Burgers, Midtown West, Porterhouse, Rib Eye, Steakhouse Reviews

NYY Steak

July 19, 2015 Johnny Prime 6 Comments

NYY Steak overall score: 85

NOTE: THIS PLACE IS CLOSED

Ever since moving back to NYC, my dad and I have been talking about hitting the relatively new New York Yankees Steakhouse in midtown. We were finally able to set up a visit (they’re only open on weekends during dinner hours, and my parents usually visit during lunch hours on weekends, so we had to reassess the normal visit routine). So my parents came in with my oldest nephew. It was hotter than Derek Jeter’s balls in a Phoenix double header that day. My wife, my parents, my nephew and I were all sweating our asses off. We were walking around Central Park in the lead up to the reservation when out of nowhere it began to pour. Rain was coming down hard, as if Poseidon and Zeus were having a golden shower party in the sky. We ran out of the park and, lucky for us, a bus was heading down 5th Avenue just as we exited. The bus let us off just around the corner from the restaurant, where we were finally safe from the downpour. Check out the count below:

Flavor: 8
I ordered the 27oz long bone rib eye. It was perfectly cooked, nice and juicy, tender, and didn’t have too much inedible gristle on it. However I felt like it was just a hair under-seasoned. Nothing worth complaining about in the slightest. The most awesome part about the steak, for me, was the custom etching of your name into the bone. Upon taking our order, Michael, our awesome waiter, asked my father and I what text we wanted etched into our rib bones. WHAAAT?!??!!! THIS IS AWESOME!!! Check it out!!! This shit is now on my (Mickey) mantel at home.

Choice of Cuts & Quality Available: 7
You have all your major cuts here. Filet, strip, porterhouse and the rib eye. Everything on the menu is prime and aged in house. When you head downstairs you can actually see the meat man carving up cuts and trimming the meat into portions.

Portion Size & Plating: 10
Portions here are massive. Aside from the steaks, whatever else you order is a very generous size. You’ll see what I’m talking about below for some of the items pictured. In addition, the plating is really clever. The bread plates are in the shape of a baseball field, and each dinner plate has the unique jersey number of a famous player (7 for Mantle, 9 for Maris/Nettles, etc).

Price: 8
The cost is a bit on the high end, but this is to be expected in a place that dons the Yankee brand and that is located in such a big, beautiful space in costly midtown. The really good thing here is that you get a LOT for your money – well worth the cost, in my opinion, and very good quality food.

Bar: 7
The bar is nice and sleek, with a few television screens broadcasting baseball games, as you might expect at a Yankees steakhouse. They mixed a nice martini too, which is always important to me.

Specials and Other Meats: 9
There is a really amazing $42 price fix special here. You get your choice of salad or the bacon app to start, then a choice between a 6oz filet (you can upgrade to 8oz), chicken, or salmon, composed as a plate with mashed potatoes and broccolini. Well done NYY! Broccolini is a personal favorite of mine, so I was glad to see that on the menu. Here is a shot of the bacon app and salad (a few people ordered this at the table). The bacon app is actually a half order of the normal sized app. Still generous in my opinion.

Other than this, they basically feature an on-menu steak of the day that the chef recommends for whatever reason.

Apps, Sides & Desserts: 9
We selected a few apps from the main menu. My dad and I had the lump blue crab. I was expecting a portion half this size, and with crappy meat, but this was AMAZING. The meat was tender and juicy, and served with a little salad on top and some croutons, cucumber and tomatoes. Delicious.

We also had french fries. These were great too – very crispy and really well seasoned with some parmesan cheese and coarse salt. For some reason I forgot to snap a photo of these beauties. My sincere apologies. But I did get a shot of the amazing chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich with a fucking chocolate Yoohoo shake. LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THIS FOR ONLY $16!!! And it was GOD DAMNED DELICIOUS!

OH YEAH! We also had this freaking thing: a 151 rum flamed ice cream volcano. Yes. Ice cream was beneath the flames and caramelized coating. So cool.

