Butcher Bar recently opened a location in Manhattan’s lower east side. I went with a small group of Instagram buddies to check it out. Here’s what we had:
Burnt Ends Sandwich: Top notch quality burnt ends, which contain the fat cap of the rib as well as the brisket.
50/50 Sandwich (half pulled pork, half brisket): Really great sandwich here. Throw on some house made sauces and you’re all set. Topped with slaw, onions and pickles.
Brisket Philly Cheese: Probably my favorite of the three sandwiches we tried. I would maybe have liked a bit more cheese but I really loved the combination.
Wings: Brined so that the flavors penetrate deep to the bone. Nice smoke flavor in a great homemade Buffalo style sauce.
Shrimp & Grits: Incredible. A must order when you come here. Nice heat from the smoked habanero on this too.
Chili Mac & Cheese: You’ll get a sense that you’re eating a bowl of chili when you dig into this. Very unique and tasty.
Rib Eye: 6/10. Good cook temp, good flavor all around, but this isn’t steakhouse level beef. It will satisfy when you’re craving, though.
Moonshine Creamsicle: You’d never even know there was booze in this – that’s how seamlessly mixed the moonshine is with the house made cream. Perfect for the summer.
My wife and I decided to finally give this joint a shot after a manager at a different restaurant mentioned the porcini dry-aged rib eye to us when we were discussing steaks. That particular cut wasn’t available, unfortunately, since we came here for lunch (dinner menu only). But I was still able to get a good beef-filled meal into my belly nonetheless. Check it out:
I started with the bresaola. I always jump at this when I see it, because it’s not very common on menus anymore. No one wants to cure filet mignon – they want to cook it. But the cured preparation is so amazing!
It was sliced nice and thin, and was so incredibly tender.
Seriously. You need to come here and order this. It’s topped with lightly dressed celery leaf and endive.
My wife had the unlimited pasta trio. Of these, the veal bolognese was the best (spirals), then the tomato and basil (chitarra spaghetti), followed by the chard-stuffed ravioli.
I had a nicely charred hanger steak on a bed of polenta with fried leeks – drizzled upon with a really nice balsamic.
This baby was perfectly cooked and was so tender that you could pull the meat apart rather than cut it with a knife.
An easy 9/10 for flavor. Great portion size and price point too, at around $30 for the composed plate.
See that purple balsamic?
I definitely recommend giving this place a shot, and I’ll be back for that porcini aged rib eye ASAP.
Le Monde is a French bistro up on 112th and Broadway. They serve up classic French fare in a nice environment.
I went in to try their steak frites, mussels and burger. Here’s how it went down:
This is a shell steak, which is usually used to describe strip loin, though not always. Based on the shape, tenderness and quality of the cut, I’d say this was indeed a strip loin, so I’ll include it with my rankings of strip steaks for category purposes.
The meat quality is pretty good. Not much fat or gristle. Good texture and tenderness, and it even comes with marrow.
No dry aging, but I wasn’t expecting much for a $30 plate with fries and sauces. 7/10.
My wife had the mussels. These were pretty good, and the broth is great for eating with the table bread or simply a spoon.
I also tried the house burger, which is topped with roasted tomato, gruyere, onion and lettuce. Not pictured are the fries and Bernaise sauce that come with it for just $15.50.
Not too bad at all! Though it was a bit too tall for regular “by-hand” eating. used a fork and knife, otherwise it would have been all over my beard.
We also tried their house made foie gras terrine.
You can tell this was home made due to the chunks of organ meat within the terrine. It wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped, but my wife liked it very much and she’s more of a traditionalist on this stuff.
For dessert, the chef made us some special custard-filled crepes that were topped with an orange mango glaze.
Overall this was a good meal. I recommend this joint if you’re in the area and looking for a classic but casual French joint.
My wife took me to The Grill for a birthday dinner. I had no idea this place existed, but apparently it’s the former location of the Four Seasons.
excellent table breads and cocktails
Famed Torrisi restaurateurs opened this joint and stuck to an old fashioned theme with things like a wheeled cart for prime rib and a “meat press” for squeezing the juices out of various bits of fowl in order to create a nice sauce reduction for their pasta app.
