Tag Archives: potatoes

Top 5 Potato Sides at NYC Steakhouses

October 31, 2017 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

A little break from steak
to give you my take
on the best joints that make
taters: fried, mashed or baked.

Actually I’m going to nix mashed. You see, my mom makes the ultimate mashed potatoes. Insanely creamy and smooth, buttery, and riddled with melted mozzarella. Nothing I’ve ever had in the mashed potato realm even comes remotely close to that shit.

But I do have five favorite potato dishes from steak joints to share with you. These aren’t in any particular order, so don’t go reading into shit.

Boucherie’s French Fries

These fucking things are simply perfect. They’re hands down the best French fries I’ve ever had. There’s some sort of crispy and mildly spicy batter on the outside that gives them an extra crunch, while retaining a soft and smooth inside. Amazing.

Le Rivage’s Potatoes Au Gratin

Okay this isn’t a steak joint, but since Chef Paul is basically extended family to Pat LaFrieda, the meats you get here are immaculate (especially the French Onion Soup Burger). As such this is an honorary steak joint in my eyes. The potatoes? Insanity. I’ve had a lot of great gratins in my day, but this shit is next level. Go get it.

Apologies for the buffoonery in this photo. I didn’t get a shot of the taters myself, but my friend Mike from Gotham Burger Social Club managed to capture them in the foreground of this photo a little bit before we ruined it.

WAIT! Found one. Thanks Chef Paul!

Michael Jordan’s Hasselback Potatoes

This baby is not advertised on the regular menu, so you have to ask for it. It’s pre-sliced, fried, baked, covered with melted cheese, topped with sour cream, bacon, chives… I mean… It’s like a roid-raging unicorn baked potato streaking through the quad while on acid and cocaine at the same time. It’s fucking awesome.

Keen’s Prime Rib Hash Browns

This is one of the biggest portions of potato and meat you can get. The meat is their amazing prime rib, chopped up and worked into a hash brown that will leave you craving more every day of your life. They’re only offered on the brunch or bar menu, but if you ask nicely the waitresses/waiters will hook you up in the main dining room.

Pro Tip: order a few of these to take home with you and throw in the freezer. They heat up nice for future indulging.

“Rocco’s Fries”

I’m a sucker for a good potato chip. Sometimes I will even hand cut potatoes to about 3mm thick and roast in the oven with herbs, spices and oils to make a thick chip at home, but very rarely do I see anything similar at a restaurant. Rocco’s comes pretty damn close to it, and I really have to sing their praises for being so bold as to put something as simple and delicious as potato chips on their menu. These are their “Rocco’s Fries:”

I even used them as a vehicle for eating their creamless creamed spinach, which was excellent (top five creamed spinach post coming soon, no doubt).

That about does it. Starch it up, you fuckers! And while you’re at it, you should add Bistrot Leo’s mille feuille style fried potatoes to your list, as well as the pommes dauphines from Ai Fiori that come with their delicious White Label burger. Insanity!

Recipes

The Steakhouse Sandwich

March 19, 2017 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

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.

Commentary, Press Reviews, Product Reviews

BallerBoil

September 6, 2016 Johnny Prime 0 Comments

This post will serve as a triple hit review of the Fresh Direct food delivery service, Tipsy’s boozy ice cream and Saveur Select wines.

My wife and some of our food friends were planning to do a Labor Day seafood boil on the rooftop of our building. It turns out, a few of the ladies managed to get the entire thing sponsored by the three companies above, provided that we post a few pics on Instagram.

Fresh Direct gave us a $500 credit to use towards their incredibly high quality seafood. We broke this out into two main items: a huge seafood boil, and a colossal chilled seafood tower.

There was so much fucking food! Lobster, king crab legs, blue claw crabs, steamer clams, little neck clams, three varieties of oysters, jumbo shrimp, scallops, multi-colored potatoes, kielbasa and corn. My wife and I were always big fans of Fresh Direct but this seafood really hammers home the word FRESH in their name. The lobsters were delivered LIVE! And everything tasted incredible, which is obviously the most important factor.

Saveur provided us with four bottles of crisp Gewürztraminer wine. This white German variety of wine was just the kind of refreshment we needed with this meal. We even poured some over fruit to make a white sangria.

Tipsy hooked us up with six different pints of ice cream for dessert.

The flavors were incredible: spiked hazelnut coffee, raspberry limoncello sorbet, cake batter vodka martini, dark chocolate whisky salted caramel, mango margarita sorbet and vanilla bean bourbon.

We even scooped some into a few glasses of champagne for good measure. Why not?

For more awesome pics, check THIS out.

Commentary

The Steak Cake

February 15, 2014 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

No: this is not a real steak. Yes: this is cake.

I have the pleasure of being married to a baker. She goes by the name “The Cake Dealer.” When I first started this blog, she was pretty well into her baking hobby. She was asking me what kind of cake I wanted and I suggested a cake that looks like a steak. It’s only fitting, right?

Well this is what she came up with. A perfectly grilled medium rare porterhouse with a side of mashed potatoes and string beans. Unbelievable.

The mashed potatoes are made from mashed up vanilla cake mixed with vanilla frosting, and topped with a slightly melted-looking yellow square of fondant as the butter:

The green beans are shaped from green fondant:

When I said medium rare inside I wasn’t fucking kidding. It’s strawberry cake, nice and pink all the way through, but it still maintains nice grill marks on top with a healthy sear (brown fondant with lines made from food coloring):

The details are where this piece really shines though. That t-bone is absolute perfection. It looks like it is REAL and glistening. Made from fondant as well. And on top there is black and white sugar to look like kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper.

Not only did it LOOK amazing, but it TASTED amazing too. The fondant was made from marshmallows, so it didn’t have that grainy, chalky texture that is always disgustingly sweet. The cake was soft, light and moist. Man, I fucking love my wife.

To see more of her amazing creations, like her cake that looks like a burger, fries, and a shake (below), go to HER WEBSITE.