Don’t be fooled by the look on my boyfriend’s face as he eats his seseri, or grilled chicken neck, at Yakitori Torys. This is actually his favourite thing on the “Chicken Limited” menu.

That, the crispy chicken tail, and the chicken oyster sell out fast and are well worth arriving early for. I can’t speak to the grilled soft knee bone, though, as it’s been sold out every time we’ve been there in the past two years.

The place also has the best decor for taking faux-serious photos.

I went into my dinner at Keens Steakhouse with an extremely open mind. I’m a lover of Peter Luger, but I was under the impression that $90 steak is $90 steak wherever you go, and I was excited about the scotch-and-cigars atmosphere of Keens.

I hadn’t known to specify in my reservation that my boyfriend and I wanted to sit in the main dining room, so I was worried when all of the people in front of us were sent to different parts of the restaurant, but we were luckily seated downstairs under the ceiling entirely covered in clay tobacco pipes. The atmosphere is much darker and cozier than Luger’s, with dark walls and low light to contrast Luger’s whitewashed walls and bright windows shining in the midst of nowhere Brooklyn. This is the place you come to slurp oysters and talk about the things gentlemen do.

I love how it looks like the woman behind Kamran is blowing in his ear.

None of the appetizers enticed us in the least–though I’m sure my boyfriend would have jumped at the $65 seafood platter had I given him any indication that I was interested–so we opted for two side dishes with our slab of meat instead. We ordered the porterhouse for two, carrots with brown butter, and boiled baby potatoes with parsley and butter. For the record, any kind of restaurant with a separate menu section entirely for potatoes is my kind of restaurant.

We ordered our steak medium rare, because that’s how my boyfriend likes it, and I prayed that it’d be served on a hot dish like it is at Luger so I could allow my pieces to continue to cook. It was indeed, but we really didn’t need it to be, because the ends were so much darker than the middle that they were perfect for me and my desire for blackened beef.

Right away, I noticed that the plate just didn’t look as good as it does at Luger. The steak was smaller, and it was already cut off the bone. The bone was pathetically propped up on one end of the plate, which was almost worse than it not being there at all. I waited a minute to give our server a chance to put several slices on my plate like the waiters do at Luger, but he just walked away. It’s not that I even like that they put the steak right on your plate at Luger, but I somehow expected it.

The first bite of steak was just as juicy and steaky as any great steak I’ve had, but after that, I honestly believe that I could tell a difference between it and the steak at Luger. To be super, super honest, I think the steak I had at Primehouse might have actually been better than this one, but I don’t want to say that and risk losing my cred and have people think my palate is inferior.

There’s no doubt, though, that the sides we chose were better than anything we’ve had at Luger. My boyfriend said the cooked carrots were the best he’s had; we loved all of the butter left in the dish for spooning over our plates. The potatoes were the kind you close your eyes to savor completely.

My boyfriend ordered the crème brûlée, and I excitedly told him about a review I’d read in which the writer gushed about the deep dish that left plenty of cool custard underneath the layer of custard warmed by the torching of the sugar on top. What the reviewer failed to remind us was that a deeper versus wider dish meant there was a lot less caramel to enjoy.

However, everything I read about the hot fudge sundae was true. The woman at the table next to us was so impressed by the look of it that she leaned over to ask what it was. What it was was a giant cocktail glass filled with hot fudge an inch deep, several scoops of vanilla AND chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, slivered almonds, and wafer triangles. My boyfriend complained that the whipped cream didn’t compare to the schlag at Luger, but I was too busy having a heart attack over how much the hot fudge tasted just like my mom’s homemade sauce to notice.

I wanted to like Keens better than Peter Luger so I could stick to Manhattan when I want a great steak, but it looks like I’m stuck traveling to Brooklyn when I want to impress someone with a stack of meat. Keens wins for atmosphere, service, sides, and desserts hands down, though. And for saving me $20 on cab fare.

Meat fiend that I’m becoming, I find myself perusing steakhouse menus sometimes when I’ve been eating too much chicken and can feel my bloodthirst diminishing. My favorite recent find is the Angelo and Maxie’s menu, which divides their selections into Meat and Not Meat:

This is how all things in life should be classified.

