Category Archives: Commentary

Lobel’s vs Eataly

October 3, 2013 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

A buddy of mine, Doug, and his chef friend, Dave, recently undertook a fantastic endeavor to pit two great meateries against one another in a home cooked steak-off challenge:

Lobel’s vs Eataly.

They took to searing up two two-pound steaks, one from each powerhouse NYC butcher. They spent about $80 at Lobel’s and $50 at Eataly, scoring two delicious looking, highly marbled, two-pound porterhouses.

Inspired by watching the PIORA cooking method of bathing the steaks in clarified butter, they eagerly followed suit.

But they elaborated and improved upon that brilliance by first searing in bacon fat. YES!

Then they finished the steaks in the oven for even cooking, and slathered with bernaise sauce.

On the side they whipped up some duck fat potatoes and creamed spinach. Solid choices. Lots of fat. Doug took to naming the dish “Porterhouse ala Cardiac Arrest.”

My buddy Doug, like me, is a meat aficionado. But he was wise to enlist the help of his chef friend Dave… You might recognize him as a winning contestant on one of Guy Fieri’s many cooking game shows… Namely, Ultimate Recipe Showdown. On the show, Dave blew away the judges with an awesome party dish he called the “Shrimp and Scallop Margherita,” which looked (and tasted) absolutely amazing. As it turns out, Doug helped conceptualize the dish. Doug and Dave actually have some loose plans for creating a cooking show involving lots of booze. Check out Dave’s impromptu, self-video’d intro to the steak-off below:

So who fucking won the steak-off? Doug and Dave both agreed that Lobel’s eked out the win (of course…) BUT at a cost of an extra $30 for what was only a small margin of victory. Lobel’s was better, they said, but Eataly had a meatier taste. You decide which is the better buy between the two…

Commentary, Japanese, Lower East Side/Chinatown, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews

Tabelog Event at SakaMai

September 20, 2013 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

I’ve been meaning to yap it up about Tabelog for a while now, but the timing is perfect now for this entry. Basically, in a crude and overly simplified description that cheapens what I mean to say, Tabelog is the Japanese version of Yelp – only a shitload better. In Japan, Tabelog is 5x larger than Yelp; they dominate the food review market. The company has recently endeavored to break into the US and global market, with their first state-side stop being NYC, of course. That’s where Johnny Prime comes in. The awesome folks at Tabelog recognized my manliness and contacted me (and other well known and influential food bloggers) to be a part of the process – to give input on the website, to act as the voice of the user, etc. And most fun for us foodies – they also asked us to be judges for their NYC restaurant awards. Of course I fucking jumped at the opportunity to voice my opinion on things; namely, their “best steakhouse” category… Which, sadly, went to Peter Luger… Yeah… BOO… HISS… I was a bit surprised too… Oh well. Clearly some of the people who voted on this category need to get out to some different steakhouses, or they need to thoroughly read my site. I guess this just means that my important work must go on. I have more to do… Thankfully, Tabelog provides another great format and outlet for my manliness to disseminate to the world abroad. So thank you Brock and Ken for taking me into the fold. I’m honored, humbled, and thrilled to be a part of this.

Anyway… After being introduced to the newly launched US website I found that I REALLY liked the format. Not only that, but Tabelog allows food and restaurant reviewers a hell of a lot more control over the content and overall look of their reviews. Tabelog was smart to make the review process personal, so that you can almost get to know the writers just as much as the restaurants. Reviewers on Tabelog have their own little corner of cyberspace to stand on their milk crate and shout out their unique message; it’s kinda like Facebook meets restaurant reviews in a way. Meanwhile, Yelp has a whole shitpile of obnoxious restrictions like no use of hyperlinks, no self promotion, no mention of your website anywhere in your reviews, image restriction this, content restriction that… To some extent I understand the concern, but it has gotten a bit ridiculous lately. Yelp also doesn’t allow for embedded images in the body of the review, and they also hide or block certain reviews based on some fucked up algorithm that they THINK works to weed out what they perceive as “biased” reviews from tainting the process. Good intentions, but the reality is that many times this “feature” actually HARMS small businesses; I’ve seen it happen with people that I know who run small shops. Even despite numerous efforts by these small businesses to contact Yelp to alert them of problems or attempt to rectify situations, Yelp ignores, or pulls out some pre-conceived, pro-forma, bullshit-laden excuse/rationale. Tabelog has none of these ridiculous issues. Whoever is running the Tabelog tech is a fucking wizard, and the layout, user interface, and intuitive organizational nature of the site simply blows away the competition. Granted it is still new here, and things are just starting to heat up for them in NYC, but MAN do they show promise… I’m really looking forward to their explosion into the US market. And it’ll be fun because I’ll be there for the wild ride. Exciting.

