Roast Prime Rib of Beef

[jfazrh]

Where is the best Roast Prim of Rib being serviced in Manhattan? Appreciate recommendations

[Schadenfrau]

Are you looking for a good steak or the roast-beef style dish?

[jfazrh]

Lokking for a place that preapres and serves the real roast prime rib of beef au jus (dry agend, slowley roasted to perfection and servied in cuts)

[Schadenfrau]

I hate to say it, but I think you're going to have a very tough time finding that here.

I was really curious about this last night and asked my boyfriend if he could think of anywhere that would serve this. He suggested Las Vegas.

[TonyO]

I hate to say it, but I think you're going to have a very tough time finding that here.

I was really curious about this last night and asked my boyfriend if he could think of anywhere that would serve this. He suggested Las Vegas.

Huh? There are dozens of world class steak houses here. I'm not a huge fan of Prime Rib (I prefer porterhouse or a NY Strip), but there are many that serve dry-aged beef. Try BLT Prime, very popular especially with the wall st. crowd.

[Schadenfrau]

There are a million terrific steakhouses, but I can't find a single one that would serve Roast Prime Rib.

They certainly don't serve it at BLT Prime. I was going to suggest Strip House, but it's nowhere to be found there, either.

Jfazrh, you'd have much better luck just eating a great steak.

[Fabrizio]

Served in it´s juices, a cut of standing rib roast is one of the greatest things you can eat. You might want to try an Argentinian steak house if all else fails. Anyway, if you´re ever in Florence, this is my place for prime rib (ask for "il pezzo grande":

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/florence/D34470.html

[kliq6]

Place called Hacienda Argentina, 75th and First has something like that but also and dont laugh, there is a place in Madison Square garden that serves it, very good as well

[TonyO]

A friend of mine told me Keen's steakhouse has prime rib. Never been there but it is one of the better-known steakhouses in the city.

[jfazrh]

Ciao Fabrizio
Grazie, I was in Florence just about 4 weeks ago but defintively not looking for Roast Prim Rib of Beef. When in Italy (from Switzerland) I go for your stuff but RPRB is a truly US-thing and hardly available in Europe....unfortunately less and less in the States as well as it is very time consuming to prepare and that's why probably most places do no longer want to bother with it. However I won't give up and still hope to run across an address in good ol' New York by the time I arrive there this Saturday

All
Thanks for all your much appreciated feedback. We still got a few more days to go before D-Day. Let's hope we find the place for a starving Swiss

[jfazrh]

Is that the one in 2 Penn Plaza????? I don't remember the name. Street level on the right hand side before you enter Madison Square Garden

[lofter1]

Where the Lore Is Part of the Lure

By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times
Dec. 14, 2005

http://events.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/dining/reviews/14rest.html


THERE'S a secret to the surprising mellowness of the "legendary mutton chop" at Keens Steakhouse, a restaurant long synonymous with that gargantuan slab of meat. (The menu announces it with a verbal trumpet blast.)

There's a simple reason it has none of the gaminess that diners expect of mutton, which is sheep, and instead reminds them of lamb, the younger version they know and trust.

Nix the trumpet and commence a drum roll: it is lamb. The mutton lore is a mutton lie. For at least two decades and perhaps many more, the legendary mutton chop has indeed been a matter of legend. The following sentence is inevitable, as is the one on its tail. Diners have had the wool pulled over their eyes.

But they haven't been fleeced. The mutton chop at Keens, a 26-ounce saddle of lamb, skirted with fat and nearly two inches tall, can wear whatever label it pleases, because it provides about as much pleasure as a carnivore could want.

So, for that matter, does Keens, a meaty Mecca since 1885, artery-clogging proof that not all good things must come to pass, though they may indeed have to adapt to new times by toying with certain traditions.

In the case of Keens, those traditions include true-blue mutton chops, which it once served. It kept the name even after it lost the sheep. It's nostalgic like that.

No restaurant in New York City pays the kind of lavish, often kooky, sometimes even touching tribute to the past that Keens does.

Look to the ceilings of various dining rooms, which are spread over two floors of three connected townhouses, and behold row upon row of clay pipes. There are more than 50,000 of them, the property of Keens customers who, in tobacco-friendlier times, stowed and used them in the restaurant.

Keens had what it called a pipe club, with members including Babe Ruth and Theodore Roosevelt. Even after smoking in restaurants went the way of absinthe, Keens inducted honorary members into the club, famous customers as diverse as Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Dr. Renee Richards, Liza Minnelli and Stephen King. There are pipes bearing their signatures in a glass case beside the main entrance.

Keens is a trove not only of protein but also of memorabilia. Its dark-paneled walls display vintage photographs, vintage political cartoons and vintage playbills.

On a poignant note, in a room often used for private dining, Keen has what it identifies as the theatrical program that Abraham Lincoln was holding when he was shot.

On a humorous note, in the main vestibule, it has what it identifies as "dinosaur sirloin," supposedly a fossil from the Red Rocks area of Utah. It looks like reddish-brown marble, and a sign with it says that in the opinion of Keens, it has not yet been aged long enough to be cooked
.
Keens expertly dry-ages its beef, which it serves in an array of cuts, all of them memorable and almost all of them mammoth: sirloin, filet mignon, prime rib, porterhouse for two, porterhouse for three.

