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Carnal Knowledge — Page 3
IThat tradition continues at Hy’s. Our waiter,
Bonnie Fong, has been here on and off since 1972, about
the time that Jimmy Pattison, a regular—he’s
in the house tonight—started coming in. Hy’s
has been in this 100-year-old Hornby Street building
since 1962, when the garlic-buttery escargots and Gorgonzola-spiked
mac and cheese would have been nouvelle. (They still
taste damn good.) I defy the most rigorous Atkins disciple
not to devour a basket of Hy’s cheese toast or
a creamy double-baked and stuffed potato. By the time
Fong flambées syrupy Bings and pours them over
vanilla ice cream in a sundae dish for the popular but
off-menu cherries jubilee, I’m the happiest 10-year-old
girl in the world.
Hy’s real advantage is charcoal. From the coat
check there’s a viewing corridor straight to the
glassed-in mesquite-fired grill, where sparks, smoke,
and flames rise theatrically. “It’s not
an easy grill to cook on. It takes a lot of experience,”
says assistant manager Tim Butt. “It’s different
every day, with slight temperature variations.”
The charcoal works magic on Hy’s spice rub, giving
a distinct, smoky finish to my 16-ounce bone-in rib
steak of triple-A Sterling Silver beef, wet-aged at
least 28 days. (Wet-aged meat literally stews in its
own juices in a sealed plastic pouch, which its proponents
say creates tenderness while maintaining moisture.)
But this steak is notably chewier than its dry-aged
siblings at Gotham and the Shore Club, the other two
jewels in the David Aisenstadt meat empire (which also
includes the Keg).
If Hy’s is pure retro, then the Shore Club is
retro-chic, a modern meta-meditation on the good old
days, with nods to modernity (seen in the lamb and fresh
fish on the menu); like Pinkys, it’s the steakhouse
reinvented. I dine like a circa-1960 queen on buttery-crumbed
clams casino in the shell, bright with bell pepper bits;
velvety creamed corn; a massive rib eye; and a banana
split. “Hy’s is where you’d take your
wife. This is where you’d bring your mistress,”
one of my companions quips wickedly. Tonight the room
buzzes with several martini-laden tables of guys and
dolls. The toughs in the corner are either sunglasses-wearing,
unlit-cigar-chomping bridge-and-tunnel pretenders or
real mafiosi. (I’m afraid to stare long enough
to find out.)
Brandishing a six-inch wood-handled Walco, I saw into
my rib steak with anticipation, only to realize that
the Steak Nazi won. I wanted it rare; the white-jacketed
waiter politely advised that the kitchen recommends
medium; we compromised on medium-rare. It arrives medium,
perhaps because it’s only a scant inch thick.Overcooked
to my taste, but my friend’s eyes practically
roll back in his head when he tries it. “The fat
kind of squirts in your mouth,” he whispers. To
me, his steak is the real winner: a 24-ounce bone-in
New York cut, perfectly medium-rare. A steak eater’s
steak, with real beefy taste and the extra flavour and
gravitas that come from slicing it off the bone.
I taste the same terrific bone-in New York again at
Gotham, which, like the Shore Club, serves Canadian
Prime beef, first wet-aged for at least 28 days and
then finished with old-school dry-aging, which evaporates
moisture and concentrates flavours. That must be the
secret behind the city’s tastiest filet mignon,
a lean and comparatively flavourless cut I usually avoid.
(Morton’s Lee Milton calls well-done filet mignon
a “texture-delivery device only.”) Not only
is the inside a juicy red rare, the crusty, salty exterior
has been broiled to a perfect Chicago sear. This is
a big, black baseball of meat. (Gotham also offers a
Pittsburgh, or slightly less blackened char.) I have
to giggle at the curried lentils in phyllo that Sri
Lankan corporate chef Bala Kumanan has snuck onto the
menu. “Okay, we have a vegetarian entrée,”
waiter Joel Wright concedes. “But if you’re
a vegan, I really can’t help you.”
The long-aproned, white-coated Gotham waitstaff are
as young and handsome as the crowd: couples on dates,
high rollers, and no doubt a raucous sports team or
two tucked into the downstairs private rooms. Jazz standards
float in from the porkpie-hatted player in the lounge.
The oysters Rockefeller taste like sex, and don’t
get me started on the divinely browned, duck-fat-crisped
Lyonnaise potatoes. Gotham is a showy steakhouse for
grown-up and—at $49.95 for the rib steak and the
New York, $42.95 for the filet—deep-pocketed fun.
Steak earned its special-occasion allure over the years
partly through price: though Pinkys and Hy’s offer
steak-and-side dinners in the $25-$50 range, usually
your chunk of beef comes à la carte, with $10
creamed spinach or $15 frites for the table to share—a
pricey proposition, even before you order the $1,200
bottle of 1999 Château Latour.
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