So now, literally, to the meat and potatoes… Last night Tabelog threw an event for their NYC judges at the incredible SakaMai restaurant; a real deal legit Japanese place on the lower east side. The Tabelog folks were cool enough to let me bring my wife as well, who, as you might already know, is The Cake Dealer and also an awesome food blogger herself. The food at SakaMai was off the hook – pretty much perfection. Check out the pics and captions below.

First is the menu. Pics of the dishes go clockwise from bottom left:

Here is the carrot puree with dashi gelee and summer truffle. At first I thought it was some kind of uni puree based on the color and bright, brine flavor. This was one of the most delicious items of the night. I think I sucked down three of these mutherfuckers.

Next is the meat: filet mignon tartare with uni, wasabi mascarpone, and poached egg. I had three of these too. Hands down one of the better tartares I’ve ever had. It was earthy, it had great texture, and the poached egg introduced just the right amount of fat back into the dish.

Now for the trout and caviar sushi. I only had one of these, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. It was delicate, but full of great flavor. Very clean, crisp and refreshing.

Lobster croquettes with lardo iberico and sansho peppers. I went back for seconds here. Just a great, soft yet powerful punch of velvety flavor inside that crispy fried outer shell. And sitting on a little puree of potato.

Now for more meat – this time a chicken + fois gras burger. Fucking delicious. I only had one, but I could have put away a dozen of these fuckers quick and easy – so quick it would rival my old drunken 3am White Castle runs. And I don’t care what you say: White Castle sliders rule. Just don’t save any in the fridge overnight or else the next day the entire appliance will smell like rotting trash.

MORE MEAT! Iberico pork on a bed of farro salad. My first bite was extremely chewy but I think that’s because I got one of the fatty/gristled ends. My next two servings were perfect. When I first saw the color of the slices I thought I was dealing with flank, skirt or strip steak: a nice pinkish center. But when you delve into high quality pork, the “other white meat” can be served a little less cooked. This was some yummy shit:

Dessert: strawberry compote with mascarpone and a truffled balsamic drizzle. Fuck the strawberry though. It was great but I could drink that fucking cream all day. I’d rub that shit all over my face and gobble it down like Jenna Jameson if I had to.

Now onward to the booze! SakaMai offered us up a delicious selection of sakes, served up by some serious sake experts – so serious that they are called samurai. Serious. No joke. But seriousness aside, the one samurai we spoke to was hilarious, reciting jokes about the history of certain drinks.

We tasted a nice array of some very different sakes and booze. Below are two pics: one of our favorite sake, which was very clean, crisp and pure… Then a spicy plum alcohol which was accompanied by a funny story told by the sake samurai.

And last but not least, the talent and brains behind it all. First Tabelog: this is a shot of Brock (left) and Ken (right) telling us about the company’s plans and how we fit into the equation.

Next is SakaMai owner Natalie (left) and Chef Akiyama (right), who told us a lot about their restaurant and fielded a wide array of questions from us food nerds.

SAKAMAI
157 Ludlow St.
New York, NY 10002

Commentary

Top Chef Premiere Event

July 25, 2013 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

My wife was able to score some VIP tickets to the Top Chef Masters Season 5 Premiere Tasting Event.

With heavy hitters like David Burke and Bryan Voltaggio on the roster for this season’s competition, we were both really psyched to try their food. We were a bit disappointed to learn that Voltaggio would not be in attendance (he just had a baby), but we still had the pleasure of eating some of the best bites of food in the biz.

The way it worked: we were tasting the dishes that were presented in the elimination challenge at the end of the first episode.

