by Warren Bobrow
MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, NYC
Picture a bustling street in the heart of summertime Greenwich Village. Food is being sold in open doors and windows nearly everywhere. To the left there are multitudes of schwarma stands, gaudy kebab palaces, Chinese take-out, Halal vegetarian foods, pizza from a dozen different windows. Then, to the right the Village staple, the ubiquitous Italian cuccinas – one there, another there, another and another with frivolously dressed hostesses clutching piles of menus trying to entice the throngs to come in and feed on ambiguous plates of pasta.
Ahead there are more coffee houses serving staccato conversations, poetry, and 60s style guitar music. Watered down espresso drinks dot the tables and the waiters move to the ebb and flow of students. This is the restaurant row of mostly cheap eats, Village-style, MacDougal Street subculture.
We ask ourselves, has simple classic American cooking gone the way of a preconceived notion that all new dining spots are designed to become mere “theme” restaurants?
Evidently not, as we were to discover at Minetta Tavern, the “feather in the cap” restaurant of wunderkinds, Keith McNally and his chef-partners Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr.
We open a wood and frosted glass door, then enter a vacuum from another generation, 1930s New York City to be exact. Patrons, over five deep at the bar, are deep in loud, back slapping, boisterous conversations. It is an extremely loud room from the tile floors and hard ceiling to the wood bead-board walls. All ages are represented from the elderly moving slowly in walkers to the young bon vivants who sit in front of vast plates of steak frites and glasses filled with classic cocktails.
Minetta Tavern is a serious steakhouse with a wine list to match, featuring old Bordeaux and library wines plucked from private wine cellars. We order glasses of an excellent Cotes de Provence. We have come for Dry Aged Côte de Boeuf from Creekstone Farms. Here, they serve it plain on a plate garnished only with elegant 6-inch long roasted marrow bones. These marrow bones have been cut lengthwise on a meat saw, sprinkled with fleur de sel and roasted at over 700 degrees until browned and sweet.
There isn’t anything like this series of two speak-easy style rooms anywhere else in New York City. Low, tin ceilings are painted white; brass chandeliers covered with vintage painted paper shades hang from the ceiling. The music is big band enlivening the already lively room.
Minetta has the formula right and the food is not secondary to the historic nature of the room. In stark contrast, the energy of the dining room at Minetta reminded me of the Friar’s Club uptown. I felt as if I was in a private domain where everyone knew each other through some association. I had not dined at the Friar’s Club in many years, but the memory of a secret place was rekindled when I entered Minetta, it was as if I never left that club located so many blocks uptown. The Friar’s Club is no longer a temple of gastronomy; it may not have served a fine meal in many years, although the historic dining room filled with those “in the know” still exists. The private domain of the crowd could have been here at Minetta Tavern all along.
There is boundless good energy at Minetta Tavern. People are very serious about what they eat and demand the highest quality food. We scarcely had time to lift our drinks from the bar when our table was called. The hostess efficiently and cheerfully offered to take our drinks on a tiny tray-directly into the fray of the dining room. Waiters bustled by carrying steaks, chops and frites. I didn’t know which way to look.
Our table was set in the tight hallway between the two rooms of the restaurant. We had a perfect view in both directions, everyone who went into the rear dining room had to pass by our table and vice versa. It was as if we were on stage and the wait staff who rushed back and forth made for a kind of visual and ever-changing tapestry. Balthazar, the French bistro just up-town from Minetta is the obvious template on which the service model of Minetta is based. The uniforms worn by the wait staff reflects the intellect of the owners. They could walk out of Balthazar and enter Minetta Tavern without losing a beat. The back waiters and busboys do their tasks with quick motions, pouring water into perfectly clean glasses from what appear to be clear wine bottles (a la Balthazar), without disturbing the rest of the table.
I ordered a Maple Leaf Sazerac, an old school cocktail made from Rittenhouse Rye, Sortilege Maple cordial, Pernod, and Lemon Zest. The addition of the Maple cordial added a certain depth to the drink that mere white sugar cubes could never duplicate. This small cocktail transported me to a time when hastily mumbled secret passwords opened doors in this neighborhood. I had the secret password in my hand in the form of this delicious, classic cocktail from before the days of Prohibition in New Orleans.
Our very patient waiter read us the specials. Salads were ordered and then swiftly presented with expertly melted goat cheese croutons forming juxtaposition from sweet to savory to meltingly delicious cheese to crunchy toasts. After a bite or two, I wanted more. I had ordered a steak-house favorite. Steak Tartare. But here, in this room the menu stated that there were three nuggets of different meats. Lamb Tartare with Argan Oil, olives and mint. Pastured veal with black truffle and chervil; and finally, one composed of classic beef with mustard and cornichons.