Seafood Selection: 8
My wife had the salmon with her price fix meal. It was really nicely cooked to medium rare as she requested. Mild, but very flavorful. Based on this I would definitely come and try some of their other seafood offerings.

Service: 10
As I mentioned above, Michael was a great waiter. He was helpful, he knew his meat, and had great suggestions for us. When I made the reservation, I randomly put “congratulations Jeremy” in the text box on Open Table. I guess they pay attention to those things, because they printed up a special menu with my nephew’s name on it saying congrats.

A few other service notes: the manager was very generous and offered us some after dinner drinks on the house. Port, Sambuca, and cognac. This was incredible! We were blown away by the service.

Another item worth mentioning was the bread. They offer a cheese bread roll with olive spread, and a pretzel bread roll with mustard butter. Very tasty stuff. And last, a trio of salts/peppers was presented to us as well. A himalayan pink salt, a fluffy sea salt, and a pepper from Madagascar that was pretty spicy for peppercorn.

Ambiance: 9
The space is really neat here. It used to be a bank. They have some private dining rooms on the ground floor with a converted vault as one of the private rooms. They have a big, high ceiling open room with two levels on the main floor, featuring larger-than-life sized photos of the great Yankees from the beginning on up through today. Last, there’s a 100-seat room on the upper floor, which features more memorabilia and some smaller framed items. Not only this, but the waiters are all wearing pinstripes beneath their vests and ties in honor of the greatest baseball team ever. The menu even reflects this greatness, with 27 wines by the glass to go with the Yanks’ 27 championship victories. Nice touch.

Beside the bar I noticed a cool feature: steak knives with MVP names on them: many are players, but some are honored guests and frequent diners. Pretty cool.

POWER LUNCH!

For $27 you get a salad, your choice of burger, chicken sandwich, or salmon (7oz), and dessert choice of cheesecake or creme brûlée. Awesome deal. The burger was pretty good, though the bun didn’t quite hold up to the immensity of the meat. Fries were perfect – nice and golden brown. Salad was basic and refreshing, and the creme brûlée, though served with a fork, was right on the money – creamy smooth and really bright.

On a third trip, my wife and I came in to take advantage of a free baseball hat and free Yankees tickets promotion that NYY was doing. Each diner gets a hat, and you get a voucher for Yankees tickets, which you can turn in at the stadium box office for tickets.

So we tried the steak tartare and tuna tartare as apps. Both were awesome. The steak was hand cut, but very soft and tender. Really nice flavor. The tuna was thickly chopped on a base of avocado and served with sesame rice chips and sesame oil for a distinctly asian flavor profile that was very refreshing.

For our main course we split the porterhouse for two (38oz). It was overcooked on the edges, but the coarse salt and pepper gave it a nice crust and flavor. The filet side was super tender, but the strip side was a bit tough in parts, and also overly charred, which gave some bites a burnt, ashy flavor.

On the side we had the mac and cheese. This was a spiral pasta with a variety of non-traditional cheeses. It was okay, but a little too funky for my liking. I’m more of a cheddar type of guy when it comes to mac and cheese.

We skipped dessert this time, but I noticed that they no longer offered the chipwich or the ice cream lava mountain that we had on the first trip. Bummer. I also noticed that the three-course price fix was no longer offered, and there was no booze cart that came around at dessert time. Hmm. I took a few points for this here and there in the updated review.

NYY STEAK
7 W. 51st St.
New York, NY 10019

Recipes

Beefalafel Burger

July 10, 2015 Johnny Prime 4 Comments

I should say up front that I initially intended this recipe to involve lamb rather than beef, so feel free to swap out the protein. Shit, you can even go with ground turkey if you want. What the fuck do I care?