On my visits the restaurant put a nice char on any and every cut that was supposed to have it, and it cooked everything to its requested temperature. It proved itself to be not only one of the city's most charming and diverting theaters for testosterone cuisine but also one of its most reliable.

And it presented a few surprisingly effective cameos, most notably a fried chicken salad available only at lunch. Morsels of tender breast kept company with hunks of Stilton cheese, several kinds of lettuces and a sparingly applied vinaigrette.

Keens doesn't consign a diner to iceberg with blue cheese, though that's a very happy fate. It also serves a salad of arugula, bibb lettuce, basil and watercress, and both times I had it, the greens and herbs were springy and fresh.

Other digressions from the beefy, lamby norm proved perilous. A half chicken had been left on the rotisserie at least 10 minutes too long. A gigantic wedge of salmon had an impressively silken texture but a muffled flavor. (Was it really wild, as the menu claimed?) Fried calamari were a rubbery wreck.

It could be argued that a person who orders these dishes in a steakhouse gets what he or she deserves. But a steakhouse should come through with a stronger lineup of desserts than Keens did. Most of the ones I tried were instantly forgettable.

The service was usually a graceful departure from the studied gruffness of some other traditional steakhouses. Keens paid attention to details.

A glass of iced tea arrived with a fresh mint leaf floating on its surface. A refill wasn't a refill: it was a new glass with a new leaf. Water was poured from a pewter pitcher. In deference to the holiday season, a big stuffed moose head wore a little red Santa cap.

Keens is mischievous like that. Cue the mutton.

Because Keens changed ownership in the late 1970's, a definitive, comprehensive mutton history seems to be out of reach. But the restaurant's current manager, Bonnie Jenkins, investigated the matter at my request.

Keens began with real mutton, which is often defined in this country as sheep of about a year or more in age. In 1935, the restaurant reached and publicly celebrated a milestone: one million mutton chops served. Apparently, Keens was an early, upscale McDonald's of mutton.

World War II came. Deprived Americans ate more mutton than they wanted, and as it later fell farther and farther out of fashion, getting fresh mutton of reliable quality became iffy. At some point Keens had to turn to lamb, choosing a cut with a winged shape that mimicked the mutton chop of yore.

Keens was using lamb in place of mutton when its current owner reopened it in 1981 following several years of extensive renovations. It was using lamb when subsequent newspaper and magazine articles about Keens appeared under headlines like "Mutton Place" and "Of Mutton and Men."

And it is using lamb now, although it tries to get lamb around 10 months in age, which is older than most of the lamb we eat, including the thick-cut rack at Keens.

That doesn't make it mutton, but it does seem to give it a more robust taste, like lamb with an exponent, lamb on steroids. Call it near-mutton. Call it extreme lamb. Go ahead and call it legendary. In more ways than one, it warrants that tag.

Keens Steakhouse
**

72 West 36th Street, Midtown; (212) 947-3636.

ATMOSPHERE Its various rooms teeming with memorabilia, paneled in dark wood and decorated with a dense canopy of clay pipes, the restaurant is a cozy time capsule, a kooky tavern on testosterone.

SOUND LEVEL Variable. Extremely loud, for example, in the Lambs Room, but moderate in the Bullmoose Room.

RECOMMENDED DISHES Iceberg with blue cheese; fried chicken salad; sirloin steak; prime rib; mutton chop (saddle of lamb); porterhouse; apple crisp.

WINE LIST Befitting a steakhouse, an emphasis on big reds, especially from California. American and French wines dominate a concise international list.

PRICE RANGE Lunch appetizers, $7.50 to $16; large salads and other entrees, $14.50 to $42.50. Dinner appetizers, $7.50 to $16; entrees, $24 to $42.50; desserts, $7 to $8.50.

HOURS From 11:45 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. From 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Saturday and to 9 p.m. Sunday. Full menu available only in pub room and bar between 3 and 5:30 p.m. most days.

RESERVATIONS For prime dinner times just before events at Madison Square Garden, call a few days in advance.
CREDIT CARDS All major cards.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Entrance to bar at street level; a few steps down, with ramp available, to tables in adjacent pub room. Restrooms are inaccessible.

WHAT THE STARS MEAN:

(None) Poor to satisfactory
* Good
** Very good
*** Excellent
**** Extraordinary

Ratings reflect the reviewer's reaction to food ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.



Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html)The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[Fabrizio]

Jfazh: "When in Italy (from Switzerland) I go for your stuff but RPRB is a truly US-thing and hardly available in Europe."

Oh my... the traditional dish of Tuscany is steak! And especially of Florence! T H E classic Tuscan dinner is "ribollita" (a bread, bean,and black cabbage soup) followed by a very rare T-bone steak with white beans on the side.

[lofter1]

"ribollita"
One of the greatest dishes ever invented. MMMmmmmm.

Perfect for a cold evening.