The Meatball Shop just opened up a new location on 9th Avenue at 53rd Street. The space is pretty cool, and it even has a bar attached called “Sidepiece,” where they feature all of their great cocktails and more food items.
My favorite cocktail there is a tequila and mezcal based drink called “the girl with the nice pear.”
My buddy brought me with him to shoot some photos for Instagram influencing purposes, so we were able to try a bunch of stuff. We started with the buffalo chicken meatballs, which were really great.
Next, this truly one of a kind tomato soup that is served with grilled cheese balls. This is only available for a limited time and only at the Hell’s Kitchen location, so get on it while you can.
This dish was awesome: pork meatballs in pesto on a bed of spaghetti. I really liked the texture and flavors here.
Meatball Shop also does something called “smash” sandwiches. Basically they flatten a pair of meatballs, cover them with melted cheese and dress with sauce before putting it all on a nice sandwich bun. This one here is made with chicken meatballs and topped with their classic tomato sauce and melted mozzarella. We added an egg on top because we rule.
Stinky Cheese Week is actually a thing! To celebrate, L’Express and Cafe D’Alsace (and all restaurants within the ownership’s group) are offering a special menu of selections that feature various stinky cheeses.
Okay so I said something about free dessert up above… Well, here is the explanation: I was invited in to try some food in order to let my readers know all about Stinky Cheese Week. If you go into one of their restaurants and mention the words “say cheese” and my blog or instagram account, they will comp you with a free dessert! The participating restaurants are Cafe D’Alsace, Le Monde, L’Express, Nice Matin, French Roast (both uptown and downtown) and Marseille.
Below are my reviews for both L’Express and Cafe D’Alsace.
L’EXPRESS
249 Park Ave S
New York, NY 10003
My wife and I shared the raclette cheese and salumi platter as an app. This was pretty great. The cheese was stretchy and warm, and the meats were good quality.
I had the rib eye steak frites for my entree. The fries were nice and crisp, and the steak was cooked to a perfect medium rare.
While the steak was thinly cut, this isn’t a bad deal for just $29. The cap was tender and there wasn’t much gristle on it. The roquefort cheese and onion sauce really kicked this thing up a notch too.
My wife had the stinky cheese plate for her entree. Some of these fuckers were really funky!
And for dessert, a stinky cheese panna cotta that had a jam topping. This would have been perfect on a bagel, as the panna cotta was thick and had a texture and flavor similar to cream cheese.
CAFE D’ALSACE
1695 2nd Ave
New York, NY 10128
I started with a glass of mint tea. This was a really nice way to start a cheese-centric meal.
A buddy and I shared the frisee salad with bacon and egg. Very nicely done, and I was impressed with the addition of pork rinds.
For my entree, I went with the hanger steak frites, of course.
It was topped with a melted morbier cheese, caramelized onions and a red wine sauce.
I liked this steak more than the rib eye from L’Express. It had a great texture and thickness to it, and it was cooked perfectly with a nice crust on the outside as well.
The fries were great! Very crisp and nicely seasoned.
My buddy ordered the duck l’orange. It was pretty good but the steak was definitely the winning dish for the entrees.
For dessert, we shared an apple tart with vanilla ice cream. Not only was this beautiful, but it was absolutely delicious. I highly recommend ordering this.
I hate wasting food, but I’m also not a fan of leftover steak. That’s why I will always try to finish every scrap of meat on my plate. But sometimes you just can’t pack it all in, and you have to bring some of that meat home. If you’re like me, you don’t like to re-heat quality meat. Something just changes and it’s not the same.
I’ve had some sliced cold in a salad before, but I also hate salads. I’ve also made a lot of beef stocks and broths with bones and meat scraps. But making the same thing can get tiring, and that’s a long process as well. So I came up with this recipe to satisfy my urges.
What you need:
Leftover steak
Leftover creamed spinach
Leftover potato element
Cheddar and/or American cheese
Sub sandwich bread
Okay so here’s how it goes down. First, slice up your leftover steak scraps as thin as you can get them.
Inevitably, you’re going to have some congealed beef fat mixed with butter in the bottom of your take-out container.
Don’t throw that away!
Grab your bread.