I’ll start with what was by far our favorite dish of the evening, which has ended up being the feature of this article. It was masterfully created by Jennifer Jasinski, Executive Chef and Owner of Denver’s Rioja, Bistro Vendome and Euclid Hall Bar & Kitchen, and her sous chef Jorel Pierce. Check out the pics below and let your mouth water like a hungry, rabid dog.

Jennifer and Jorel: best of the night! — Jennifer and Jorel:
best of the night!

They prepared an orange and ginger caramelized skirt steak with roasted mushroom-fregola salad and preserved lemon yogurt.

The citrus really popped when you bit into the meat, giving it a bright contrast to the usual warm and earthy flavors you associate with good skirt steak. The caramelization gave the meat a nice crunchy and savory element, almost like a course sea salt, which contributed great textural dynamics.

I was curious, though, as to how the meat was butchered, because each piece of steak was sliced to a perfect little round circle, which is not normal when you think of skirt steak (usually sliced in strips on the bias). When I had the opportunity to speak to Jennifer and her sous chef Jorel about how the dish was prepared, they explained that several skirt steaks were “meat-glued” into a terrine form and shaped to look like sausages, then the terrines were cooked to a perfect medium rare before slicing into rounds (I think with a sous vide bath). I was blown away. I had seen this terrine technique used before, but never with skirt steak, and never had I seen it executed so perfectly and elegantly.

terrines of skirt steak
note they are set up to still be sliced on the bias

Jorel plating the slices of skirt steak terrines. Look at those juicy pink medallions! — Jorel plating the slices of skirt steak.
Look at those juicy pink medallions!

After watching the first episode, I realized that she sincerely took the judges criticisms to heart, because their critique was that her original dish was too clunky with large unshapely pieces of steak taking away from the dining experience. So by forming the steaks into terrines and slicing the newly-formed meat into perfect bite-sized rounds (and still cut on the bias), she and Jorel erased that problem completely. I guess that’s what happens when an expert chef has the luxury of using a kitchen and a sous chef. In the first episode she had to cook outdoors with a very basic set of tools, all by her lonesome, so making a terrine or using a sous vide machine was out of the realm of realistic possibilities.

Bravo Jennifer and Jorel, for impressing this carnivore connoisseur with a really amazing dish!

Another highlight of the evening: a Vietnamese style pork dish whipped up by chef Sang Yoon. This was the only other dish that I kept eating more and more of. It was sweet and pungent with the familiar, fresh, herby and spicy flavors commonly associated with Vietnamese cuisine (chili, cilantro, fish sauce, etc). Plus it was nice and juicy as well.

And, finally, here’s a little photo dump for all you bastards out there who want to see more:

Chef Sang Yoon and sme judges — Chef Sang Yoon and some judges

The Cake Dealer and David Burke — The Cake Dealer (my lovely wife) and Chef David Burke

sous chef Vinson Petrillo plating the fish

Saluggi's Pizza - grabbed a slice of my favorite pizza in NYC to cap off the evening — Saluggi’s Pizza
I grabbed a slice of my favorite pizza in NYC to cap off the evening

American, Commentary, Long Island, Non-Steakhouse Steaks, Other Cuts, Restaurant Reviews

Where The Buffalo Roam

June 17, 2013 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

I recently became aware that Long Island has a thriving buffalo ranch out in Riverhead called North Quarter Farm. When I started digging around online about it, I came across a few articles written over the last 10 or 15 years that championed the effort. See the NY Times Article and the Long Island Press Article. I learned that the farm owners also have a steakhouse-type restaurant called Tweeds, run by the husband of the bison ranch team, where they proudly feature many items that derive from bison (buffalo mozz, buffalo hanger steak, buffalo rib eye, buffalo reuben sandwich, etc). There’s even a second restaurant, right next door and run by the wife in the farm team, called Dark Horse. This place is more of a casual bar type of place, with a modern decor and music selection, featuring items like buffalo pate and buffalo pastrami sandwiches. I inquired about whether they use the actual buffalo from the farm in the restaurants. The answer was no (with the exception of the “ground steak” used to make the bison burgers at Dark Horse). Unfortunately their bison must go out to PA to be USDA certified before they can be slaughtered and cooked up into delicious food. But I thought it was cool that they put as much buffalo meat onto the menu as possible to pay tribute to their ranch business. They even offer buffalo meat cuts (steaks of all kinds, pate, chopped meat, etc) to buy and take home for your own cooking adventures.

