Starting over, the other weekend I had the opportunity (curse?) of driving my friend's car in the city, ostensibly to go buy large items from Target across the Hudson in New Jersey which would otherwise be impossible to haul home on the subway. The problem is, on the way to Target in Edgewater we passed by Mitsuwa, a large Japanese marketplace. So on the way back, primary objective complete, we stopped and I raided the place for everything I remembered from childhood, hanging out in the kitchen with grandma. But I also had a secret agenda. A few days before this weekend errand excursion, Ajay, a labmate and I were discussing the difference between Yakitori, Yakiniku, and Korean BBQ. Me, being the worst part-Japanese in the world, had the least to offer to the conversation, which was held between an Indian, a Taiwanese, and myself. I am ashamed. This conversation naturally made us think of having a grill session in the near future, which all came back to me as I stood in the aisle of Kobe and Wagyu beef neatly packaged in Styrofoam trays. $94 later, I walked out of Mitsuwa supremely happy with myself.
The next night, Ajay, Shih-An and I gathered around the electric grill my grandmother thoughtfully got for me when I moved into this apartment, a year and a half ago. That cooking utensil has without a doubt gotten the most use out of all the other gadgets in our kitchen. All unwrapped, the spread looked like this:
The more I look at this, the more I realize we're sick people.All in all, we had an Unagi to be broiled, two packages of regular beef chuck steak, a package of Wagyu sirloin, one Kobe chuck and two Kobe tri-tips.
First, we went about it in a civilized fashion, cooking individual pieces with slices of Negi, or Japanese scallion. We also had a package of shishito peppers, which we put on the cooler portion of the grill.
An electric grill that makes nice grill marks? Yes please.We consumed the meat with Yakiniku sauce, which is a soy based dipping sauce with sesame, citrus juices and spices. The higher quality beef was so finely marbled I could almost describe it as biting into beef cheesecake; it had the buttery smoothness of filet mignon, but a lot fattier. Mmm beef cheesecake...
A piece of tri-tip in it's last few seconds on earth.We finished off by wrapping the scallions in pieces of the lesser-quality beef (which were still delicious, being intrinsically fatty and meaty) to make Negimaki, something my grandma used to make all the time.
There has to be some colorful metaphor to describe what my kitchen looked like after we were done. Something involving wildebeests, lions and a hyena or two, but truth be told it was pretty gruesome in the way a morgue is spotless. We consumed everything.
So wrapping up the Harlem part of our adventure, later on in the week Kent and I decided to check out a restaurant that was recently featured in the NY Times, Le Relais de Venise - L'Entrecôte. The history of this joint is summed up nicely on the main page, so best check it out. Or evening there began at 8:30pm on a Friday night, which is probably the worst time to be looking for a bite in New York city. But, thanks to the efficiency with which this place herds people through the entire dining experience, we only waited 5 minutes before being directed to our table in between a group of boisterous Brits and a French couple (and their new iMac). True to form, the waitress in her maid's outfit asked us only how done we'd like our steak, wrote our responses on our paper tablecloth (rare), and brought us glasses of the house wine.
Not being a connoisseur of wine, I can't say much intellegent about it other than it didn't offend my palate. It's the wine that motivated the whole inception of the restaurant, and it's from Toulouse so I guess it's a bit like a Bordeaux. Let's just say it was drinkable, and leave the second pass analysis for the professionals.
The salad came shortly thereafter, a mid-sized pile of romaine leaves and walnuts, slathered in a mayonaise-thick dressing. In my best guess, the dressing was olive oil, dijon mustard, cider vinegar, marjoram and thyme. It tasted great, except it was way too thick and in order to coat every leaf they had to put on way too much, so when all the leaves were gone the plate was coated in an unappetizing slime.
What's this shrubbery doing at a steakhouse?Between the salad and main course came a 10 minute pause, and I couldn't tell if it was intentional or not. I'm leaning toward not, since all the waiters did look extremely harried as if they were barely keeping up. I didn't mind the break, as up until now it had felt like the Model-T of dining; assembly line efficient and no options for variety. Anyway, after our brief intermission, where our expectations (and hunger) rose a few notches, our plates arrived.
The main course, a meager few slices of meat in the establishment's "secret sauce" accompanied by a pile of freshly fried potatoes. The meat was cooked exactly as we requested, which being a skirt steak isn't too tall an order, and just the right texture. The sauce, while not exactly understated, wasn't as overpowering as I had feared. As you can see from the photo, if the sauce had been bad there was enough on there to ruin the meal. Apparently the name of the game tonight is to guess the ingredients, so I'll venture it's butter, butter, beef stock, flour, and more butter. It's herbed with some sort of bouquet garni, heavy on the sage. The fries were--and I'm not a huge fan of fries--everything you want in a fry: very hot, crispy, no rancid oil flavor, and tasted like potatoes instead of ambiguous starch. I consumed the 6 slices of meat in mere minutes, so the second helping arrived right away. Their policy is to serve the meat in two stages, to keep it warm throughout your eating experience. In my opinion, they do that so the butter sauce doesn't solidify on your plate into a greyish-green mass. As our waiter served our second helping, I asked if they had any sort of "all-you-can-eat" plan. She looked shocked and offended.After we finished our second helpings, we glanced briefly at the dessert menu before passing on the small selection of uninspired offerings, cake à la mode, ice cream and the like. Forty minutes and about $70 dollars later, we found ourselves on the same street corner whence we began, although by now a small waiting crowd had formed. To sum it all up, it wasn't bad at all, but I think they're stuck in some undefined category and they would benefit to choose a direction. For one, they have an efficient mechanical flow through dinner, with no options and french fries an integral part of the meal. In that case, they would do well to lower the price and perhaps offer multiple servings to encourage people to stay longer and drink more. On the other hand, the meat is tasty enough that if they gave it a better presentation and perhaps a more upscale side dish, people would be more cognizant of what they were eating and appreciate it in the moment. As it is, it's like "hey come here what do you want?-too bad here's a steak anyway oh you're done ok don't get these lame deserts just get out" and as tasty as it was, and as reasonable as the bill was, you can't help but still feel a bit underwhelmed.