Anyway, the grocery store that’s on my way home from work didn’t have ground lamb, and I wasn’t about to break out the Kitchenaid stand mixer and grind up the lamb chops that they DID have for some $20+. Also, I didn’t feel like going to Whole Foods and waiting on a line filled with granola-eating vegans to procure said ground lamb (Whole Foods has everything – it really is awesome… just always crowded with food Nazis). All that said, I went with ground beef. About half a pound of ground chuck, to be exact. Under $3.

My idea for this came to me when I was trying to decide what I wanted for dinner. I was thinking or ordering a burger from a local steakhouse, but I was also craving falafel. So I decided to combine the two desires into one. Behold, the beefalafel burger:

It’s a really simple recipe, with an incredibly delicious end-result.

What The Fuck Do You Need?

lemon juice
plain greek yogurt
a few cloves of garlic
olive oil (for sauce)
vegetable oil (for frying)
falafel mix
half pound of ground beef
potato buns
tomato
red onion
arugula
feta cheese
various normal, everyday household cabinet spices

*Note* as I mentioned above, feel free to swap the ground beef out for something else. Also, you can play with the ratios. If you add more meat, you will have a beefier final result that leans more toward the burger side than the falafel side. This recipe ratio – with a half pound of beef to one packet of falafel – yields four burger patties that are somewhat more falafel-ish than burger-ish. However, they are WAY more juicy than your typical no-beef falafel.

How The Fuck Do You Make It?

First, I’m going to pop my time-lapse cooking demo into the post here, that way you can see for yourself how the steps unfold. It’s really fucking easy.

So now that you’ve seen it made, here’s the step-by-step:

STEP 1: Make The Sauce
Cut up a few cloves of garlic. Sautee the garlic in a pan with olive oil and lemon juice until they get softened and the mixture starts to get slightly brown. Allow this to cool. Place a few tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt into a small dipping bowl and add some spices to your taste. I like cracked black pepper, oregano and crushed red pepper. Once cooled, add your garlic, olive oil and lemon juice combo into the yogurt from your pan. Mix thoroughly and set aside for later.

STEP 2: Make The Falafel
Prepare your falafel according to the instructions on the packet. If you’re industrious, feel free to make your own falafel from scratch. I go with the packets because they are easy as fuck, and they taste perfectly delicious to me. Besides, all that’s really involved here is adding a cup of water to the falafel powder and then mixing the shit into a fucking paste.

STEP 3: Add The Ground Beef
Mix your half pound of ground beef into the falafel paste and get the meat particles evenly distributed throughout the falafel.

STEP 4: Make The Burger Patties
Form four equi-sized burger patties on some wax paper. Step four is fucking one line of text. Don’t fuck it up.

STEP 5: Fry The Burgers In Vegetable Oil
Add your vegetable oil (1 & 3/4 cups, thereabout) into a frying pan and crank the heat. Once it’s hot enough for frying, place your burgers into the pan. When the patties turn to a dark brown color on the bottom, it’s time to flip (maybe 5 minutes). When both sides are done, take them out of the oil and place them on a drying rack or a bed of paper towels.

STEP 6: Assemble The Burgers
While you’re waiting for the oil to get hot, you can slice your tomato, red onion, and feta cheese, and rinse your arugula. When you’re ready to go, smear some of your yogurt sauce onto each half of the bun. Be generous, too. This shit is actually pretty healthy. Add your burger, onions, cheese crumbles, tomato and arugula. Close that bitch up and eat! I like to slice mine in half for easy mouth-shoving.

As you can see, this leans a bit more on the falafel side than the burger side. Add more meat and you’ll see some pink in there for a nice medium.

Parting Thoughts

This is a great way to stretch your supply if you’ve only got a small amount of ground beef left from an earlier meal. It’s also a smart way to cut down on the fat and red meat if you’re dieting, without sacrificing flavor. Lastly, it is really budget-friendly. For about $15 you can feed four people. Not bad! And you can make a salad with the rest of your arugula, tomato, feta and onion, if the burger itself doesn’t fill you up. Just make some extra yogurt sauce to use as a salad dressing.