The crab cake exhibits some of that classic technique as well, with thin sliced scalloped potatoes forming a crust on top of the $36 lump crab cake appetizer.
A nice refreshing endive and apple salad cut the fat of our steak entree perfectly.
But for $220, this 50-day, dry-aged Creekstone Farms 40oz steak for two was way overpriced.
It really should have been half that price, but I will say that, despite the wallet raping, this was a pretty good steak. It had a great seared crust, and was cooked to a nice medium rare throughout. 8/10.
Dessert was a fun throwback as well, with this fruit cake style rum raisin ice cream.
Everything here is delicious, but at over $500 all-in for this meal (we had four drinks total), you really need to be ready for a gorging.
UPDATE 1/5/18
I came back in with some friends to try more shit. The steak tartare was incredible. I didn’t think I’d be into it because it contains anchovies, but I really loved it.
The foie gras was incredibly creamy, smooth and delicious. You could order a bunch of these and eat them for your entree if you’re daring enough. The crazy thing is that a friend I was with was unimpressed with this, since he said the foie in his home country of Israel is way better. I can’t even fathom that. This was so good.
We shared the honey mustard duck entree as an appetizer as well. This was easily the best duck I’ve ever had. The mustard has a spicy kick to it, but the honey rounds it out. The skin is perfectly crisp, and the breast was incredibly tender.
One of the guys I was with had the bone-in strip steak. He ordered it medium, but it still had great flavor and texture. The crust was similar to the porterhouse I had on my first visit. At a much more friendly price point of $74, I think this comes in with the same score at 8/10, even though I did enjoy the porterhouse better.
The prime rib, on the other hand, might just be the best piece of meat I’ve ever eaten in my life. This is a 10/10. It gets sliced from a wheeled cart table side, and then topped with jus and freshly shaved horseradish.
It is served with spicy mustard and horseradish cream sauce. Insane. Well worth the $62, and it wasn’t as small as I thought it would be.
Also tried an end cut – not necessary since the flavor penetrates all the way into the center even on the middle cut.
They even give you the bone with all the attached meat still there. This is the best part of the meal.
I little something we looked at but did not touch – 112 day dry aged wagyu rib eye. Not much of a cap on it, and it didn’t have a very dry-aged smell to it. We passed. Especially since it was $650.
The lamb and ham are both excellent . There are no mediocre dishes.
Squab was nice but overpriced for the size (to be expected here).
On the side we had a broccoli pot pie thing, as well as some fries that were similar to JG Melon (but way better).
For dessert we shared a slice of grasshopper ice cream cake, which is chocolate and mint. Despite not being a big fan of mint ice cream, or the combination of mint and chocolate, I did like it.
Also worth mentioning – I really love the bar here.
Afterwards we were chatting with the manager and he ended up giving us a quick tour of the kitchen. It was immaculate back there.
UPDATE
The burger and prime rib sandwich are both excellent!
Bevy is the new restaurant that took the place of The Back Room at One57. My wife took me here for an early birthday dinner. I was excited to hit this joint, because they have rib eye fat cap steak on the menu (aka spinalis dorsi), as well as a bison rib eye. We tried both.
We started with the rib eye cap steak as a shared appetizer. The portion size is 8oz, so this was perfect to share as an app.
This was perfectly cooked, super tender and amazingly flavorful. At $48 it’s a bit pricey, but totally worth it given the quality. 10/10.
Both the rib eye cap and the bison rib eye hail from Fossil Farms. I’ve encountered these guys at food shows in the past, and the quality is superb. I hope to work with them in the future and feature some more of their proteins here on the website. Especially the exotics.
Anyway, we ate the rib eye cap steak with some crispy lemon oyster mushrooms, which they sent to us on the house!
This is a reprise of a dish that used to be on the Back Room menu, which I really liked. It’s just as good as I remember. It’s also really damn beautiful.
