This place is amazing. It has been in business since 1949, and you walk in and it's just like you walked about 50 years back in time. I think I saw the Cleaver family leave just as we arrived. Dark wood trim everywhere, huge old wine room with probably 1000 bottles, and a nice old wooden bar. And you gotta sit at the bar and have a martini or a manhattan, which are served in a tall glass with a shaker top so that you can refill your empty martini glass at will. I shared a Manhattan with Maria and had a sip of Steve’s gin Martini and both were superb. As I like to say,”Good drinking is the start of a good evening…or a good morning…hell, just get me a drink already”.
This place was really cool and the menu is hilarious. It's really just a opposing faced single page guide, to tell you which cut of prime rib you might want. You are getting prime rib, see…you’re at the bloody house of prime rib. If you want anything, and I mean anything else, why are you here? Did you not see the large red glowing sign outfront? So you really don't even need a menu. Ok, I did notice they served a fish of some kind but please, that’s just silly. I think that when somebody orders fish they actually sneak a few slices of prime rib inside the fish somehow. They have 3-4 different cuts of prime rib, and we all went for the "House cut" which is about a 12 ounce slab of meat. The chef pushes this ridiculous meat cart around the room from table to table...what I've coined "The Meatinburg"...you'll see...and he cuts up the meat, and doles out the sides you've ordered, which in my case were mashed potatoes with gravy and creamed spinach (not a fan of the spinach…seriously, I’ve been a friggin vegetarian for 17 years and not once, NOT ONCE have I even heard of cream spinach, but I start eating meat and all of a sudden it’s everywhere. WTF??? No wonder meat eaters thing vegetarians are crazy, they think all we eat are things like creamed spinach all day. Yeeeech!). I got lucky and got the cut with the rib on it. Oh yeah baby. OK, so then he puts the plate in front of you. Now I'm staring at a re-F'ing-diculous slab of beef in the center of my plate, a big dallop of mashed potatoes with crater full of gravy and some creamed spinach...which I still don't get, but whatever, I’m willing to move past it for now, but I want some explanation from you meatitarians. Then they pour this sauce over the whole plate and it's like a little meat island in a little meat juice lake. I'll admit at this point I'm a little reluctant, but I deal with the astounding presence of the meat slab sitting in front of me. Ok, now I'm ready to dig in..."but wait!" says the waiter...appropriately...HAHAHAHA. NO? moving on: And he ladles on some more sauce over the top, and tops it all off with yorkshire pudding...on TOP of the meat. OK, this is wacko. I'm thinking that I need to wait another few minutes just in case he has to pile a stick of butter on the top, or sprinkle some jujubes on my mashed potatoes, but no, he's done. And here it is:
Well, and again I've never had prime rib in my life...this was unbelievably delicious. Although I have had all kinds of fancy meat that I found to be cooked perfectly, delicious for what it was, a technical achievement worthy of praise...I loved the prime rib. The meat was soft, velvety, and melted away when chewed. Oh, and it was blood red. When people talk about read meat, they are talking prime rib. Because this is not grilled like most every other meat I've ever had it doesn't have a tough grilled outside layer...it's red all the way thru to the very edge. They actually cook these things in pounds of rocksalt, so the salt flavor permeates the meat a little, and the salt keeps all the juices inside so the meat is tendered when cooked, and juicy up until the moment it lands on your plate, and in your gullet. I ate this entire thing in what felt like a matter of minutes, but it was probably longer, I was just in meat heaven. I now have my 2 favorites: pastrami and prime rib…interestingly I have a love of the p’s.
The famous Meatinburg:
and the holy meat that it contains:
That's not a light, that's a halo people.
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