Tag Archives: central park south

Midtown West, Rib Eye, Steakhouse Reviews

Bourbon Steak

May 29, 2024 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

Bourbon Steak overall score: 91

Bourbon Steak is a brand new spot that just took over the restaurant and bar space at the luxurious Essex House/JW Marriott hotel on Central Park South. They opened two weeks ago. Check out the review below!

Flavor: 8

We had the 20oz bone in rib eye.

While it was a bit thin, it packed a punch for flavor. Good crust outside and lots of juiciness inside.

Not dry aged, but still a good one.

Choice of Cuts & Quality Available: 9

There’s a great selection of cuts here, but only one was dry aged (the 40oz porterhouse). I took a point for that. I was impressed to see domestic, Aussie and Japanese wagyu on the menu as well. Great stuff!

Portion Size & Plating: 8

The sizes are all pretty standard for NYC steakhouses, and the plating was a mix of simple/elegant, and modern.

Price: 8

Everything is so expensive now, so this category is going through a big renovation, but here is the bill:

Bar: 10

The bar here is big and gorgeous. They offer a lot of really unique signature cocktails as well as standards, and there’s a huge wine list.

Specials and Other Meats: 8

This place offers veal and duck as far as other meat items go. We tried the veal, which came out very late (we were already done with our steak). It was good/tasty, but a bit overcooked (we asked for medium rare, it was closer to well done).

Apps, Sides & Desserts: 10

We started with a custom seafood tower with items we selected from the seafood cart:

We went with clams, oysters, abalone, prawns and uni/sea urchin.

Everything was incredible! Our next app was the soft shell crab, which is stuffed with crab cake. Very unique and delicious! They said there were two here, but that was not the case… I don’t know where they learned to count…

For sides, we went with the very unique creamed spinach souffle, which ate similar to a popover.

We also did some mushrooms.

For dessert, another unique item, the banana tart with macadamia nut ice cream. Really nice!

Seafood Selection: 10

Based on the apps we had, I would definitely suspect the entree fish items are great as well. The tuna foie-poivre sounds insanely good.

Service: 10

Service was great despite the restaurant opening just two weeks ago. We had two staff members attending to us. One seemed seasoned, and the other seemed new (he was good – very attentive). The only hiccup we had was the veal coming out much later than we expected. We thought maybe they forgot it, so we told them to cancel it if they hadn’t fired it. But then brought it out anyway as we were finishing our steak, and they took it off the bill for us in the end. Totally unnecessary! We made sure to tip well for that.

Also worth noting here is that the table bread is scrapped in favor of a trio of French fries! Knowing this was the case, we skipped a potato side altogether. These were amazing.

They also give you some chocolate bars with your check. These toffee and caramel milk chocolate bars blow those Peter Luger chocolate coins out of the water.

The staff was also great at wishing me a happy birthday. They had a card for me, signed by the staff, and there was even a little miniature ice cream cone that came out with dessert (forgot to take a pic).

Ambiance: 10

This place is absolutely stunning inside. Really beautiful. I can’t wait to go back and try more stuff.

BOURBON STEAK
160 Central Park South
New York, NY 10019

American, Burgers, Flash Deals, Midtown West, Non-Steakhouse Steaks, Other Cuts, Restaurant Reviews

Beautique

September 16, 2016 Johnny Prime 1 Comment

NOTE: THIS PLACE IS CLOSED

As usual my bargain hunter wife found a nice Gilt City deal for a three course meal for two here at Beautique.

It included two drinks per person, which is unusually generous.

Apparently the place turns into a sugar daddy lounge after like 9pm, where young girls try to score rich older men (according to reviews I’ve seen online). We went at 6pm, so there wasn’t too much of that going on at that time.

I wasn’t expecting much given that lounge atmosphere. As it turned out, the food was pretty great. So let’s get down to business.