Several menu items were carried over, actually. I was glad to see that many of the good ones remained.
But now for the big guns. The 40oz, 28-day dry-aged bison rib eye. It’s actually two chops on the bone.
It comes with a vinaigrette dressed frisee salad and asparagus. But the plating is gorgeous. We actually fanned it out a little so you can more easily see the perfectly pink interior.
Bison is slightly gamy, but unless you’re looking for it, you probably wouldn’t notice a flavor difference between bison and beef.
It’s typically more lean than beef, and sometimes has a more iron-metallic flavor profile than beef. Very good. 8/10.
We ate this baby with sides of paprika dusted steak fries and trumpet mushrooms. Both were great. I was impressed with the crisp on the fries. So good! I usually dislike the massive quarter-of-a-potato style steak fries, but I’d get these again and again, every time I eat here.
The trumpets were good, but I did enjoy the oyster mushrooms more. These were served with minted labneh, which added a nice fresh pop of flavor.
Dessert was great as well. We ordered one, but they gave us two. Great service! In fact, Amanda was a wonderful waitress. She knew her stuff and had great recommendations.
First was this apple pie with a sugar cookie crust. So awesome! That’s vanilla ice cream up front, covered with a nice caramel sauce.
The other dessert was cheesecake with lemon pudding and espresso ice cream. Really tough to choose a best between these two.
I definitely recommend this place. If you happen to carry the “Founders Card,” you get 20% off when you use it to pay.
BEVY
153 W. 57th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10019
Madame Vo is a Vietnamese joint on 10th Street near 2nd Avenue.
My wife and I have been itching to go, since we have been on a quest to find good Vietnamese food in NYC since the early 2000’s. I think we finally found it here, so let me give you the rundown of our meal.
First, Autumn Rolls. These are soft rice wrappers filled with jicama, egg, sausage and shrimp. The brilliant thing about these is that they’re sauced with a brush of hoisin prior to wrapping. Just a little hit of sri racha and you’re all set. They’re delicious.
Next up, the “Madame Pho” soup. This is served with short rib.
Awesome deep, rich beefy flavor. No sauces needed whatsoever. The broth is on point. And the meats are all high quality. It has a variety of cuts like flank, brisket, meatballs, eye round and marrow. But that short rib! So good. And the noodles were cooked perfectly.
The Bun Bo Hue, however, was even better. It’s very hard to find good pho in NYC, but it’s even harder to find good bun bo hue.
So many times, bun bo hue noodles are overcooked and fall apart when you try to pick them up with chopsticks. Here, they are nicely cooked and hold up to pulling and grabbing. The broth has a great pungent richness, bright with herbs and lime, and really deeply satisfying. Just the right amount of heat, too.
Last, the rib eye Bo Luc Lac, or “Shaking/Shaken Beef.”
I’ve often seen this made with lean cuts like sirloin and sometimes filet. This is the first time I’ve seen it made with rib eye, and also the first time I’ve seen it served with an egg.
The result is a nice sticky sweet molasses flavor, with a great sear from the sizzling cast iron skillet. The fat rendered out nicely, making for a delicious sauce sludge through which to drag your rice. I really enjoyed this dish, and it’s a perfect example of what a good chef can do with a choice grade cut of beef when he – in this case, Jimmy – knows how to coax out great flavor. 7/10.
For dessert, we shared a nice avocado shake. While pricey at $8 (avocados are expensive these days), its filling and well made. Not too sweet, and super creamy.
Antique Bar & Bakery is a new joint in Hoboken. I know what you’re thinking: Fuck Jersey! But for real, everything at this place is absolutely amazing. And I can’t in good conscience fuck with Jerz: I’m from Long Island, and everyone knows that LI, NJ and Staten Island are all retarded cousins from the same demented family.
Anyway, when you walk in, you feel like you’ve entered someone’s home. It has an old school feel to it. There are a few nice nooks for seating, and a great bar with really nicely fashioned cocktails.