Slice it open and spread that buttery beef fat onto each side of your bread, like so, and then heat up a pan.
Toast this baby as if it were grilled cheese.
Then start layering your components. Creamed spinach:
Potatoes and cheese:
Those were crispy potatoes mixed with onions, so that was a bonus ingredient for me!
Meat:
More cheese, because why not?
Close it up and wrap it in tinfoil.
Bake this fucker for a quick stint at like 450. It doesn’t need too long in there. Once the cheese is completely melted down it should be good to go. Also, you don’t want to overheat the meat since it should already be a nice medium rare from the steakhouse.
Done.
Unwrap, slice and eat. Just try to do a better job slicing it than I did.
Ethyls Alcohol & Food might be my new favorite place to hang out. Not only is the bar an awesome throwback to NYC’s dirty 70s, but the food and drink quality is top notch and really reasonably priced. You might think you’ve taken a time machine back to the 70s.
Check out the decor.
The place doubles as a gogo dancing bar late on certain nights, and there’s even a small stage for live music. They even host movie and bingo nights!
It’s the safer, cleaner, sometimes family friendly girly bar of the dirty 70s, I guess.
But the food. Man. Let’s get into it.
The fidollaburger. Five bucks.
The double – my favorite.
The stack, a double topped with an egg, guac, lettuce, tomato, onions and bacon.
The Coventry sub, a burger log topped with port wine cheese, watercress, bacon, sautéed onions and gogo sauce – all on a pretzel bread sub roll.
Wings.
Mexican cheese stuffed mole meatballs.
Disco curds.
Fried chicken sandwich.
Banana Spiders – shredded, fried plantains.
Fish tacos.
Everything is delicious and nicely cooked. I’m dead serious you can’t choose poorly from these items.
The same goes for the cocktails. We tried a bunch of them, including a negroni on tap. The newest addition to the cocktail menu is replacing the negroni though, and it’s called the Gent. Bartender Julia mixes up amazing cocktails here, like the spicy tequila and blood orange concoction called “Hot Blooded.”
Get up there and try some of the delicious shit. The new French Connection burger is one of the best I’ve ever had.
ETHYL’S ALCOHOL & FOOD
1629 2nd Ave
New York, NY 10028
My wife and I grabbed a Groupon for this place that scored us a bottle of wine, a shared app, two entrees and two desserts.
When we stepped into this joint it felt like we had stepped into a wine bar meat shop in Rome. The warm wood decor was inviting and cozy, and starting our meal with some red wine and salumi just brought us right back to our Italy vacation.
There were no offensive limits to what we could choose from the wine and app selections, by the way. And the meats were high quality and consisted of salami, prosciutto, mortadella and brasaeola. This was my favorite item of the night.
Our entrees were both good, but my wife’s lamb shank was the winner between the two. We were limited in our selection to items that were listed for $24 or less.
Interesting though – instead of a bed of orzo, as is traditional, this featured as bed of roughly mashed potatoes. They were tasty.
I had a pork chop. It was pretty big at 16oz, T-bone style.
It was nicely cooked and tender.
For dessert we did a chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, and panna cotta. The panna cotta was great. Super smooth, light and flavorful.
Overall this is a good deal and I recommend picking up the Groupon if they’re still offering it.
A food buddy of mine set up a press/influencer meal at this midtown east Indian joint. I have somewhat of a deficit when it comes to Indian restaurant reviews on this site, so I was excited to try this place. I had heard good things from friends, and they were recently awarded a Michelin star.
We started with a bunch of apps.
The chicken tikka was my favorite of these babies. The meat was super tender inside and crispy/charred on the outside.
Chaat.
Paneer cheese.
Of course the amazing naan.
Their garlic naan was awesome, and went very nicely with the coconut shrimp curry.
In fact all of the curries I tried were pretty great here.
I also tried a goat biryani, which was probably the best biryani I’ve ever had. It was spicy! And the goat was super tender (just be aware of bones throughout).
My favorite dish of the night, however, was this halibut dish.
The fish was cooked really nicely, had great texture and a crisp outside, while remaining flakey and tender inside.
So beautiful too.
