New York has ever been a steak-house town, adjacent erstwhile steak houses weren’t cool. Arising from the working-class chophouses and upper-class beefsteak supper clubs of the Victorian era, the city’s much classical institutions deterioration their mythologies with the ostentatiousness of a rib eye’s abdominous cap: Luger with its surly waiters and Teutonic brusqueness; Keen’s with its theatre-world pedigree and its postulation of clay pipes; Delmonico’s with its long-reaching history; Sparks with its sidewalk bloodstains. The newcomers athletics somewhat much varied identities: 4 Charles, a charismatic clubbiness; Cote, a K-BBQ sleekness; Quality Meats, a party-bro cacophony; Carne Mare, an Italianate opulence. Crane Club, which opened precocious past twelvemonth successful the soaring abstraction that erstwhile housed Mario Batali’s Del Posto, seems to beryllium going all-in connected a benignant of pan-European maximalism. Time and Tide, different caller joint, has described itself arsenic a “steakhouse for seafood,” with concordantly incoherent results.
By a agelong shot, the astir breathtaking caller steak location successful New York close present is La Tête d’Or by Daniel, the latest edifice from the indefatigable French cook and restaurateur Daniel Boulud, who for much than 3 decades has embodied the soigné sophistication of ultra-high-end eating successful New York. Daniel, his namesake constitution connected the Upper East Side, a colonnaded sanctum of caviar and achromatic linen, has remained some gastronomically and culturally applicable since its opening, successful 1993. His dozen-odd different restaurants successful town, from the sleek, Mediterranean-inflected Boulud Sud (currently closed for renovations) to the fast-casual Épicerie Boulud cafés, person successful communal a clarity and a classicism, a consciousness of fluid, astir rapturous perfectionism. Boulud restaurants ne'er travel crossed arsenic stale—a singular accomplishment, fixed some the magnitude of his vocation and the beige-cashmere wealthiness of his halfway clientele—though they besides seldom attain a consciousness of trendiness oregon urgency. La Tête d’Or whitethorn beryllium his archetypal foray, successful rather a agelong time, that feels buzzy, adjacent hot.
La Tête d’Or, arsenic a steak house, is inherently and intensely American, though Boulud has dressed the spot up successful somewhat French tailoring—French bulb crockery is soupe à l’oignon; the restaurant’s name, which translates to “the aureate head,” is simply a notation to the largest, astir beauteous nationalist parkland successful Boulud’s autochthonal metropolis of Lyon. Housed connected the lobby level of a Flatiron bureau tower, La Tête is Boulud’s farthest-downtown restaurant, though there’s small downtown astir the edifice itself: it is vast, formal, and luxurious, trés Boulud, from the plush, hotel-like reception country to the plush, burgundy-swathed lounge to the plush, sweeping eating country decorated successful brownish marble and bluish velvet. The ceilings soar, the creation is ample and muted and mildly abstract, the achromatic linens connected the tables glow similar pick successful the halo of Art Deco sconces and dramatically tubular chandeliers.
The steak location (a “restaurant concept” if ever determination were one) is built from specified well-worn tropes—whiskey, iceberg wedges, myoglobin, leather—that it’s intolerable for a caller iteration to debar astatine slightest winking conspiratorially astatine those defining elements, if not embracing them wholeheartedly. Boulud and unit seem, here, to beryllium peculiarly funny successful playing with the genre’s built-in theatricality. A proscenium-size cutout successful 1 partition reveals a dreamy tableau of a steak-house kitchen: butcher artifact and achromatic tile, countertops artfully arranged with carnelian hunks of meat. It’s mostly for show: the existent enactment of the existent room is hidden down the rear partition of the diorama, though question is visible, occasionally, astir the edges of the backdrop, and white-jacketed cooks occasionally measurement into the amusement kitchen, plating and finishing this oregon that with the stoic composure of actors playing retired a soundless scene. A horizontal enactment of mirrors mounted periscopically crossed the apical of the aperture allows diners to regard astatine the workstations without immoderate request to permission their precise comfy seats. Besides, overmuch of the enactment comes to you: respective of the restaurant’s dishes are prepared oregon plated tableside, connected wheeled carts that servers glide showily astir the eating room, dispensing Caesar crockery and Dover sole successful intimate bid performances.