In the back room, you’re basically IN the kitchen, which is really fun to experience. The skylight overhead illuminates the room with a nice, pleasing natural light.
The back wall boasts an insane coal oven that cranks up to over 1000 degrees, and then to the left of that, there’s a cooler area (about 500 degrees).
On the side wall is all your normal kitchen gadgetry like a gas oven, burners, sinks, expediting station, etc.
Okay but enough about that – let me get to the food. Chef Paul Gerard is doing amazing things here. Everything has a sense of familiarity, but also a sense of “newness.” He’s accumulated aspects of Soul Food, Cajun/Creole, Italian, American and French cuisines and balled them up into a delicious, enveloping and immersive experience: especially when you sit in the back near the kitchen (a must-do if you’re anything like me).
We started with a snack of blistered shishito peppers and pickled watermelon. The peppers go into the hot coal oven and finish up really quickly – like within a minute. It’s pretty neat because you can feel the capsaicin in the air once they get cranking. If you sit close like we did, you may sneeze or cough a bit. That’s how IN the kitchen you are. So cool. It makes you feel like you’re part of the staff.
Raw Fennel Salad with Burnt Orange Marmalade: All the burnt items are done right in their crazy oven. They add a great natural bitterness to the food (and cocktails), which cuts the fat and sweetness of any complimentary ingredients. This salad was awesome: crisp, fresh and satisfying.
Hot Oil Shrimp: Incredible dish. Really nice heat from the peppers, and the shrimp retain a lot of shell flavor from being blasted in the oven. Perfectly cooked.
Rice Balls: I mean, these guys even managed to make rice balls interesting, new and fun. The outside is really crisp and the inside is soft and gooey from the provolone fondue. You need to try them.
Fresh Mozzarella: This shit is made to order, right there at the prep counter. You can watch the guy stretch and pull until its ready. It’s topped with some cracked pepper and a few cherry tomatoes. Eat this quickly while it’s still warm, otherwise it can firm up a bit and lose its softness.
Burger: The only slight I will make about this entire meal is that the burger was a bit overcooked for our liking. But the flavor was off the hinges, even though our burger was medium-well. It gets some dry aged fat (carved right off the steaks), some chuck and some flank in the grind – made in house, obviously.
It’s topped with shredded cheese, spicy fries and pickled chili peppers. Despite the shape of the burger being spherical, it really was formed well: Loosely packed and not overworked; hollowed out top bun so it isn’t too tall and unwieldy. This burger has real potential to be one of the best around. I need to come back and try it again, and make sure the temp is pink through the center. Don’t shy away from ordering it just because mine was a bit over.
Whole Octopus: This is a special menu item, which you can order as a half or whole portion. The octopus is treated in a similar way as the shrimp, but it is tossed in an olive puttanesca sauce that really blew me away. It was cooked very nicely too: snappy to the tooth, but not chewy. Great char flavor from the oven.
Whole Fish: This was black bass, and it was really damn delicious. When you cook seafood hot and fast, you retain all that great juiciness in the flesh, so that nothing ever dries out. That’s what happens with the fish here. You can’t go wrong.
Whole Chicken: Absurdly delicious, and I’m not even really a chicken man. This is plenty big to feed the table.
Dirty Rib Eye: I was amazed. I watched as Chef Paul went through the entire process, and I even got some good video.
First, he broke down a 28-day dry aged rack of ribs that the restaurant got from DeBragga Meats. Antique Bar & Bakery has its own shelf in the DeBragga dry-aging room.
The steaks are allowed to come up to room temperature so that they cook better.
Once they’re ready, they’re coated with coarse salt, slapped on a cast iron skillet, and then popped into that ripping-hot coal oven for about five minutes. This hell-fire licks every square inch of surface area on the meat, giving it a great outer crust.
The steak is then pulled out of the crazy oven, placed onto a bed of herbs, hit with some drawn butter, and then finished in the other oven until the center comes up to the proper temperature.
