American Cut – A Cut Above

Who says steakhouses are only for guys night out? Not the Pants! In fact, we organized a dinner with our favorite girls, and it wasn’t for us all to shout over rabbit food and cosmos… these chicks wanted dirty martinis and red meat, with a good scene on the side, so we headed out to Marc Forgione’s latest TriBeCa endeavor, American Cut for our TGIF feast.

Although it’s been open for months now, the scene on a Friday night was still hot – Bethenny Frankel over there, and lots of double dates in between, but we were situated in a cushy corner booth with plenty of table space – perfect for over-ordering and lots of sharing. Although our waiter was a little overwhelmed with our urgency to order drinks and wine, we received both quickly while we were perusing the menus and strategizing our order… never a quick or easy task with five girls each with their own dietary hang-ups.

We noticed a favorite or two from the Forgione menu (ahem, chili lobster), and some takes on steakhouse classics (crab cakes, wedge, and of course plenty of cuts of meat), but noticeably absent was an a la carte raw bar. All good, because there were enough  options to make the  decision process difficulty and lengthy as we narrowed down our choices.

The best part of the entire meal, in my opinion, arrived in dinner-carb form with the Everything Bagel Biscuits with Veggie Cream Cheese Butter. If I wasn’t carrying a dress bag, those fuckers that my carb-phobic friends didn’t touch would have come home with me for breakfast. They were hot, crispy, fluffy, and the creative butter melted on them just made the entire bite orgasmic (sorry, my husband was out of town).

Next out (rather quickly) was the chili lobster, caesar salad, and shrimp cocktail, which surprisingly came out in a bowl already doused in cocktail sauce and horseradish – perfect, less work! The chili lobster had 5 decent sized pieces nestled in a spicy sauce with buttery Texas toast soaking up its amazingness, while the caesar was classic and super creamy. There was (thankfully) enough shrimp for everyone to have one (maybe two), and with all this food, we definitely didn’t need more; however they packed the perfect amount of punch and the citrus mixed in cut the tangy horseradish.

Dinner was a little more tricky, because when dining with ladies, no one is ordering a Tomahawk Ribeye (how cool would that be?!). That said, we ordered two filets and one strip, figuring there would be some left over to bring home to one of our lucky men. Well, that didn’t happen, as the steak was so delish and seasoned perfectly that we finished every last slice. I happened to have liked the filet more than strip, which is odd because strip usually has more taste and it was cooked a little less than the thick filet, but both were perfectly charred on the outside and tender in the middle (kind of like me, when I’m mad at my husband).  Although they were out of the sunchoked spinach (how?!?), we had twice baked potatoes with cheddar and black truffle (!!!!!!!) and broccolini (snooze) on the side.

You’d think after all of this, we’d pass on dessert, but no… another tough decision, so we ordered not one but two things to share – Meyer Lemon Tart, and a Malt Blondie . I have to admit, this part of the meal was extremely fuzzy for me after a round of martinis and 2 bottles of wine, but after checking back in with the girls, I guess the dessert wasn’t too memorable for anyone else either; the Malt Blondie came up on top.

“Cut”ting to the chase: American Cut is a fantastic steakhouse with some modern updates on traditional steakhouse fare.  Although it is very busy and buzzy right now, this is more chef and location driven than due to anything groundbreaking.  High -quality cooking always outlasts any trends, and I hope to see American Cut become a long-standing mainstay on the meat scene.