Bern’s Steak House did not build its reputation on curb appeal. Set in the Tampa suburbs, not far from the bay that gave this city its name, the restaurant is housed in a complex of interconnected bone-white buildings that suggests a sprawling middle school, designed by an architect with Spanish Colonial tendencies.

If the tile-roofed exterior is drab, then the interior overcompensates. Swagged in gilt and velour, the rabbit warren of bordello-worthy nooks and anterooms at the core of the restaurant bespeaks both the grand castles of Europe and the chicken ranches of Nevada. Somewhere beneath that tile roof lurk the remains of Beer Haven, the workingman’s tavern that founders Bern Laxer and his wife, Gert, bought in 1956 and refashioned into our nation’s rococo temple of red meat and red wine.

It’s difficult these days to picture those humble beginnings. Seven nights a week, bow-tied waiters, working under the direction of David Laxer, the son of the founders, weave among clutches of marble statuary, peddling tins of malossol caviar and suet-rippled porterhouses. Meanwhile, sommeliers coo softly in the ears of well-heeled regulars, extolling the supple Italian amarones that lurk in Bern’s 500,000-bottle collection.