Finally, it rests for a while before being sliced and plated – sometimes up to 20 minutes. While resting, it gets brushed with more herbs, so you really get that great herb flavor with each bite.
Alright here’s the video. I made you suffer through reading all of that first before linking it, because I’m a dick.
The herbs really make it. In fact, they have herbs drying and hanging all over the back room. It was pretty cool, and reminded me of my dad’s garage, which always seems to be decorated with dangling peppers and herbs from his garden.
Needless to say, this steak is an easy 10/10 for flavor. It’s really unbelievable. I suggest you get out there immediately to try it.
Hard Herb Hanger: Perfectly cooked, great crisp on the outside, and wonderful flavors from the herb roasting process in the ovens. This is a great option for those who aren’t willing to go big with the rib eye but still want to eat beef. Just $23? Awesome. 8/10. We actually had this come out alongside our desserts and we still devoured it instantly. Haha!
All entrees can be consumed with a variety of available sauces. We tried them all, but I really liked the herb puree and puttanesca the best. As for the steaks? No sauce needed. There’s so much flavor on those babies already.
Okay let me address some of the fantastic sides we tried.
Charred Kale with Pickled Chilis: Really nice acidic punch. This is similar to something like collared greens in Soul Food cuisine, only with a new twist.
Blackened Beets with Goat Cheese and Walnuts: Awesome. This is my new favorite beet dish. And if you’re one of those weird bastards that doesn’t eat meat, then this is the way to go for you. Very satisfying, satiating and fulfilling.
Fava Beans: Holy shit! Traditional French styling here with butter and shallots, and finished with mint, but so great. I kept going back for more of these green delights. Probably because they’re served with Spring Brook Farm Reading Raclette, a raw cow’s milk cheese.
Fingerling Potatoes: As I said above, Chef Paul is making things in a new way here. These babies are roasted with dried, aged, shaved Bottarga fish flakes (similar to what you might see being used to make dashi broth, but more specific). It might not sound that appetizing, but it adds such an amazing earthy flavor to the potatoes. Trust me. And with a topping of cheese and that awesome crisp from the hot oven, this side is not to be skipped.
Now on to the desserts. We tried a few, and all of them were excellent, just like every-fucking-thing else in this meal.
Lady Ashton’s Dirty Chocolate Cake: Served family style in a large cast iron skillet, this is one of the best chocolate cakes I’ve ever eaten. I’m not huge on chocolate either, but I loved this.
Frozen Cannoli: This is essentially a cannoli in sundae form. Incredibly tasty, and equally beautiful.
Dandy’s Decadent Cookie (with sweet milk ice cream): This baby is baked to order, and it is a massive, soft, delicious cookie with ice cream on top. This is my kind of dessert.
Burnt Lemon & Marshmallow Pie: I have a weakness for this type of stuff. It was a great twist on lemon meringue pie.
TCB Sundae: This is based on the Elvis sandwich. Burnt banana bread, caramelized banana, peanut butter ice cream, candied slab bacon, milk chocolate covered potato chips, and all of it draped in gold! Just like Elvis would want it baby! Chef Paul rocks harder than Elvis, if you ask me.
Holy shit. Is that everything? I’m dying to go back here. Get your ass out to Hoboken ASAP. You will thank me.
UPDATE!!!
This place just keeps getting better. Not only was the Dry Rib Eye even more heart-stoping than last time, but this time there was a new burger being offered. Check it out:
That’s right – he takes a whole 40oz rib eye and grinds it up right there for you. This makes four burgers and is off off menu, so make sure you call and ask for it ahead of time with a group.
That’s a dry-aged rib eye with aged cheddar cheese sauce, fresh herbs, garlic puree, chilies, pickles and a house made bread. The fries are cooked in beef tallow. Awesome. This is my new favorite steakhouse style burger. Nothing comes close.
We also tried some pasta dishes:
Excellent hot oil shrimp:
Pork cheek parm! Beef cheek is also available sometimes as a special, and with an egg on top for the brunch special.