Mediterranean, Midtown East, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews

Hummus 21

July 7, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

I recently had the opportunity to eat at this really nice Kosher Mediterranean joint over on 1st Avenue between 57th and 58th for a press dinner.

The restaurant is simply and elegantly decorated with white table cloths, white textured wainscoting on the walls, and a patterned tin ceiling. Wide glass windows open out to the sidewalk along 1st Avenue to give the restaurant an airy, street-side feel without the hassle of being on the sidewalk, in the sun, or bumped by passers by.

There’s a private room in the back for parties and events, which can accommodate about 20-25 people. The restaurant also offers daily happy hour specials, as you can see from the chalkboard below:

Although they are not yet open for lunch, they do offer a brunch menu on weekends.

Chef/owner Sam is a young man of 25 years, but he’s been working in kitchens and learning the trade since he was 15, via his father. He spent time running a restaurant in London before he opened up shop here in NYC just six months back. He keeps a small, skilled team by his side, and he runs the show on everything from the apps through desserts. Yes: he even makes all desserts in-house. Pretty impressive for someone so young. He’s truly a skilled chef, and the meal demonstrated to me that he can cook anything and cook it well, to boot.

Whenever I dig on Kosher food, I’m typically apprehensive, because I always feel like a restaurant will have to sacrifice something in the flavor department in order to satisfy the Kosher dietary requirements. That is NOT the case with Hummus 21. Everything I sampled here was incredible, and I tried a lot of stuff from the menu, as you’ll see below. Everything was fresh, well balanced, light and healthy. The short summary is that I would definitely eat here again, and again, and again.

Tables are set with a nice bottle of olive oil and some fresh olives for snacking, and the wine list features a variety of nice selections from all over the world, including a great Israeli pinot noir and a light rose.

First, we sampled four types of hummus with some fresh pita bread.

The first was topped with white tahini, olive oil and toasted pine nuts. This had a very creamy, traditional flavor to it.

The next one was topped with Moroccan style chicken, tahini and a chimichurri sauce. This was probably my favorite of the four. Each bite offered a dynamic range of flavors and textures.

The third was my next favorite, which was topped with a spicy jalapeno sauce, garlic, cilantro and olive oil. Absolutely delicious. I can eat it all day long!

The last hummus selection was topped with whole chic peas, tahini and some lemon juice. Really nice pop from the lemon.

Our next items were golden-brown falafel footballs. These came with a really nice green dipping sauce. They were perfectly cooked: crispy on the outside but still flavorful and juicy on the inside.

This next dish was beautifully presented – an appetizer sampler with six different items:

First was a lentil kofta: a lentil cake fried with chic pea flour. This was probably one of my top three selections of the night. It was so tasty, light and crispy.

Next was the bureka duo. One was filled with potato, and the other with mushroom. These reminded me of knish, only very tasty and with a nice, flaky puff pastry and sesame crust on the outside.

Third was the kibbe, which was ground, spiced beef battered with wheat flour and fried to a golden brown crisp. These were amazing. I could easily see these selling like wild if they were served on a stick from a food cart or food truck. Could be the next big craze to sweep the city!

The dolma (grape leaves filled with basmati rice) had a slightly sweet note to them, and were drizzled with tahini sauce. Very good.

Next was briwat, aka Moroccan beef cigars! These were like spiced beef egg rolls, only not greasy, and very light and crispy.

Last was this Israeli chopped salad, which was comprised of tomato, cucumber, onion, parsley, olive oil, lemon vinaigrette and mint. Very refreshing, and a great way to cleanse the palette before the main courses come out to the table.

For the entrees, we sampled three plates. First was Mediterranean red chicken: boneless chicken thigh served on a sizzling skillet with both sweet and hot peppers, cilantro and onion. This was really juicy and flavorful. Perfectly cooked, it was probably my favorite item of the night.

