The Summer of $10 Meat Skewers Begins!
Notes on Dynamo Room and "Steakhouse Alley." Plus, reviews of the skewers at Miss Ada, Rule of Thirds, and an essay on Amy Sherald's "American Sublime"
Scroll past the paywall for reviews of 11 affordable meat skewers, as well some thoughts on strawberry ice cream. Subscribers get access to our full archive, including The Sushi List
New York Doesn’t Need a Steakhouse Alley
Next week, two important things could occur on a single block in Midtown.
First, the Knicks will face off against the Pacers at Madison Square Garden! The beloved New York franchise has advanced to the Eastern conference finals for the first time in 25 years.
Second, a new restaurant by the folks behind Café Chelsea might (supposedly, finally) open up. It’s called The Dynamo Room. Should you find yourself dining there when the Knicks win, you’ll enjoy a prime view of 19,000 fans getting ready to block traffic with the same gusto as demonstrators protesting an unjust war.
You’ll also pay $116 for a king’s cut prime rib. Because Dynamo Room is yet another steakhouse.
If that jab — yet another steakhouse — comes across as somewhat banal, let me offer a little more context.
Dynamo is the third steakhouse on a single Manhattan block, a stretch of 33rd Street that Vornado has transformed into The Penn District.
Let’s start with Nick & Stef’s, on the north side of The Garden. It’s where you can swing by in a pair of khakis and a blue oxford and enjoy a Niman Ranch Strip Loin with truffled steak fries. How very 2007.
Then, just across the street, Blue Ribbon Steak & Sushi (née 2023) caters to indecisive folks who’d like some domestic beef, domestic Wagyu, Australian Wagyu, or Japanese Wagyu. The four-ounce Kagoshima beef cap is the “chef’s favorite.” It costs $98.
If that’s too expensive, The Dynamo Room is just a stone’s throw away. It will also serve you a rib cap....for $96, lol. So much for price diversity.
But to be fair, that’s just one steak. Dynamo will also sell a regular strip, a dry-aged strip, a wagyu strip, a strip as part of a T-bone, and a strip as part of a larger porterhouse.
Among other cuts.
Altogether, Penn District diners have a selection of 30 different steaks over three restaurants. All on a single block. And I’m not even counting steak tartare.
Call it a proper Steakhouse Alley.
You’ve already read about how New York is undergoing a beef boom. Or a plague, depending on your point of view. Some of the openings and offerings have been compelling. The Korean steakhouses. The funky cheese-aging. The cooler, smaller cuts. Our city’s red meat scene is evolving, and I’m stoked to keep covering these changes, even if I do so a little more closely than I should.
But there’s a flip side. Large swaths of New York’s meat movement feel more cynical, more dystopian. I’m thinking of the de rigueur steaks at seafood spots. Our growing stable of all-you-can-eat wagyu restaurants, one of which deploys membership-based pricing. And then there’s the fact that most restaurateurs aren’t giving us these places because they have something vital to add to our city’s culinary scene. They’re opening them because they’re a safe financial bet, especially as our country’s politics skew a little more red.
Yes, there’s some great stuff here in the Penn District. We have a Roberta’s with its quirky pies, and a Los Tacos, with some of the city’s top al pastor tacos.
I’ll also admit I’m intrigued by Blue Ribbon Steak, as New York doesn’t have a ton of great teppanyaki spots. Just the same, Dynamo Room deserves credit for serving a riff on Café Chelsea’s maitake steak, a meatless main that manages to be truly thoughtful — quite rare for a chophouse.
Will I end up reviewing these venues in some form or another? Probably, as part of a listicle or a shorter column. Let’s be real; I can only write about this stuff so often (and at this point, it’s more than often).
Indeed, the question of whether these three steakhouses are “good enough” from a food reviewer’s standpoint is secondary to the larger food critic questions that we need to ask. Questions like:
Do we really need three steakhouses on a single block? Three restaurants with the same basic shtick: a la carte sides and a la carte sauces? Three restaurants serving sides of creamed greens? Three restaurants serving mac & cheese? Three restaurants offering — oh what a f&cking surprise — lobster tails or half lobsters (one of them as a maki roll), for a little surf & turf.
And most importantly: Is this how we really want to show off Manhattan’s dynamic culinary scene — to tourists who might not otherwise dine elsewhere in the city?
Of course, I’m using “we” liberally here, because these Midtown blocks aren’t the type of “we the people” hodgepodge neighborhoods where capitalism translates to scores of different restaurants doing edgy, experimental stuff. These blocks are about a few developers and restaurant groups adopting a paternalistic, “steak for dinner” mindset.
All three steakhouses are different in their own way. One is Japanese-ish; another is corporate new school; another is updated old school — if any of that is meaningful to you (it shouldn’t be). They’re only different in the way that “Captain America” is different from “Thor.” At a certain level, you just have to wonder whether these affairs are crowding out the other stuff you love. There are only so many theaters. There are only so many city blocks. And we only have so much time before the $23 martinis knock us out while the big steaks go for our jugulars (and our climate).
We as critics try to judge restaurants for what they are, not for what they aren’t (“too bad this fish shack doesn’t serve Thai noodles”), but sometimes, when you take a broader view of neighborhoods, you notice an imbalance that’s worth mentioning.
For example: Maybe the oligarchs of The Penn District could’ve given us something different. Maybe this is too much damn steak.
Eleven Affordable Meat Skewers, Reviewed!
What meat skewers to order at Rule of Thirds, Yakitori Totto, Miss Ada. Plus: an essay on strawberry ice cream and “American Sublime”