So my wife and I decided to take a drive out there to try the food and to see the farm. We settled on eating at Tweeds, since we liked the interior better and it was a little more quiet. Since we ordered from the lunch menu I couldn’t realistically give the place a full review here, but I thought it was worth mentioning in a commentary with some photos. The place was beautiful inside, rich with local history and an old timey atmosphere. Apparently the giant bison head on the wall beside the bar is the actual last bison that Teddy Roosevelt ever hunted. Pretty cool. The service was excellent; our waitress Janine was really nice, helpful, and sweet. They had a great selection of German beers on tap and in bottles, and the food was fucking delicious. We started with a bison skewer and a couple of beers. The meat was juicy and tender; cooked just right. For my entree I had a bison hanger steak. It too was perfectly cooked, juicy, and delicious. It came with a peppercorn cognac cream sauce that I could drink by the gallon. So good. My wife had the corned bison Reuben sandwich. Just like a regular corned beef Reuben, but with corned bison. It was incredible, and served with some big sliced pickles. Both of our meals came with potato wedges, deep fried with the skin still on for a really delicious, crispy, homemade pile of steak fries. Needless to say we will definitely be going back here for a proper dinner, where I can sink my teeth into a buffalo rib eye (it wasn’t on the lunch menu).

Scroll down for pics of our food, and for pics of the buffalo at the farm. The bison were right along the fence for a bit, so I got a few close up shots before they walked away. We even had the pleasure of seeing some of the bison “wallowing,” or rolling themselves in a shallow dirt spot, covering themselves in dust.

FOOD PICS:

BUFFALO RANCH PICS:

TWEED’S
17 E. Main St.
Riverhead, NY 11901

Commentary, Education

Restaurant Review Website

March 26, 2013 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

Hey Meat Minions:

A good buddy of mine has endeavored to start a really cool and much needed Long Island based restaurant review website. It’s fully searchable by cuisine, neighborhood, and type of place (is it good for bar action, date night, etc.). Check it out, and dig the fuck in!

http://www.liblogger.com/index.php

Commentary

Anniversary Post

April 24, 2012 Johnny Prime

Dear Loyal Meat Eaters & Readers:

It has been one year since I started this blog. Many cuts of beef have come and gone. Many delicious bites have passed my lips and, ultimately, exited my ass and entered into the NY sewer system. On to greener pastures. There have been new additions to my personal favorites list (Del Frisco’s, George Martin’s and Strip House). Many strong and steady NYC standards have held their ground as well (Delmonico’s and Keens). There were also some disappointments (Cattleman’s and J&R), but I must say that, after having been to 32 steakhouses in 52 weeks, there were very few all out FLOPS. In general, NYC is a great place for steak, and Long Island ain’t so bad either.

This post is meant to serve as a general thank you to all the waiters, waitresses, bussers, hosts, and chefs that have served me through phase one of this lifelong journey. It is a difficult lifestyle, but it is a glorious and noble one. I have a new-found appreciation for the food service industry, a deeper understanding of the restaurant business, and a much better skill set when it comes to cooking, especially cooking steak. I was good before, but now I am pretty awesome. So thank you for that!

In addition to more steakhouse reviews, phase two of this meatventure will likely involve some trips to Brazilian churrascaria joints (which have an unfair advantage when it comes to variety of cuts), some out-of-area reviews possibly contributed by various minions and other trusted meat eaters, and even some cooking tips. The economy is rough, and it has hit the meat industry hard, causing steak prices to rise about 15% over the course of the year. This will deter people from going out for expensive dinners, and make a bad experience feel much worse; if you pay $55 for a steak and it comes back messed up, that is pretty horrible. As such, some people will stay home and try to cook their own ribeyes and porterhouses. I will help make those meals the best they can be with some instructional posts and tutorials.

Stay tuned. Keep reading. Keep eating. And keep shitting it out and getting hungry again.

Yours in Beef,

Johnny Prime, CC

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carnivore connoisseur