on the design team, advocated for the nice facilities. Men don’t always think about bathrooms, she said.

It’s far from the only way Kirkendoll has made her mark on the family business that was founded by her father, John. Caroline Kirkendoll wants the club to become a nightlife destination akin to those in Las Vegas — not just a spot for men in Baltimore, but for women and people coming from D.C. and even beyond. To that end, the company plans to bring in professional acts from outside of Baltimore, something unheard of at a traditional strip club.

“I think that’s how we really differentiate ourselves,” she said, adding that her dad was a tougher sell on the idea. Strip club owners aren’t used to paying for entertainment; most of the time, dancers instead pay a fee to the house to work there. During Penthouse’s grand opening, out-of-town acts included a former Cirque du Soleil contortionist and an acrobat in bondage gear who shimmied herself inside a massive balloon — performers Suqi said Kirkendoll plan to bring back.

The club’s regular dancers, too, are feeling optimistic. The remodeled Penthouse has “a completely different vibe,” said “Gigi,” who declined to give her real name to maintain her privacy as an exotic dancer. Four years after she first began working at Penthouse, the Baltimore-based dancer says the club has risen to the level of upscale venues she’s seen in South Florida. “I think it’s going to bring a lot of people.”

And not all of those people are men. As I wrapped up dinner, Suqi pointed to a birthday party that had just walked in, a group almost entirely made up of women. “That,” he yelled over the music, “is what I’m most proud of.”

The birthday girl didn’t get a chance to try the food.