I started with a red an yellow beet salad. Beets are all the rage these days. They were a little more stiff here than at other places, and cut into rustic chunks rather than thinner slices. But they retained a more natural flavor as a result. They were dressed with pistachio nuts, yogurt, lemon and rosemary.

My wife ordered the Beautique salad, which was radicchio, pear, gorgonzola and walnuts. This was a bit bitter for my taste, but the ingredients were all fresh, crisp and high quality.

For my entree, I had the hanger steak. This was super tender and cooked to a perfect medium rare. I was expecting some chew to this but every bite was extremely soft and had a good char on the outside. This would be 10 out of 10 if it weren’t for a slight lack of salt on that crust. But otherwise this was incredible.

It was served with a peppery gravy and on top of a bed of sweet corn and mushrooms.

My wife went with the branzino. This was plated beautifully.

As you can see, the skin was crisp and well seasoned. The meat was cooked just right, and it was served on top of some potatoes, tomatoes, baby leeks and artichoke in a rosemary sauce.

For dessert, we had cheesecake with oreo ice cream. The ice cream was awesome. It was super flavorful and almost fudgey, but without being overly sweet. The cheesecake had a nice thick, but not heavy, consistency, however the cracker crust was too hard to get through with a fork. It may have been a peanut brittle type of thing, because it didn’t taste like graham cracker.

Overall this was a great deal, especial given the fact that my wife paid much less than the asking price due to coupons and other shit like that. If it is still available by time you read this, I recommend trying it out.

UPDATE 9/16/16

My wife and I went back with another Gilt City deal to try a few different menu items and see how well this joint has been holding up. I think we went with better choices the first time around, because this time wasn’t as good as we remembered.

We started with the duck wonton tacos. The sauce on them tasted like McDonald’s BBQ sauce. Nothing wrong with that except that it seemed to clash with the asian toppings. Also there was a strange flavor that reminded me of the scent of wet dog.

The other app was tune tartare. This was a bit lacking in flavor and a bit small and uninspired in the presentation.

For my entree, I went with the burger. The menu said there were brandied onions on it, but I didn’t find any. The tomato was cut way too thick, but the bacon was nice and crisp. Also the cheese didn’t taste like gruyere either, as mentioned on the menu. It was cooked perfectly, however, the the rosemary fries were awesome.

My wife had the roasted chicken. This, too, was a bit small. Luckily it wasn’t dry and the skin on it was deliciously crisp and well seasoned.

Beautique really shined with the desserts, which took forever to come out because the place was starting to get jammed. First was cheesecake with oreo ice cream (same as last time) with strawberry and mango sauce.

Next was chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream and caramel popcorn. I usually dislike lava cake, but this was really soft like a brownie, and the fudgey melty stuff inside was tasty.

BEAUTIQUE
8 W. 58th St.
New York, NY 10019

Italian, Midtown West, Non-Steakhouse Steaks, Other Cuts, Restaurant Reviews

Marea

January 30, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

After seven months of living on top of this restaurant and pining for a bite of the cuisine within, my wife and I finally got a chance to check it out.

I had heard insane things about this joint: “Best restaurant in the city;” “Best Italian food in the country,” and so on. The place has been awarded two Michelin stars, and with a four-course price fix menu at $99/pp, it was a no-brainer that we’d hit this place up.

First off, excellent fucking martini – one of the best in town actually, garnished with three perfectly soft Castelvetrano olives.

And amazing table breads like fresh olive or black pepper focaccia:

First was an amuse of smoked fish on a sesame cracker. This was a nice bite:

My wife started with six oysters, one of each available variety; two from Massachusetts, two from Washington, one from Rhode Island, and one from Virginia. She preferred the two from Massachusetts. They were served with a balsamic mignonette that cut the fishy flavor of the west coast jammies, and the other sauce was a bright citrus motherfucker that I liked a lot.

I had the grilled octopus with smoked potatoes. This was really nice and soft, with a great char flavor, though I HAVE had better grilled octopus around town.

