If you looked up “overpriced meat joint” in the dictionary, you’d find a photo of Tom Colicchio rolling naked in a giant pile of Craftsteak Benjamins. There would be a secondary entry with a frowny-faced picture of me with my pockets turned inside-out and a big shrug that basically said, “what the fuck!?” Of course nothing says classy dining like a big, modern space practically on the West Side Highway. The soaring ceiling and enormous space (complete with open raw bar) gives some majesty to the joint, but somehow makes it feel a little more like a banquet hall than a fancy place you might want to drop sixty bucks on a hunk of medium-rare cow flesh. The evening started off relatively promising for me with a nice lobster bisque, but Ms. Hipster had a frise salad that was all frise and no salad. Nothing like paying fifteen clams for a plate of anemic lettuce. I went for what turned out to be the cheapest cut of the meat on the menu (although it’s barely a cut of meat at all): the beef short rib. Normally a tasty bit of pillowy niceness, this oddball tureen of limp meat was more fat than beef, and brought back awful memories of my pre-stomach flu short rib drool-fest at Cookshop. I’m sad to say that this may officially be my last foray into the short rib arena. My dining partner ordered the sixty-four-dollar t-bone. Dude, I said sixty-four dollars! That’s like ten rides on the Cyclone in Coney Island, or, um like two steaks at any other good steak house. And the thing was puny and included exactly zero sides. Despite the preposterous prices, there were some weird Euro couples hanging out with their kids as if they supped like this on a nightly basis. I suppose there really are folks out there who can drop three hundred and something in cold hard cash each and every night with the rugrats in tow and not even blink, but these are the same people who put dog’s heads on stakes and molest the help, and just have their peers and parents call them “spirited.” Even the desert (three sorbets of varying intensity) was practically inedible. I know we chose to come to this place, but it seems almost criminal the way the congenial host of Top Chef took us for our hard-earned meat money. [MF]
85 10th Ave.
212/400-6699