I was a vegetarian from midway through high school through college for two reasons:

1) my entire family is made up of farmers, and I knew it’d really start ruffling some feathers when I announced I wasn’t eating the Thanksgiving turkey, and

2) I found this really sweet graphic of Ronald McDonald holding a sign that said “meat is murder”, and I wanted to use it on my proto-blog, which was a Geocities(!) website.

I decided to eat chicken later one Father’s Day to make my dad happy, and lo and behold, it made me happy instead. And so I’ve been eating meat ever since. For the longest time, anything but fowl still weirded me out, but now I’m full-on pork and beef all the time. Chicken dishes almost seem childish to me nowadays, especially after watching something like this:

That’s the burger challenge from this first season of “Top Chef Masters”. And boy, does it make me want a grilled slab o’ cow.

My boyfriend, Kamran, and I base most of our Restaurant Week dining decisions on the inventiveness of the menu, which is why we chose Primehouse New York over Smith & Wollensky or Delmonico’s on the 31st. Passion fruit and gazpacho? Yes, please.

I don’t care for seafood and absolutely can’t eat tomatoes, so even though a salad is the least-appealing appetizer in the world to me, it was my only choice, and it turned out to be one I didn’t regret. The lettuce was lettuce, but the goat cheese with the bacon was perfect for the glutton in me, and figs are one of my favourite fruits. There was a upper-thick slice of bacon on either side of the plate, and while one was perfectly crisp, the other was chewy and fatty. While I’m usually much more of the burnt bacon type, I welcomed the diversity.

Kamran ordered the passion fruit gazpacho, of course. It arrived with the mound of crab and basil (or tarragon–we weren’t sure) looking rather lonely in the center of the large bowl, but then the waiter poured the soup around it for a delightful presentation. I don’t know that I’ve ever had gazpacho in my life, so I’m not sure how it’s supposed to taste, but this tasted exactly like salsa. A really, really good salsa. The kind you always want in Mexican joints but never actually get.

Kamran and I like to get different entrées and sample each other’s, so when I decided on the filet (obviously), he went for the hanger, thinking he’d appreciate the larger size. But no. The moment he saw the look on my face as I tasted my first bite, he knew he’d made a mistake.

I know the steak looks a little crusty and the vegetables a little drab in this photo, but the dish was very much the opposite of both these adjectives. Kamran’s hanger was a little bit embarrassing next to my filet, and although he tried to tell himself that it was just delicious in a different way, it wasn’t. It was decent and nothing more, and Kamran didn’t even want all of the extra portion size in the end. Sorry, hanger.

We didn’t even discuss getting a side, but as soon as our waitress walked away, I casually mentioned macaroni and cheese, and so it was. It was very homemade-tasting and had a nice crunchy topping. It was pretty standard, but standard mac and cheese is still pretty special.

My bittersweet chocolate tart was rich and fudgey, although the cake crust dumbed it down. No complaints, though. I ate every last bite of it and mopped up the chocolate drizzle on the plate with the sliver of chocolate stuck in my ice cream, too.

Kamran prefers a lighter dessert, so he was happy with his strawberry shortcake. The crunchy coconut slivers provided a nice texture, and there was no chance of the coconut sorbet with fresh strawberries being bad. I finished Kamran’s dessert for him, too, if you must know.

For the remainder of Restaurant Week, Primehouse appears to be lunch only, but we went at night and were surprised at how many couples weren’t trying the Restaurant Week menu. All around us were tables with raw bar towers, and one in particular caught Kamran’s eye, because he swore Tom Colicchio was sitting at it. I wasn’t convinced, so we called it a truce by deciding that it was his younger brother, Rod Colicchio. (Who doesn’t really exist, of course.) But watching to see how the supposed Rod Colicchio was enjoying his food became the focal point of the dinner nonetheless.

