The Strong Buzz

“Lonesome Dove-- CLOSED”

October 23, 2006

 When I first heard about a restaurant from Texas moving to New York I was skeptical. Generally speaking I am skeptical of most things that come from Texas. But I try to be open-minded and not pre-judge, though I imagined a menu I thought would be amateurish or maybe some sort of rip-off of Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill fare. I wondered, what could Tim Love do that our chefs hadn't done before? Turns out, quite a bit.

First, there's the big brown and white cowhide rug sprawled out on the sidewalk of 21st Street that you must walk over to enter the restaurant. It's rare. Then there's the restaurant itself, which Love designed to feel like an urban saloon. The space is marked by dark wood, with a long welcoming stretch of bar topped with cactus plants, chile peppers, and margarita-filled tumblers. On the pressed tin ceilings hang deer antler chandeliers, and on the burnished walls, a giant heifer's head. The vibe will have you searching for the swinging doors and the smoking gun.

 

But the food is what really got me to stop and reconsider my preconceived notions. Love is doing some fun and quite inventive cooking. I've eaten at Lonesome Dove a few times now, for a feature assignment from the Post, for a shoot with Code TV, and with Craig, Adrienne and Gregg before we left for Italy, and I have become a big fan of his food because it's a dose of fresh air, it's something new and boldly different from what we are used to. Love's vision of the Wild West includes ingredients from his native Texas and from what he considers the new Wild West-Australia. He brings together unexpected ingredients to surprising effect. I loved the kangaroo "nachos"-actually tender seared slices of kangaroo carpaccio layered on tortilla chips and topped with a rosettes of creamy boursin cheese partnered with an avocado and roasted corn salsa and glossed with huckleberry-habenero demi glaze ($12). Then there are the buffalo corn dogs, sweet corn fritter dough blanketing spiced buffalo dogs served with a tangy ketchup called State Fair Sauce-a smashing puree of Dijon mustard, mustard powder, garlic aioli, and roasted poblano chilies ($12). The quail quesadillas are also terrific-soft flour tortillas filled with shredded quail, goat cheese and New Mexican onions, folded over and marked on the grill until hot and gooey and served over smooth black beans and tart crème fraiche. The weakest appetizer is the braised rabbit empanadas ($12), which are so doughy that all you taste is bread and none of the flavors on the inside.

 

By now you've already heard about the Prairie Butter ($10), which actually has little to do with butter. In fact, it's dairy free, though it is far from vegan. It is a buffalo femur bone that is split down the middle and roasted with chile and onions and served with piping hot, just-grilled camp bread-think puffy slices of pizza dough. While the marrow flavor can at times be obscured by the intense flavor of the salt and the chiles, when you get the right bite, is hot and meaty, and tastes like pan juices from searing a really good steak in butter and herbs. Mop it up with that hot camp bread. Yeah, baby.

 

Larger plates are oversized, in both flavor and portion, so if it's petite plates with precious delicate nuance you're after, look elsewhere. Take The Tomahawk Chop for instance, which was a spectacle similar to the recent big boned beef I had at Country. This slab is cut straight from the ribcage of the cow and had an 18-inch bone as an appendage. The beef is wet-aged for 21 days, then dry-aged for 28 days, and then peppered, rubbed, seared and roasted on the rib bone so the meat swims in its own juices. The chop is accompanied by a grilled Australian lobster tail, a couple of succulent seared scallops the size of hockey pucks and a monster-sized mound of smoked yukon gold potatoes so high you could throw a fastball off of it. This dish is said to serve two but it can easily serve four and while we loved it, the price tag was startling. The server, who was quite interested in giving us every detail of the menu and of how to approach and order from said menu, left out the little fact that this market price dish was $125. Sticker shock is putting it mildly. When a dish is going to cost you over a hundred dollars, it might be nice to be told in advance.

 

On the more affordable spectrum, go for the garlic-stuffed beef tenderloin that truly speaks to the tender half of that word. It's also a big boy portion that would be a Quick Draw McGraw favorite for sure. It comes with an order of Western plaid hash-a fevered mess of fried shoestring potatoes topped with braised red and green cabbage, sautéed with garlic, red onion, red bell pepper and red wine ($34). But one of my favorite entrees was actually a fish dish-the grilled whole Colorado trout ($25) had flesh so sweet and flaky, I could barely stop eating it, but did so that I could concentrate on the accompanying succotash, made from corn, sweet potatoes and langoustines cooked down with bacon for that added hit of smoke that makes everything taste better.

 

The seared monkfish ($24) was firm and almost too sturdy, and came in a "spicy" posole stew (made from hand-made posole Love sources from a woman in New Mexico) that wasn't nearly spicy enough for me, though it was garnished with some amazing rendition of lobster that Love calls lobster bacon: lobster poached in veal stock, soaked in bacon fat and fried in peanut oil-that should be illegal considering what it will do to your arteries (and your hips).

 

The duck breast is described on the menu as crispy, and while I loved the texture (nice and moist) I didn't find it crispy at all, though it does come with a very crispy Rosti-a tangle of shredded potato and manchego cheese. The pork tenderloin ($26), which was perfectly cooked, gets rubbed with a coarse grind of coffee and cocoa and comes piled up with crispy fried onions and another pitcher's mound of those smoked Yukon potatoes. But the red deer chops ($31) come with the most indulgent side dish of all-a copper crock pot of gloriously gooey mac ‘n cheese, made from silky orzo pasta, no elbows in here. For a little more fun and added texture, Love tops the mac off with a few polenta-crusted deep-fried baby artichokes. It's killer. I'd like to see those fried artichokes at the bar, with a smoky chile mayo for dipping. I'd also recommend ordering a side of the ricotta dumplings ($8). These firm but fluffy fritters are greaseless and have a sneaky spicy kick to them, a great balance to the sweetness of the cheese.

 

Sadly, though, desserts need some work and are not worth the calories. We had a huckleberry and pear crisp that was basically stewed fruit topped with some uncooked oats, and a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich fashioned from two cookies that were so hard we could not cut into them to eat the ice cream sandwich. We tried teeth, we tried knives, we could have asked for the buffalo femur bone saw I suppose, but nothing worked. Finally, we disassembled it and broke the cookie into hunks with our bare hands and spooned the ice cream on top of the cookie pieces. Instead of desserts, have another round of Margaritas, especially the one infused with jalepeno. Texans may not know ice cream sandwiches, but they do Margaritas, and quite a few other things, very well.

 

Lonesome Dove is located at 29 West 21st Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, 212-414-3139.

Andrea Strong