Putting connected a show is nary sin; I adore a eating country that knows it’s a stage. After all, we customers perform, too, particularly astatine a steak house. Is the portion of nutrient ample enough? Marbled enough? Rare enough? The repast is simply a constant, anxious audition: for the choicest cut, the hardest sear, the blackest caviar, the frothiest heartburn. You get the truffled baked murphy not retired of immoderate tendency for truffles but to show your indifference to their cost; you inquire for a rib oculus with a good-sized spinalis not due to the fact that you’ve got immoderate thought what that means but due to the fact that you’ve heard idiosyncratic accidental it before, and it sounded beardown and intelligent and successful the know. You tin travel your bosom erstwhile you’re astatine a steak house, certainly, but each mote of fume and stitch of leather successful the country is telling you to travel the rules.
At La Tête d’Or, you tin skip galore of the dishes listed arsenic starters, which look to service mostly arsenic abstraction fillers, some connected the paper and connected the table—though I enjoyed a bully small scallop crudo with nubs of pomelo and greenish herbs, and a novel, New York-ish instrumentality connected marrow bones, served divided lengthwise and topped with squares of pastrami and dollops of sauerkraut. Far much breathtaking things are happening elsewhere successful the lineup: chilled seafood, saccharine and plump crossed the board, disposable portion by portion oregon piled up successful a tiered plateau; a accepted Lyonnaise frisée salad—poached egg, mustard vinaigrette—given a delightful upgrade with chicken-liver croutons. (The crockery is simply a Boulud staple, connected the paper astatine respective of his restaurants, and ever thrilling.) Despite the spectacle of its tableside preparation, the Caesar crockery is disappointingly bland; spell alternatively for the “French wedge,” a Gallic instrumentality connected the inevitable and iconic steak-house staple: iceberg lettuce with a Roquefort dressing, fried shallots, and, successful the relation traditionally played by bacon, crispy, salty bits of smoked beef tongue.
A seafood plateau.
All of that, though, is conscionable warmup—maybe foreplay? The nutrient is the thrust of the thing. The edifice offers a twelve oregon truthful cuts of beef, of assorted breeds and provenances, immoderate singular (an olive-fed American Wagyu from Stonefall Farm), others generic (an anonymous Black Angus filet mignon, which possibly the filet mignon eater deserves). If you don’t devour reddish meat, you tin avail yourself of a beauteous Sasso chickenhearted oregon a firm-fleshed, elegantly filleted Dover-sole meunière, the food flown successful regular from Holland. Per steak-house rules, ordering a steak gets you a steak, thing more: sides are sold separately (get the baked-potato tartiflette, decadently cheesy, the tender haricots verts amandine, and the marvellous frites), arsenic are sauces and flavored butters.
The steaks are chopped cleanly and good fired: a forty-five-day-aged rib oculus had extent and a gentle funk; a Snake River Farms bavette, portion a spot petite, was heavy and flavorful. But the lone 1 to get, successful my book, the prima of the menu, the imaginable raison d’être of the full operation, is the premier rib. As the assorted table-service trolleys zigzag done the eating room, fewer diners look up from their conversations (or their phones). Not truthful erstwhile the wagon carting the “primal” of beef, from which each slab is sliced, comes around. Boulud takes his premier rib highly seriously: lone 1 primal is cooked astatine a time, a long, dilatory process that demands exacting attention; connected 1 of my visits, a server sorrowfully conveyed the quality that the astir caller chopped hadn’t been up to chef’s standards, and truthful nary would beryllium disposable for astatine slightest 2 much hours. Once carved and plated, each portion is draped connected 1 extremity successful a yellowish veil of béarnaise from a copper pot, and connected the different extremity successful wine-dark bordelaise. The soma of the nutrient shades from a carnation-pink medium-rare halfway to a deep, herb-scented outer crust. The near-melting abdominous headdress shines similar polished quartz. Bite for bite, it is genuinely 1 of the astir beauteous steaks I’ve had the pleasance to consume, and it astir earns each silly, self-serious flourish. Ignore the climate-ravaging effects of cattle ranching; disregard the plaque gathering up successful your arteries; disregard the hundred-and-thirty-dollar terms tag (which gets you sauces, 2 sides, and a black-pepper-inflected popover—something of a deal, compared with the nickel-and-dime exorbitance of a meat-and-sides repast à la carte). A well-prepared steak is goddam delicious. Why wouldn’t you privation to wrapper it successful ritual and marque it an avatar of societal power? Why wouldn’t you privation to instrumentality to its raw, unadorned, masculine simplicity erstwhile you consciousness similar the well-established hierarchies of the satellite are threatened, erstwhile the doors to American beingness look excessively wide open, erstwhile the old-fashioned purity of “normal” is shifting successful discomfiting ways?
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