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“BLT Prime”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	New American	Flatiron	Break the Bank	Off the Charts

a big white bowl filled with fresh baby spinach leaves, crumbled bits of Maytag blue cheese, sliced button mushrooms, and hunks of nicely crisped bacon in a basic vinaigrette that let the contrasting flavors of the salad’s ingredients take center stage. The Roasted Beets with Fresh Goat Cheese ($11) were also quite more exciting that I had anticipated. The beets are shaved into thin rounds, then paired up and filled with a layer of chevre, like little beet and cheese sandwiches, drizzled with a bright vinaigrette with a side of fluffy microgreens. A modern Tuna Tartare ($14) is also terrific. The glistening hand-cut tartar is shaped like a Rubic’s cube, rested on a bed of creamy diced avocado, and then lowered onto a pool of lip-licking soy-citrus sauce.

While Tourondel is best known for fish, we stuck to an all beef diet for entrees. BLT Prime serves USDA Prime and Certified Black Angus meat, aged in-house in a dry aging room that is visible just past the frat party at the bar. The dry aging insures that the steaks are buttery, intensely flavored, and quite easy to demolish, and the kitchen helps is along by broiling it at 1200 degrees, for one of the best chars in town.

We chose two steaks to share between the three of us, to which we added about a half a dozen sides. There was so much food on the table that a leaf had to be pulled up to accommodate our feast. Again, people stared. The five-spiced American Kobe ($44) was everything you want a slab of beef to be—super tender and just past rare on the inside, saturated with flavor, and charred and spicy on the outside. Ditto for the New York Strip ($42), which I actually preferred to the Kobe. It had more depth of flavor, more chew and grain, and more marbling. The char on that skirt steak was also brilliant— delivering meaty juices through a smoky crust burnished with a good dose of sea salt. It’s the sort of meat that makes you both happy and proud to be a carnivore.

At this point, after two bottles of wine (which we were all poured a sample of to taste, a nice touch), and a meal fit for a dozen full grown men, we ordered dessert. Yes we are heathens. The desserts are displayed on a large table to the side of the open kitchen. You must walk past them when you are being seated and on most trips to the bathroom. The effect of this dessert gallery is to make it impossible for you not to order at least one. Coveting them from a distance for the duration of dinner creates not onl ... [more, click below]

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Posted: August 8, 2005

Other restaurants in Flatiron :
+ Suenos   + Amuse-- Closed   + Dos Caminos   + Lucy-- Closed   + Gramercy Taver   + Veritas   + Fleur De Sel   + Bolo -- CLosed   + City Bakery   + Shake Shack   + Kalustyan's Cafe   + Devi   + BLT Fish   + Sugarcane   + BLT Prime   + Barca 18-- CLOSED   + Beppe   + Barbounia   + Boqueria   + Eleven Madison   + Lonesome Dove-- CLOSED   + Hill Country   + Olana   + Wildwood   + Primehouse   + Allegretti   + Bar Breton   + Aldea   + SD26 by Bao Ong   + ABC Kitchen   + Ciano   + The NoMad   

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