The second entree was sen’ya, which is a 50/50 ground beef and lamb mixture, formed into a patty and grilled, topped with tahini, and garnished with roasted pine nuts and a side of couscous. These were great; and that means something coming from a meat aficionado such as myself. I instantly started thinking of how amazing this would be if served on a bun with some lettuce, tomato, and tahini sauce: like a Mediterranean burger. The char on the patty was so perfect. It added a great texture to the outside, and the inside had such a unique flavor combination of Mediterranean and middle eastern spices. Highly recommended.

Last was a rice and lentil dish with tahini sauce, topped with fried onions and served with a spiral cut salad of carrot and cucumber, which was lightly pickled and flavored with lemon.

Sam had stepped up his game with each item that came to the table, so I wasn’t surprised at the quality of the food when the desserts came out. Everything was beautiful, unique, and delicious. First was kadaif, a Lebanese vanilla soy cream cake served on top of shredded filo dough and drizzled with tahini. This was my favorite of the desserts. It was cold, crunchy, creamy, and sweet, with just a hint of salt that made all the flavors jump out.

My next favorite was the traditional baklava. This was executed perfectly. It was light and not too sweet or drenched in honey, as so many other baklava desserts can be. I loved it.

This malabi custard had a light vanilla flavor, topped with shredded coconut and rose water sauce that really made it stand out as one of the most unique items of the night.

The chocolate molten lava cake was rich and decadent, and came with little wedges of homemade halva, which I was excited to see! I used to love it as a child and I hardly ever see it anymore these days.

Our host ordered a Moroccan tea, which comes presented in a beautiful pot with a really fancy little cup. Very nice!

So that about does it for Hummus 21. I hope you guys get a chance to check this place out. If you’re like me, and you don’t follow any sort of Kosher dietary restrictions, I promise you will still love the food here. Everything is absolutely delicious.

HUMMUS 21 IS CLOSED

Japanese, Midtown West, Restaurant Reviews

Torishin West

July 5, 2015 Johnny Prime 3 Comments

For quite some time I’ve been fascinated by the idea of small, yakitori bar type joints in Japan. For those that don’t know what this concept is, it is essentially a long bar with open flame coals where the well drinks would be. All manner of chicken parts are grilled on skewers, charred over the coals before you and served up hot and fresh to your plate. I’ve never been to Japan, and therefore have never been to an authentic yakitori joint. Now, you may be thinking that NYC would surely have an authentic place like this, being a cultural melting pot and all. The problem is that NYC’s zoning laws don’t allow for open-flame charcoal style cooking indoors at restaurants. So any place that claims to be BBQ, or grilling style (like Korean BBQ, for example) is actually a cheap knock off version that is done with electric heater cooking coils and infrared grills. NOT real charcoal.

So anyway, with that caveat placed firmly up top, we can get down to the goods. Torishin is a NYC yakitori restaurant located in the 50s on the west side. We tried a shitload of chicken, with a bit of pork and veggies mixed in as well. Unfortunately there is no open-facing bar where you can watch the chefs cook this stuff in front of you, like you can in Japan, but the end products were all really nice. I enjoyed every course of this yakitori omakase.

First was a bowl of pickled cukes and daikon. Unimpressive, for me.

This next bowl is meant to ba a palate cleanser. Shredded daikon. I’m really not too much of a fan of daikon to begin with, so I barely dipped into this:

Next, more daikon. This time a thick “burger patty” of it, topped with shrimp, veggies, and a dreaded piece of eggplant (which is a disgusting, vile vegetable).

Now on to some good shit. Chicken hearts. These were very tasty, and probably one of my favorites of the evening. They tasted, to me, like mild beef skirt steak.

Chicken breast wrapped in shiso leaf:

Chicken thigh (mmmmmmm):

Mushroom caps:

Pork belly:

Crab and shrimp with black mushrooms and yuzu jelly:

Asparagus. To me, this is a colossal waste of money. Essentially each skewer comes out to like $8 a pop. This plate was for four people. So we each got one asparagus shoot, which cost us $8 each. Rip off.

Chicken meatballs. Very tasty!

