"Can you stop thinking about that steak?" one of my friends emailed the next morning. "I can't."
I'm with him. Two days later, I'm still thinking about the steak at April Bloomfield's new restaurant, White Gold Butchers, (which she owns in partnership with Jocelyn Guest and Erika Nakamura, formerly of LA's Lindy and Grundy). These women have the best beef: I know it doesn't look like much, but this unassuming little steak is the stuff of dreams.
But then, everything we tried was extraordinary, from the chicken liver mousse with its thick slabs of charred bread
to the frilly little carpaccio with its cheese, herbs and mushrooms,
the fantastic ham-laced chicken snuggled beneath a puff pastry dome ... this is chicken pot pie's leap to immortality.
the salad with pistachios, shards of Parmesan in a lovely lemon dressing
and maybe, best of all, these potatoes, a take on hasselbacks, rich with meat drippings and topped with salmon roe. Listed among the sides, these deserve to be upgraded to appetizer status.
There's also this madly delicious version of fried rice.
Part butcher shop, part lunch counter (everyone seems to be focused on the lunchtime cheese steak), White Gold turns serious after dark. Wine. Waiters. Lowered lights. It's surely the best thing to happen to hungry Upper West Siders this year.