The lamb chops were incredibly tender as well. I really liked the spice profile on them. Aggressive, but really earthy. I didn’t get a shot of the inside, but they were cooked to a perfect medium rare to rare temperature. And like I said, so freaking tender. I actually cut them with a butter knife.
Dessert was interesting. My favorite was their rendition of cheesecake. Super creamy!
And I also liked these yogurt cream “cannoli”-like shells:
But everything else I tried was beautiful and tasty.
It seems like everyone in the country knows about Omaha Steaks delivery service. Over the years, I’ve had many boxes delivered to me, but I just realized that I never actually took the time to review them. Recently my wife and I were given a box of various goodies, and the steaks within were tenderloins.
I did a simple preparation, which is becoming my go-to method of cooking steaks at home: sous vide and then a blow torch finish. You can see the recipe post HERE.
I think the issue with Omaha Steaks is that they spread themselves too thin by offering a bunch of other items aside from beef/steaks. They do chicken, pork, meatballs, baked potatoes, french fries, etc. As a result, maybe the steaks suffer?
My filets, while tasty, were a bit on the thin side. I enjoyed the ones from Nebraska Famous Steaks better, mainly because they were thicker and actually felt like a real steakhouse filet mignon. That said, the Omaha jams were still great in the way I prepared them.
Flame is a pretty large hibachi joint on the upper west side. I was recently invited in for a hibachi meal with a bunch of lunatic foodies.
They put on a great show here, I must say.
We started off with a pair of shrimp.
Then some fried rice and veggies.
And then the steaks came out!
Very simply prepared, and nicely cooked.
As far as hibachi goes, this is one of the best I’ve experienced. But that’s not where the action stops. They also serve a variety of nice dumplings, sushi and other seafood.
Everything was great; especially that miso octopus tentacle. I highly recommend this joint. There’s a lot of space, really beautiful tables and decor, and even some really nice mixed cocktails.
Nebraska Famous Steaks sends frozen steaks out to customers who purchase meat from them. Most people are familiar with this concept by way of other companies like Omaha Steaks. I had not heard of Nebraska Famous Steaks until they reached out to me. Their ask was simple: Would I like for them to send me some meat to try out at home and post some pictures, write a review, etc? My answer was fast: Yup.
Here’s what they sent me:
I was blown away. I wasn’t expecting so much!
I have to say, their filet mignon destroys Omaha Steaks. The filets I recently cooked up from Omaha were thin, while these were nice and thick. Quality was similar, however, at good choice.
The Nebraska Famous Steaks rib eyes had some really nice marbling throughout the muscle tissue, and a nice sized spinalis cap. I was impressed! And also excited to eat them.
I did my usual quick and easy cooking method for steaks at home: sous vide followed by blow torch. Here’s a video of the whole process, from unboxing through to plating.
And I took a shitload of photos, of course. I simply seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic, then seared, and then added some flake salt. We also ate this with some wasabi as well. Nice touch!
The Rib Eye is the most ultimate of steaks, period. It is an awesome cut of beef.
Etymology: The etymology on this is pretty self-explanatory. The “rib” part of the name is because this cut of meat is connected to a rib bone. The “eye” part of the name is a reference to the circular, more centrally located portion of the cut that is more uniform than the outer portions of the cut. You will likely see the Rib Eye steak, or rib chop, called by many names.
For example, the Cowboy Rib Eye is a bone-in version of the cut:
There’s also the Tomahawk Rib Eye, which is so named for its resemblance to a Tomahawk-style hatchet. When butchered, a long “handle” of rib is cut clean to expose the bone (it is “Frenched,” as they say), and the steak meat is left at the end of the handle to form the hatchet blade:
Here’s a shot of my buddy; he’s about to get clobbered with a Tomahawk Rib Eye by Chef Josh Capon at Bowery Meat Company:
There’s also the Delmonico cut, otherwise known as a Scotch Filet. Applying what you’ve learned here, you can probably guess that this cut is boneless (filet means “boneless” in French). Delmonico’s claims this cut as their own because they named a house special boneless cut Rib Eye steak after their restaurant, way back in the early 1800’s when they first opened.
Anatomy: The rib section of beef spans from ribs six through twelve, and, obviously, hails from the rib section of the animal.
