Is Michael Mina's Bourbon Steak Worth It at $250 Per Person?
Is Michael Mina's Bourbon Steak Worth It at $250 Per Person?
Plus, everything you need to know about the $76 rib cap steak, the famous tuna tartare, and other luxe dishes
Let’s have a $45 Wagyu Old Fashioned!
Enjoy these initial thoughts on Bourbon Steak. Paid subscribers can access the full review, plus guides like New York’s Best Chops and the city’s Best Budget Steaks.
Michael Mina has long ranked as one of the country’s top chefs — he largely rose to fame on the West Coast — but he’s never opened a New York restaurant.
Until now.
This fact alone will lure at least a few of you to Bourbon Steak on Central Park South. It’s a posh restaurant for a posh slice of the city — a neighborhood teeming with designer skyscrapers, $15 million apartments, and at least one gallery hawking crappy AI-style paintings of SpongeBob and Bugs Bunny.
I like to call the neighborhood Times Square for Billionaires.
This will not be an inexpensive meal. But some of you know this already, because you got roped into that client dinner at Bourbon Steak in Scottsdale. Or in Orange County. Or in Nashville. So yes, it’s fair to say that this is Mina’s first New York restaurant, but the better descriptor is that it’s his seventh Bourbon Steak — and his ninth steakhouse — all of which rank among his 30 or so domestic restaurants.
Every single one of those venues serves “Michael Mina’s tuna tartare,” Eater NY reports. It’s pretty good tartare!
But Bourbon Steak, for the most part, specializes in the type of standard indulgences you’d expect to encounter in the Essex House, where a nice two bedroom with park views will set you back $19,000/month (not a bad deal, actually).
Things can get quite opulent here. To wit: There’s brioche with black truffle butter. And black truffle-infused onion soup. And black truffle mac. And a separate side of black truffle butter for your steak, a nine-dollar supplement.
Shall I go on?
There are slabs of seared foie gras to accompany your meat. And scallops with foie gras emulsion. And whole lobes of foie gras for the table ($225!!!), as well as truffle fries, lobster pot pie ($130), bourbon-flambeed chocolate fondue with cookie dough bonbons and churros (if you’re sick of non-flambeed fondue), random flecks of gold leaf, Petrossian caviar service with jamon Iberico, wagyu tenderloin, wagyu tartare, wagyu ribeyes, two types of wagyu strips (Australia or Japan), and — let’s see here — sides of grilled shrimp to pair with your meat, a nice little ode to the Outback or Applebee’s.
The steak and shrimp combo is actually pretty fun.
Or maybe you’re in the mood for a “tableside cocktail experience,” where someone swings by and makes an Old Fashioned washed in wagyu fat (waste not want not) for $45. And if you’re feeling like you didn’t go hard enough because you ordered the ordinary Old Fashioned for a mere $30, you can have a server come by and have them “smoke” your cocktail for a five dollar surcharge.
It’s all very pre-crash, very 2006. Though the energy isn’t so much “hip aughts revival” as it is Perpetual Corporate Gilded Age. That’s especially apparent when the bill arrives. My six-ounce rib cap — a uniquely marbled steak that actually doesn’t get a lot of airtime in New York — ran $98 after tax and tip.
Then again, all steakhouses are expensive these days. And really, money doesn’t seem to be on the minds of folks watching the game at the bar, or in any of the venue’s other 300 seats. Men showed up in unremarkable button downs and blazers. Here’s a tall guy with a fully shaved head, in the style of a bank CEO (we’ve seen this before). Oh, and there’s a bloke with a baggy, wrinkled silk shirt. Yeah.
Bourbon Steak is precisely the type of place tourists and office folks swing by for a no-big-deal $500 meal for two. It has the air of any anonymous hotel spot that’s been open for a decade or longer. And that’s what brings us to the real story, which is this: Bourbon Steak feels confident ignoring the more interesting developments in our city’s red meat scene over the past few years.
This place is simply happy to be the seventh Bourbon Steak.
The State of Steak in NYC…
The sacred act of eating red meat in the five boroughs has changed tremendously in the past two decades. Yes, yes, New York has no shortage of interchangeable steakhouses, venues serving thick cuts of bacon, lousy creamed spinach, and forgettable porterhouses the size of adult cats.
But when we crave red meat these days, we can hit up a really good hot pot chain like Haidilao. We can splurge on interesting dry-aged cuts, like the Gorgonzola-aged steak at Carne Mare, or the rump at Hawksmoor. We can test out the extended beef tasting at Bōm or the Korean American butcher’s feast at Cote.
Sometimes, a chile-rubbed ribeye at Atla will suffice. Or we can try out one of the infinite varieties of au poivre popping up on menus around town in clever ways (Lord’s adds pork trotters).
And then there’s Bourbon Steak.
Mina’s restaurant doesn’t seem interested in adding anything to our city’s dynamic red meat scene. The goal here, rather, is to provide a taste of familiarity to wealthy folks who love Bourbon Steaks in Tennessee, Florida, and Arizona. And that’s perfectly acceptable!
But can anyone blame New Yorkers for wanting more? Can you blame us for desiring something more ambitious or creative when one of the country’s top chefs shows up to bat in Manhattan for the first time?
Alas, the steaks here are just steaks. Strips. Ribeyes. Porterhouses. Filets. Wagyu or Prime. Some are dry-aged; some aren’t. At least they’re cooked over a wood fire!
So how was my $260 meal for one?
It was tasty! Well, mostly.
My dinner included cold abalone, spicy tuna tartare, the rib cap, a side of shrimp, a dessert, a beer, and a martini. But would I go back? And does the quality of the food keep pace with these steep prices? Scroll past the paywall for all the details!
And keep in mind that dinner for one can easily top $250 per person.