For the pasta dishes, we tried the red wine braised octopus fusilli with bone marrow. This was a little heavy, but full of flavor. The octopus wasn’t up to snuff in this dish, which was depressing, but the pasta itself was perfect.

The winner of the pasta dishes was this gramigna (small, extra long, curly, elbow style pasta) with wild boar sausage and savoy cabbage. It was lighter than you might expect, perfectly dressed, perfectly seasoned, and absolutely fucking delicious – especially with the addition of some bread crumb crunchy shits on top. I could eat vats of this, and THIS ALONE is why I can get behind their two star Michelin rating. Amazing plate of pasta.

For the entrees we had duck breast and steak. Let’s start with them duck titties.

The duck was served with a crispy polenta, which was nice but lacked a little flavor. The greens were overly tart, as if overdone to cook the bitterness out of the broccoli rabe (which was a little overcooked anyhow). The duck itself was nicely cooked, but after digging into my steak for a bit I really couldn’t take the iron-rich, blood-riddled, gamey flavor of the duck for too long. It was good and everything, nice crispy skin, etc. I just couldn’t go there, because I was busy with this:

It was cooked nicely to medium rare.

This is a sirloin, 50-day dry-aged, served with braised romaine lettuce and a fucking wonderfully fatty bone marrow panzanella bread. I sometimes dislike the grain and texture of this cut, but I really didn’t have any other choice for beef. I’ve had better strip or sirloin preparations elsewhere, and I suspect this cut was not from the “NY-Strip” side of a proper porterhouse. Perhaps it was from the T-bone area, which is less desirable (hence the 50-day dry-aging, to give it a boost). In any case, I ate all of it, so there’s that.

Dessert was nice, but there was some unexpected tartness in my wife’s panna cotta (from the green apple, not the roasted pineapple sorbet). Despite the tartness, this was still the better of the two desserts that we sampled, in my opinion.

I had the lemon tort, with which I totally expected the tartness. It had a cheesecake texture, and I loved how the ginger, citrus, and cinnamon gelato cut the lemon flavor.

When the bill came, there was a small amuse of candies to try. A passion fruit marshmallow, a tart white chocolate sort of thingy (which I didn’t like), and a white grape granulated sugar gelatin (also very tart). Actually, I wasn’t really a fan of any of these, now that I think about it.

In sum, we will definitely be coming back to try some more stuff, particularly the fish items, which, maybe, we should have gone with on this first visit. We’ll definitely sample more pasta dishes as well. Some of those things must really shine, and I suppose that’s why they received two Michelin stars. Otherwise I’m sort of baffled.

UPDATE: 6/25/16

My wife and I cashed in some OpenTable rewards points to the tune of $70, which we used toward dinner here. This time we stuck strictly to pasta and fish, with the exception of dessert.

First, we had this lovely crab meat paccheri pasta, which was the big winner for the night. The sauce was a rich butter and tomato concoction that I went wild for.

This tagliolini with clams and calamari was nicely executed as well, with a texture and shape that was similar to ramen. Other than that it was a classic riff on a white clam sauce dish. Very nice.

For the fish courses, we had halibut and monk fish, both roasted. The halibut was served on a bet of sautéed spinach and topped with shaved water chestnuts and an olive. The fish itself was just slightly overcooked, but I didn’t mind because the spinach and water chestnuts added that moisture back in.

The monk fish was similar in texture to catfish. Nice and hearty, with a snap that almost resembles lobster meat. This was served with beans, trumpet mushrooms and hazelnuts. While I liked this a lot, my wife wasn’t a huge fan of the flavors. We both liked the halibut better in any case.

For dessert we had blueberry doughnuts, or bombolini. These were absolutely delicious. They were stuffed with blueberry filling, and dusted with blueberry sugar. They came with lemon curd and honey for dipping. Only downside is that this order, which came with five “munchkin” or “doughnut hole” sized doughnuts, was a pricey $14.