Rib Eye steaks are mainly composed of the Longissimus dorsi muscle (the “eye” portion of the steak) and the Spinalis dorsi muscle.
The more anterior your cut, the more Spinalis you’ll find in the steak. The Spinalis is the coveted cap of meat that wraps around the fatter end of the steak and usually has much more marbling than the rest of the Longissimus eye, or interior of the steak. That “fat cap” is also sometimes butchered away from the remaining eye.
Highly skilled butchers know how to remove it from its position across an entire standing rib roast section of ribs, so as to keep it all together as one giant cut. But then that ruins the rib chop, in my opinion, since you’re taking away the best part. Some steakhouses have taken to tying several Spinalis cuts together in a spiral formation to create an all-fat-cap steak. Bowery Meat Company has one such cut, which they call the Bowery Steak:
STK also offers one on special from time to time:
The Spinalis has a more intense marbling, and, thus, much more flavor and tenderness. If you are so bold, the next time you order a Rib Eye at a steakhouse, ask for an anterior “chuck side” cut that has more of this fantastic Spinalis muscle.
Preparation: There are a ton of ways to prepare a rib steak. The most comon forms are searing in a pan, grilling, or broiling. Another common method of preparing this kind of meat is roasting. A “standing rib roast” is a section of Rib Eye steaks that has not yet been portioned into individual steaks.
When this rack of ribs is roasted slow and low to a pink medium rare, the end product is called Prime Rib.
It then gets sliced out into portions for individual consumption. This is a mammoth cut that we got from Burger & Barrel:
I know what you’re wondering, and the answer is Yes: Prime Rib and Rib Eye steak are the same exact thing. They are just prepared differently, using different cooking methods.
Cheaper cuts of rib steaks are actually the most common type of beef found in Philly Cheesesteaks as well. The meat is cut super thin and then cooked on a flat top with cheese, onions and other toppings, then shoved into long sandwich bread (incase you’re an asshole who has no fucking clue was a cheesesteak is).
Side Bar: is a Philly Cheesesteak better than a Cheeseburger? I think so… Man… Now I’m hungry for both…
Flavor: This steak has a high fat content, and that makes it very important to have a quality cut of beef, or an aged cut of beef. In high quality and aged cuts, this fat will render out or melt away much easier during the cooking process. This will impart a tremendous amount of flavor into the steak, and it will leave the remaining flesh with a very tender and soft texture. Don’t be afraid of the fat. Fat is not the same as gristle. Fat is good. Fat is your friend. Any good butcher will get the gristle off and leave the good fat behind. And when that good fat is REALLY good, it’s like having a delicious beef jelly with each bite of steak.
As discussed above, the Rib Eye is really like having two steaks in one (The small Spinalis or fat cap, and the larger Longissimus eye). The Spinalis is soft, tender, has lots of fat flavor and sometimes develops a crisp during cooking. The eye is more dense, but still well marbled so that it retains intense flavor. The eye is more uniform than the Spinalis. So: two steaks in one, kind of like the Porterhouse. Plus, there’s a nice, meaty beef spare rib to gnaw on at the end, if you order a bone-in chop.
Since there is generally more fat and marbling in this cut across its entirety, you will get better flavors than with the tenderloin or Strip, in my opinion. Clearly, high fat content is not for everyone. If you want to avoid fats in your diet, then go with the tenderloin. I actually really enjoy the flavor of fat. Fat, now, is sometimes referred to as the sixth flavor sensation. There were always four: (1) savory, (2) sweet, (3) bitter and (4) sour. “Umami” claims to be the fifth, and is meant to encompass the earthy, funky, fermented flavor sensations that you experience with mushrooms, truffles, aged beef and blue cheese. I just dislike the word “umami,” so I use “earthy” instead. The sixth is “fat,” apparently, as decreed by various food people who get paid to sit around and do these things. I’m not sure how it works, but I seem to be able to recognize a distinct sensation on my tastebuds, along with a buttery flavor and slippery feel, whenever I eat shit like pork bone ramen or a Rib Eye steak. Maybe there’s something to it?
Anyway, I hope this was an informative and educational post for you meat minions out there. Knowing this shit, I think, is very important.