Chicken thigh meat wrapped in chicken skin. I liked this skewer a lot.

To finish off, we were given a choice of rice dish. This first one came in a broth, more like a soup:

This one was rice with ground chicken on top and a small cup of chicken broth on the side:

Dessert was either a shiso sorbet (left), sake jelly with kiwi and cherry (center), or strawberry sorbet (right). I went with the shiso sorbet and absolutely loved it. Very refreshing.

TORISHIN WEST
362 W. 53rd St.
New York, NY 10019

American, Burgers, Midtown West, Other, Restaurant Reviews

North River Lobster Company

July 5, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

Allow me to introduce you to one of the coolest eating experiences in NYC.

These folks have a big ass ferry boat that has been decked out with bars and seating, where they serve up shit like lobster rolls, grilled whole lobster, burgers, and even fresh shellfish. It’s docked over on 41st and the West Side Highway.

The boat is free to ride. You can board and eat starting at noon. It takes about five or six 45-minute long rides each day, at which point you can enjoy views of the upper west side’s skyline as you approach the GWB (without actually going under it).

We tried a whole mess of shit when my wife and I went with her family. The food is just mediocre, really, but the atmosphere is awesome, especially on a nice sunny day like we had.

Here’s the lobster roll, which was more like lobster salad. I enjoyed it, but I’ve definitely had better around town. It comes with a bag of nice kettle cooked potato chips and coleslaw.

The lobster tacos are comprised of essentially the same meat/salad as the lobster roll, only with the slaw on the taco itself, accompanied by a bit of guacamole, some lettuce and a wedge of lime.

The Pat LaFrieda burger was a bit overcooked for my liking, and slightly grainy in texture, but it was a decent burger nonetheless. I wasn’t about to be a hard critic given the fact that I was eating out of a floating kitchen.

Here’s a look at the french fries. One order was regular, which came with the burger, and the other was a separate order of truffle blue cheese fries, which were really tasty.

This interesting snack was a lobster corn dog. Essentially a lobster meat mash that has been battered and deep fried on a stick. Nice.

They serve up a variety of beer and sodas too. The blueberry soda was nice, as was this lobster ale:

The cost is a bit pricey, but you are also on a boat, so take that into account.

NORTH RIVER LOBSTER COMPANY
Pier 81
W 41st St
New York, NY 10036

Recipes

The Germain Scotsman

July 3, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

This is really a riff on my Smoky Mountain Beehive cocktail recipe, but with a pop of elderflower sweetness instead of honey.

2 parts Laphroaig scotch
1 part St. Germain
1/2 part orange juice
1/2 part seltzer

Pour it all over ice and shake it the fuck up. Drink this shit on the rocks, and maybe add a leaf of basil or mint to top it off. Another name for this concoction is the Boutineer. St. German can be substituted with aloe drink, and scotch can be substituted with rye.

Flash Deals, Pizza, Union Square/Flatiron

Grimaldi’s

July 3, 2015 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

It’s hard to believe that this place once housed that most amazing night club to ever exist on Earth, Limelight.

What was once a nearly broken down magnet for drugs, wild music, and intense partiers is now a fucking high end mall. But there’s a pizza shop on board, and a good one at that.

Grimaldi’s serves up some nice pies. We tried a half-sausage, half-regular pie. The regular side was way better, in my opinion. There’s really no need for toppings.

The dough is crisp, yet soft. It still folds up for biting and doesn’t sag too much when held in the air. Nice and simple, few ingredients – but QUALITY ingredients. This is how pizza is meant to be. The tomato sauce is fresh and house-made.

The antipasto is pretty nice too. Some slices of fresh mozz, topped with salami and then adorned with roasted red peppers, olives, olive oil and toasted Italian bread slices.

We devoured the burrata too quickly. I totally forgot to take a photo of it, but it was very nicely prepared. I highly recommend it.