And these ribs, called “Buried Bones” – there bad boys are wrapped in banana leaves with spices and buried under hot embers from that monster oven. Slow cooked for 8hrs they are insanely tender. The best ribs I’ve ever had.
And just for shits and gigs, lets look at that steak progression again:
ANTIQUE BAR & BAKERY
122 Willow Ave
Hoboken, NJ 07030
Alice’s Arbor is a true farm-to-table concept in Brooklyn by Dimitri Vlahakis (Motorino, La Gamelle, Esperanto). They use products sourced from 13 local purveyors, and fresh pastries and bread from sister restaurant La Gamelle.
The menu features breakfast all day, like this hanger steak and eggs that I had for brunch:
That’s a great meal for just $15. The steak was a perfect medium rare with a nice crust on the outside. The black bean sauce was unique and delicious. 8/10. Eggs were exactly as ordered, and the paprika-spiced potatoes carried a nice comfortable heat.
They also offer signature sandwiches like the Banh Mi Croissant (braised chicken or pork with daikon, carrot, cucumber and jalapeño). We went with pork:
This reminded me a lot of the Thai dish called larb as posed to a classic banh mi. It was savory, pungent and flavorful like larb, only in sandwich format. The croissant was an interesting choice for the sandwich. It ties back to the French colonial and Vietnamese roots of banh mi, but there’s just something about a classic baguette that holds up really well to the juiciness of these kinds of sandwiches. The flavors were great, but I ended up using my fork and knife to take this baby down. That said, I’d still eat this again for sure.
There’s also an exceptional selection of dinner entrees from the wood-burning oven, like Sullivan County Farms Trout filet over green beans and roasted fingerling potatoes in a lemon brown butter sauce, topped with almonds and capers.
Other favorites include the unique, customizable Mac & Cheese with spiral pasta, cheddar and goat cheese bechamel topped with toasted breadcrumbs (with optional add-ins of pulled pork, truffle oil or jalapeños); or the popular brunch items like crab hash with poached egg, lemon Hollandaise and greens.
Daily happy hour specials from 4p.m.-7p.m. include $5 for draft beer, $6 draft wine, $2 off well drinks and $1 oysters. Awesome deal!
The interior evokes cabin-esque ski lodge decor, perhaps from the northwest: An upcycled vintage vibe with aged brick walls, repurposed wood paneling and driftwood branch light fixtures. Very cool.
I definitely recommend hitting this joint.
ALICE’S ARBOR
549 Classon Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11216
I’d been to Felix a few times for drinks in the nice weather, but I never actually sat down to eat until yesterday. I was invited in to take photos of the food and post some stuff to Instagram, so my wife and I went for dinner and tried some good French classics.
First, the foie gras terrine.
This was incredibly smooth and creamy. It was served with toasted bread and some caramelized shallots. Highly recommended, but I actually liked eating it better with the table bread than the toast.
I had to get the beef carpaccio, just because, you know, beef.
It was beautifully plated with arugula and shaved parmesan. Also really tasty, and also recommended.
My wife went with the cassoulet.
This baby was packed with a massive assortment of meats: chicken, duck, pork and two types of sausage.
Very nice.
I went with what was described on the menu as both a cote de boeuf and an aged 40oz prime rib for two. However, what came out was more like a traditional steak as opposed to roasted prime rib.
It also felt like it was a little smaller than 40oz. Perhaps maybe 32oz.
I ordered somewhere between rare and medium rare. Some parts were spot on, and others were over. But the flavor was pretty good at a solid 7/10. It also came with a nice vegetable medley of string beans, carrots, mushrooms and baby Brussels sprouts. The fries were really great too.
The three sauces that came with it were Bernaise, peppercorn and blue cheese (and a small dish of dijon for the fries). My favorites were the peppercorn and the blue cheese, but I was going into the peppercorn more because the blue cheese sauce was strong.
For dessert we tried the apple tart (tarte tatin).
This had a great texture on the outer edges of the tarte, with a soft and tasty apple inside. A nice pairing with some vanilla ice cream.