Each morsel of the tartare spoke of the highest quality, albeit small portions, of billowy soft, hand-chopped meats. I secretly wished for a raw egg on the side for mixing with the mere spoonfuls of precious essence as I see that pure ingredient as crucial in a mouthful of Steak Tartare.
My wife and I ordered the hero of the restaurant that is listed under Grillades, dry aged Côte de Boeuf. This slab of crunchy, well-marbled and aged meat was served blistering hot, then hand carved off the bone, similar to the presentation at Balthazar. But here at Minetta Tavern the steak takes on a deeper manifestation and is a masterpiece of purity and form. Pat La Frieda’s $ 26 “Black Label” burger composed of short rib, brisket and skirt may well be the most popular item on the menu for its sheer crowd-pleasing imagery of Prime Aged Beef, but the La Frieda specialty,Côte de Boeuf , may well be the flashiest cut of beef in New York City.
Pat La Frieda custom ages steaks for Minetta Tavern using a special aging room for up to 6 or 7 weeks. This extended aging process breaks down the tough sinews naturally found in the meat by a proprietary progression of time and temperature. The steak comes plain broiled on a plate. It is simple cooking raised to the highest possible standard – no butter melted on top to cover up the sight of anything unpleasant, no Béarnaise sauces to smother a second rate cut of beef here, no “un-named” steak house sauce from that other steakhouse over in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Heinz Ketchup, on the other hand is available for the excellent, steaming hot frites that are served in a paper sleeve set into a silver cone on the side.
The menu claims that the chocolate souffle’ we ordered for desert serves two persons, but it was a portion fit for three or more; and a delight to behold, presented with a thick mantle of powdered sugar.
We were taken care of by the restaurant staff as if we were old familiar faces in a crowd of well wishers. This is what white tablecloth fine dining is truly about. It’s not just the physical act of eating a meal, but creating a shared memory of a lovely dinner with family and friends. Minetta Tavern took us into its grasp with simplicity and grace. I can see becoming a regular here, perhaps one day my image will join the hand-sketched pen and ink pictures of long-gone customers that grace the walls. Nothing has changed, yet everything is different at Minetta Tavern.
Warren Bobrow’s blog, Wild Snack, appears every Wednesday.
PHOTO by Warren Bobrow
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Well written as well as informative.Comment by Nancy Page — July 29, 2009 @ 11:13 am
KhaledComment by Khaled M. Younes — July 29, 2009 @ 9:18 pm
greetings!
Thank you so much for notifying me of your coming postings!
Lamb Tartare with Argan Oil, olives and mint! The Frech love Moroccan gastronomy for good reasons. I somehow manage to get some argan oil here in Japan and i can assure you it makes a difference!
Question: have you ever tried beef, horsemeat or venison as sushi?
incidentally if you are not a featured publsher on Foodbuz yet, you ought to apply!
Once again,hearfelt compliments on great reporting!
Cheers,
Robert-gillesComment by Robert-Gilles Martineau — August 1, 2009 @ 8:28 pm
Greetings!
Interestingly I spent one year in Chad and Cote d’Ivoire back in 1972!
But the situation was completely different then!
Cheers,
Robert-GillesComment by Robert-Gilles Martineau — August 2, 2009 @ 11:43 am
WHAT ABOUT THE BEST STEAKHOUSE?There’s no one answer to this, because steakhouse selection is so particularly dependent on a diner’s mood and sensibility.If a certain corny, musky ambience is what you like, and a steakhouse need only have one great steak, then a place like Sparks — and its strip — will please you mightily.But if you want a steakhouse with an array of strengths, and you’re after a more contemporary ambience, you’d do better at, say, Porter House New York or BLT Prime. Porter House has improved since my one-star review years ago; the porterhouse on my most recent visit was superb. And there’s a decent, accessible wine list, something many steakhouses, including Peter Luger, don’t have.Peter Luger on its best night has an outstanding porterhouse, but the lights are always too bright and the service usually too gruff. That’s the thing with this city’s steakhouses: there’s almost always a drawback, a limitation.Harry’s Steak down near Wall Street has a particular tucked-away charm. Strip House has great sides and an inimitably cheeky atmosphere. Keens has the most Old World charm; its mutton chop — a misnomer, but a glorious one at that — is worth the trip alone.Minetta Tavern, while not billing itself as a steakhouse, might be my favorite, but is near-impenetrable by anyone without inside connections between 6:30 and 10:30 p.m.Comment by Warren Bobrow — August 26, 2009 @ 3:37 pm