GRIMALDI’S
Limelight Shops
656 6th Ave
New York, NY 10010

Commentary, Italian, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews, Union Square/Flatiron

Osteria del Principe

July 3, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

Tabelog hosted another great food event, this time at Osteria del Principe, an Italian cured meat-centric spot down by the Flatiron building.

The restaurant/store is the flagship location, and is run by Principe di San Daniele, a world class prosciutto manufacturer in Italy. So you know you’re getting top notch meats here when you eat.

Tabelog invited a bunch of us ass-kicking NYC food bloggers and reviewers to mix and mingle while tasting some really nice meats and wines. Here’s a menu of things we tasted:

As you can see from this sheet, we were asked to rate and judge the various sliced meats and wines:

First I created a nice cushioned base with a bite or two of freshly baked focaccia bread:

Here’s my second (or was it third?) plate of meat. I needed to try everything a few times to figure out my rankings.

I ultimately put the truffle ham in first place, followed by the 20-month prosciutto and mortadella right behind. Then the 16-month prosciutto, with the speck being at the bottom. Surprising! That truffle ham really had an amazing flavor that wasn’t overpowering. It was a cured meat.

Here are some shots of the two ham slicings. The ones with the brownish edge is the rosemary ham, and the other is the truffle ham:

This board has the speck on the left, and the mortadella on the right:

As you can see, there was a fancy old fashioned hand crank meat slicer set up with the 20-month prosciutto.

The slices were served in little paper cones:

I really couldn’t get enough of those. So good: soft, not too salty, and really nicely flavored. One of the gents from the Gotham Burger Social Club fashioned one meat cone into a lapel flower for his suit jacket. Brilliant!

So that was just the sliced meats that were laying around for our consumption. There was also a huge wheel of cheese that was being sliced/scraped and shoved into little brown paper bags for snacking. “Raspadura” Bella Lodi:

The tomato and burrata caprese salad was refreshing and light, with a great herb kick:

The prosciutto and melon was a perfect balance of sweet, savory and juicy all in one bite. These were amazing, not to mention gorgeously plated/presented:

This polenta was wrapped with speck and then baked until crispy. Absolutely delicious! I need to try making this at home now:

The grilled octopus skewers were a nice break from the pork overload. Wait.. is there even such a thing as pork overload? Anyway, they were warm and charred to a nice half-crisp texture, and accompanied by slices of grape tomato:

The slices of Piadina (bread portion) with porchetta inside were really awesome too. Especially when topped with some of the freshly scraped cheese. This meat item may have been the best of the day. I almost wish it was showcased differently, because I feel like it got missed by some of the other bloggers.

Lastly, the house-made tagliolino pasta was set in a light cream sauce and cooked with the 16-month prosciutto, then topped with a nice slice of it. Fucking amazing. The prosciutto was allowed to season the whole dish without any extras needed, other than some finely minced herbs and a little fresh pepper. So simple, yet so good.

All around awesome meal, and I was happy because it was extremely meat-centric. The wines were pretty good too, specifically the Ribolla Nera, which was a red wine that had robust flavor but was still lighter on the palette.

There were even some Italian cosmetic samples and creams handed out as parting gifts. I let my wife go for that. I was’t really interested.

OSTERIA DEL PRINCIPE
27 E. 23rd St.
New York, NY 10010

American, Burgers, Flash Deals, Full Points for Flavor, Italian, Midtown West, Non-Steakhouse Steaks, NY Strip, Other Cuts, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews, Restaurant Week

Le Cirque & Sirio Ristorante

July 2, 2015 Johnny Prime 5 Comments

NOTE: THIS PLACE IS NOW CLOSED

We scored a deal on a three course meal at this famed upscale NYC joint. I was happy to see that there weren’t any restrictions on the deal too: three courses, app, entree and dessert, with no limitations other than paying extra for the super expensive items.

First let me just say that the bread at this joint is really good quality. Those little disc looking things were delicious, and all items were warm and toasty.

We started with the grilled octopus salad and veal carpaccio. I think the winner here was the octo salad. It was a warm salad, but it had great flavor from the olive, potato and tomato mix.

