A few days ago, I walked into the Winfield Grill on Winton Road for the first time, and felt like I'd just stepped out of a time machine. It was a busy Saturday evening, and the tables were filling up with happy families, couples both young and old, and an assortment of regulars. Some of the older patrons, who had clearly been coming to the Winfield since both they and the restaurant were much younger, stopped to give the waitresses a hug and catch up on their way into the dining room. Highly polished dark wood, leaded glass windows, carefully selected post-industrial lighting, sepia-toned photos on the walls, and even the studied casual appearance of the furniture all screamed 1990. In a good way.

About 20 years ago, a new sort of restaurant made its debut on the American restaurant scene. This new genre didn't really have a name, but it certainly had a style: lots of dark wood paneling, brass accents, leaded glass windows, a scattering of antique-ish bric-a-brac to give the place an air of festive age, and a menu that straddled the line between classic bar food, and entrees tailored to appeal to a wide variety of tastes and wallets. Not quite a bar and grill, and a little more upscale than the much-maligned "family" restaurants, this new breed of American contemporary places with names like T.G.I. Friday's, and Bennigan's, and Houlihan's changed the way a whole generation of Americans went out to eat. The 78-year-old Winfield Grill is such a restaurant. And on any given evening it's justifiably packed with patrons eating from a menu that doesn't look like it's changed a whit since the restaurant was taken over by James Pizzicato and Jeffrey Kaplan in 1993. (Kaplan has owned the restaurant in partnership with Christopher DiMascio since 2006.)

Open the menu at the Winfield and the clock starts to run backward: loaded potato skins and nachos, taco salads, chopped steak with mushrooms and onions slathered in "brown sauce" with steak fries, mozzarella sticks, French dip sandwiches, crocks of French onion soup, and even the venerable reuben (only in corned beef, alas). As old as these dishes seem, the spot-on, period-perfect renditions offered at the Winfield make them feel almost new again - even the curly kale garnishes look retro and cool. And on a day when you are tired, hungry, and in need of familiar comforts, this is unquestionably and unapologetically the place for you.

Start off with a brown-and-tan crock full of French onion soup ($4.50), mozzarella cheese bubbling and sizzling on top of a thick slice of French bread-soaked broth. The onions here are not as caramelized as they might be, giving the soup a tiny bit of bite, but that's more than balanced by a judicious quantity of pepper and some sherry, rendering the soup rich, beefy, and wonderfully fragrant. Follow that with a plate of potato skins ($5.95), which are deep fried and then topped with cheddar cheese and a nearly obscene amount of crumbled bacon before being passed under the broiler. Served with the obligatory cup of sour cream, you could make a meal on these alone (and possibly still have leftovers if you are too greedy to share with others at the table). Need a bit more fried with your cheese? The mozz sticks ($5.50) here are nearly perfect, and they are served with a cup of thick ruby-red tomato sauce that tastes like it just might be homemade.

On my first visit, my wife opted for a taco salad ($7.50), largely for the novelty of seeing the old warhorse rolled out again. It came out in the usual gigantic fried flour tortilla basket, loaded to the brim with shredded iceberg lettuce, cheese, sour cream, black olives, and "spiced ground beef" finished with "taco dressing." It was delightful. The ingredients were fresh and distinct, the dressing and the beef with the barest hint of chili powder - a throwback to a world in which salsa was always red, tacos were always crunchy, black beans were a novelty, and the Mexican section at the grocery store featured only Ortega and Old El Paso.

The marvel of our first visit, however, was surely the chopped steak platter ($10.50). I ordered it on the assumption that if you have the courage to put it on the menu, the chopped steak has to be good. Served with perfectly crisped steak fries, and topped with fried onions and mushrooms, smothered in brown sauce - not demiglace, not gravy, not sauce bordelaise or espagnole, brown sauce - the oversized hunk of chopped sirloin on the plate came out pinkly medium with deep char marks seared into its tasty crust. Oozing juices onto the plate full of brown sauce (which was, I have to say, far tastier than sauces I've had elsewhere that sported fancier monikers), the meat had a lovely charred taste and good flavor for such a humble cut. That pool of sauce is an open invitation to abandon the de rigeur Cro Magnon-sized steak knife and fork and attack the spuds with your fingers alone.

A final word of praise is in order for the Winfield's French dip sandwich ($6.75). A French dip is a simple sandwich: good bread, thinly sliced beef, and a bowl of salty au jus in which to dip it. Too many restaurants try to doll the sandwich up, adding cheese or fancy spreads, or putting it on crusty loaves of bread, all of which undercut its simple goodness. Winfield's takes a minimalist approach to the dish, and the results speak for themselves. There's no tidy way to eat it, and by the time you have eaten the whole massive sandwich you really won't care - although you may wonder how you managed to down what looks like a pound of jus-soaked beef and bread in such a short time.

To find the Winfield Grill in City Newspaper's online Restaurant Guide - including a map, user reviews, and more - click here.

Winfield Grill

647 Winton Road North

(585) 654-8990, thewinfieldgrill.com

Monday-Saturday 11 a.m.-2 a.m., Sunday 10 a.m.-2 a.m.