Immaculate Infatuation

A loyal reader recently reached out to us on our Facebook page with a great point: we need a Damn Good Steaks tag. Damn right we do. Thanks Valerie. So it shall be.

There aren’t all that many steakhouses that meet our Infatuation standards for high quality and low quantity of business class asshats. Quality Meats is one of those places, and is precisely why we needed this new tag. Even though it’s in Midtown, this multi-level meat market serves up one of our favorite steaks in town, and it’s not what you might expect from a steakhouse in the area. Though they aren’t nearly on the same level, Quality Meats has a downtown aesthetic in the vein of Gramercy’s BLT Prime, just a little louder and heavier on the testosterone. This definitely isn’t a quiet dinner over a steak. This is where you kick off your bachelor party. You’re going to Abe & Arthur’s after aren’t you? She’s a lucky girl.

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Today’s Friday Fives brings us an all time Infatuation favorite, Talib Kweli. We’ve been down with his rhymes ever since the Mos Def/Blackstar days, and “Get By” has made an appearance on pretty much every iPod playlist we’ve ever made. Needless to say, we were fired up when he agreed to send over some of his go-to restaurant picks. Right now you can catch Talib on tour with Hi-Tek in support of the new Reflection Eternal album, coming next month. They’ll be at Nokia Theater on April 29th, and you can read below for some of Talib’s picks on where to eat before…or after.

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Ask any New York City female what her favorite Chronic Brunch spots are, and I guarantee Prune is on the list. Chicks freakin’ LOVE this place. They can’t get enough of the predominantly gay wait staff in their tight pink t-shirts, and are willing to to wait obscene amounts of time for Prune’s killer bloody marys and infamous triple decker Monte Cristo. The place is tiny – the mob scene out front on any given Sunday is worse than the first day of a Steven Alan sample sale. But while we all know the brunch is solid, what you may not realize is that they also have an adventurous and quite tasty dinner menu. It’s a cozy little restaurant, and combine that with a quality drink list and aphrodisiacs like oysters and mussels on the menu and you get a good sleeper spot for a First/Early In The Game Date. Good luck.

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As I usually do before going to a new restaurant, I hit Yelp before this meal to see what the people had to say about Hecho En Dumbo. A frisky female wrote a hilarious post about how Hecho’s old location in DUMBO was a hot singles hang and she thanked the sangria for getting her laid. Sure enough, Hecho’s new outpost on Bowery provides more of the same. It took only ten minutes before a tipsy female with a lisp and a lazy eye was hovering over our table, wondering if we were interested in a little post-meal rendezvous. We passed, but were happy that someone was paying attention to us. More on that in a minute.

In retrospect, I wish we would have made our way to Dumbo and google-mapped our way to some tacos at the original Hecho En Dumbo. Unfortunately that restaurant is now closed, but we probably would have avoided the hour wait and ass-tastic food. Everyone we know raved about that place. This new location is an unbelievable let down. The reclaimed wood decor is ripped right out of the Momofuku Noodle/Mercadito Cantina/Los Feliz handbook…played out and unoriginal. As for the clientele – it’s a mess. The place is populated with a mix of dudes that look like Ryan Seacrest in a fedora, and packs of interchangeable Murray Hill girls. Service is a disaster. Even after waiting for an hour for our table, we had to flag someone down to place a drink order. Our waitress came to our table a total of two times over the course of our meal, and she had zero knowledge of the menu. Even the margaritas were suspect. No fresh lime juice? What’s up with that? And the food… Jesus. Not a single thing we ate was good, and the presentation was terrible. Aside from their sweet eagle logo, the only thing we like about Hecho En Dumbo are all the drunken internet ladies in the house.

Photo Credit: Daniel Krieger

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Before we get into this, let me preface this review by saying that we liked Rye quite a bit. It’s a solid restaurant with good food and nice people. But answer us this one question: how far will this old timey New York restaurant thing go? Rye is a Williamsburg clone of Prime Meats, another restaurant meant to evoke a time when they put bitters and witch hazel in cocktails to fight off the polio. You know when we’re really going to be impressed? When someone opens a joint in Fort Greene with no running water or electricity. I want to have dinner in a restaurant with no bathroom, just a chamber pot next to each table. That’s fucking old school.

Cranky observations aside, Rye is pretty great. The concept is definitely getting played out, but they did a good job with the place, and almost everything we ate was tasty and satisfying – particularly the sandwiches on the menu. The meatloaf sandwich is quickly becoming what the restaurant is known for, and the pork belly on a soft roll is like a big Americanized pork bun – fatter and cockier than it’s little Japanese cousin, and it loves freedom. Our only complaint is that the entrees can seem anti-climactic after the excellent starters and salads. Then again we probably shouldn’t have been eating sandwiches as starters in the first place.

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