The veal was a bit on the dry side. The anchovy paste sauce was reminiscent of a German style mustard of sorts, so this had an unexpected taste. Caperberries were great though.

For our entrees, we tried the mini burgers and the skirt steak. The skirt steak was probably the best preparation of skirt that I’ve had out at a restaurant. It was charred nicely on the outside, and cooked to a perfect juicy medium rare on the inside. It was sliced nicely on the bias and at a steep angle. Just expertly handled all around. This is a 9 or 10 on flavor.

It came with a pine nut chimichurri type sauce on top, and it sat on a bed of lentils and crispy potato logs. There was even a miniature wedge salad on the side, and some pea puree blobs to boot. Really great composed dish here. I highly recommend.

The mini burgers were a little bit over salted and grainy in texture. They were nicely presented, though, and the abundantly massive side of fries that came with the burgers was a really delicious and near perfect execution of the item.

For dessert, we did the “floating island,” which was creme anglaise with merengue and fruit. Very nice and light. This was my favorite of the two, because each bite was dynamic.

The chocolate soufflé was perfectly executed, uniform thoughout and rich with flavor. I think I just got bored about halfway though. It was very large. I think soufflé fans will really enjoy it.

UPDATE 12/10/16

So it turns out that Le Cirque sectioned off part of its space to create “Sirio Ristorante,” which is, I guess, a more affordable and more casual dining option. My wife and I picked up a flash deal which gave us each a three course meal for $42 total (before tax and tip).

Much of the menu remains the same as above. We started with octopus and baccala.

Both were good but the baccala needed more chips to round out the fish.

For our entrees, we went with salmon in a truffle sauce and spaghetti “frutti di mare.”

The salmon was the big winner here, as it was perfectly cooked and had a great black truffle flavor. The pasta was a bit bland, and the sauce didn’t deliver. Some pieces of seafood were overcooked, while others were undercooked.

For dessert, we went with the creme brûlée and Crepes Suzette.

The crepes were fun. They tasted like a boozed up creamsicle.

Ice cream on top for the win:

The creme brûlée was perfectly done, and I was smiling when I saw the recipe hiding underneath the deliciousness.

RESTAURANT WEEK UPDATE 8/4/17

My wife got us a comped meal for restaurant week due to her photo skills on Instagram.

We started with the endive salad, garganelli pasta primavera and tuna tartare (they brought an extra for us). All were really great, but I think the tartare was the best, followed by the pasta. The tartare had a really nice curry accent to it that popped.

For entrees we tried the branzino and steak. The branzino had a great crispy skin on it, and was nicely cooked.

The steak didn’t come sliced, but it was a small filet of strip loin with fries and a Bernaise sauce. Pretty decent. 7/10.

For dessert, we had the chocolate fondant and another creme brûlée. It was essentially chocolate ganache and chocolate cake covered with a chocolate shell.

LE CIRQUE & SIRIO RISTORANTE
151 E. 58th St.
New York, NY 10065

Johnny Prime

Monthly Archives: July 2015

NYY Steak

NYY Steak overall score: 85

Beefalafel Burger

What The Fuck Do You Need?

How The Fuck Do You Make It?

Parting Thoughts

Hummus 21

Torishin West

North River Lobster Company

The Germain Scotsman

Grimaldi’s

Osteria del Principe

Le Cirque & Sirio Ristorante

carnivore connoisseur

NYY Steak overall score: 85

SHARE THIS SHIT HERE:

What The Fuck Do You Need?

How The Fuck Do You Make It?

Parting Thoughts

SHARE THIS SHIT HERE:

SHARE THIS SHIT HERE:

SHARE THIS SHIT HERE:

SHARE THIS SHIT HERE:

SHARE THIS SHIT HERE:

SHARE THIS SHIT HERE:

SHARE THIS SHIT HERE:

SHARE THIS SHIT HERE:

carnivore connoisseur