TESSA is a modern Mediterranean tavern on the upper west side that blends southern French and Italian cuisines. Their opening in April 2014 was the culmination of a years-long journey by first-time restaurateur, Larry Bellone, and long-time restaurateur, Will Tracy. The joint is named after Larry’s daughter. Will has been involved in the restaurant business for over 30 years.
Executive Chef Eric Cope has been at the helm since the beginning. Before his position here, Eric worked for the Rancho Bernardo Inn in his hometown of San Diego. The Pastry Chef is Yarisis Jacobo, and the Sous Chef is Ray Martinez.
The industrial and rustic interior design is absolutely stunning, and you can see the immaculate kitchen through the massive windows downstairs if you use the spotless-clean bathrooms.
The bar is really beautiful too, and the cocktail list is inventive. I tried three drinks (Kilt & Dagger, 349 and UWS Manhattan), and they were all delicious.
But let me get to the food, because that’s what you really care about the most, right? We started with three apps.
Salmon Tartare
This was nice and fresh. It had a middle-eastern flavor profile, especially when eaten with the soft naan-like scallion pita bread with which it was served. The pomegranate, cucumber, pearl onion, black sesame and saffron aioli really worked well together.
Octopus
This a la plancha style octopus was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. It was really nice! It’s served with marble potato salad, fried capers, black garlic puree and aged balsamic. This was my favorite of the apps.
Mussels
These “drunken” Hollander mussels were beautiful. The broth boasts tequila, tomato, garlic, kafir lime leaf, dried guajillo and cilantro. Super aromatic and tasty.
Next up we tried a duo of appetizer-sized pasta dishes (half of what you’d get for a full order). I must say, the app sizes were generous!
Duck Spaghetti
This was really good, and was offered as a special for the night. Duck sausage and duck confit lent a great savory component to the dish, complementing the fresh greenery of peas and fried basil.
Lobster Rye Trumpet
This beautiful rye pasta dish was topped with a generous amount of lobster for an appetizer portion. This was the better pasta of the two, for me. It was tossed with chanterelle mushrooms, celery root, chorizo, buerre blanc and chives.
We shared two entrees.
Long Island Duck
First, and actually my favorite between the two, was the duck. The breast was rendered perfectly, leaving just a layer of crisp skin above the tender, expertly cooked meat. This was served with a spiced honey sauce, a few crispy duck confit ravioli, baby carrots, cipollini onions and tarragon. The sweet and savory contrast to this dish was so amazing. I’d go back for this in a heart beat.
Cote de Boeuf
This beauty is pre-sliced and 32oz on the bone. Take a closer look at the meat though.
A little closer…
There you go! It’s a 45 day dry-aged DeBragga rib eye that carries a great earthy and funky flavor. The crust on this thing was excellent, and perfectly seasoned. It comes with roasted garlic, crispy fried shallots and roasted bone marrow. 8/10.
This was a great steak, but I was really torn between ordering this or the other two beef options that were on the menu: a hanger steak frites and a 45-day dry aged strip steak. Next time.
We also tried the fries and shaved Brussels on the side. Both were great, but I only snapped the fries.
In the background, you can also see some grilled romaine lettuce which came with the steak (along with a nice reduction-style steak sauce, and the sun dried tomato chimichurri that usually accompanies the steak frites).
To finish off the meal, we tried two desserts.
Bomboloni
I’m usually not a fan of ordering doughnuts at a restaurant. I always end up liking doughnuts from specialty shops better. But these ones were incredible. It was tough to choose a favorite between the two styles (vanilla cream vs glazed). Both were incredible, and came with a hazelnut anglaise dipping sauce.
Coconut Cheesecake Sundae
Yes, you read that right. It’s coconut sorbet with malted vanilla sauce, diced mango and macadamia crunch. Really inventive, refreshing and exotic.
Is that everything? I think it is. But I want more. I highly recommend this place. The quality of the food and attentiveness of service is top notch. You won’t be disappointed.