I really thought my filet at Primehouse was as good as any I’ve had in the city, although I hesitate to say that, knowing that the restaurant is part of the B.R. Guest restaurant conglomerate. However, a waiter near us flaunted the fact, telling his table that their size allows them access to the best ingredients. And they’re serious about what they serve, going so far as to have their own Kentucky bull (named Prime) that provides all of the beef they serve in the dining room. So maybe I shouldn’t be embarrassed to have liked it so much.

The only thing the older steakhouses have on Primehouse in my mind is the environment. While I appreciate a more trendy setting for a date, I also like how the sparse, serious décor of a steakhouse like Peter Luger lends itself to more of a focus on the food. Primehouse was full of soft chairs, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and an inexplicable slick 80s feel. It was lovely, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t my grandpa’s steakhouse. Which may be just what you’re looking for.

Kamran and I arrived at last year’s Big Apple Barbecue in Madison Square Park just as it was closing down. We got free leftover Snapple and ate cheeseburgers at Shake Shack. It was a lovely time but sadly barbequeless.

This year, we planned a little better and decided to go on Sunday when there was a better chance of rain and therefore a better chance that all of the less-barbeque-fanatic types would opt to stay home. We found the menus of each of the 15 pitmasters, bookmarked guides to the best of the festival on our BlackBerrys, and decided to arrive halfway between the lunchtime and dinnertime rushes.

What we found when we arrived was total chaos. The lines stretched for blocks, every last inch of ground was covered either by someone eating barbeque or someone’s sauce-covered trash, and our BlackBerry bookmarks suddenly wouldn’t load. We headed for the information booth and found a map, recognized a couple of names from the guides, and decided to narrow our feasting down to two pitmasters.

We headed toward the tent for Big Bob’s, but the line was so long that we lost track of it halfway back. We found what looked to be the end of something and asked the people there which vendor they were waiting in line for. “We’re not sure,” they said. But we decided that no matter which line we were in, we were going to get barbeque, and that’s all we cared about.

A giant truck and trailor beside us pumped Santogold and Vampire Weekend while people attempted to pitch metal rings into a bucket in order to win mini footballs. Men pushing trash carts blew whistles to get our attention before they ran us over. Local politicians shook hands and passed out color brochures requesting our votes.

It would’ve been, you know, not totally miserable had there been any end in sight. And with long lines come all of the people willing to do anything to get at the front of them. An old man appeared to Kamran’s right and stayed there, sort of hovering between us and the people behind us and if to confuse one of us into thinking he was legitimately with the other. We learned the best way to stand to discourage people from wanting to cross through the line using the space in front of us.

These people want some BBQ!

After fifty minutes, we were finally to the portion of the line that was actually stanchioned off, and we felt like we were safe. But just then, this man in a green t-shirt somehow got in front of us and seemed to be talking on his cellphone just to avoid a confrontation when we got brave enough to call him out on being a line-cutter. Kamran did this slick little shoulder maneuver that got us in front of him, but then he excused himself and pushed ahead of us. I was about ready to bust out my shiv, but the guy ducked under the stanchion and joined a group of people holding a bulldog puppy. A few minutes later, the guy somehow ended up with a plate of barbeque while we still waited in line.

Totally intense line craziness and that jerk in the green shirt on the left.

We reached the tent and paid, but juuuuust as it was our turn to get a sandwich, the pan of barbeque ran out, and the man scooping pork parts held us up. While we waited, he gnawed on the super-spice-infused burnt bark and didn’t offer any to us, even though it’s obviously the best part. When the pitmaster brought him a new tray of chopped shoulder, he tried to pour the bark into the new dish, but the pitmaster said it wasn’t fresh enough and threw it away. Which both impressed me and made me sad.

Blurry Pitmaster Chris Lilly with Dana Cowin, who we nerdily recognized from an episode of “Top Chef”.

With our pulled pork sandwiches and our sides of coleslaw finally in hand, we decided there was absolutely no way we were going to stand in line at any of the other stands and scuttled away as quickly as we could to a quiet side street to gobble. In the end, our sandwiches with half white sauce and half traditional BBQ sauce were delicious, but having been to another barbeque joint that Friday night, we couldn’t help but think that sitting down and not having to wait an hour for a sandwich far outweighed any extra tastiness that pork might have had. And we’re not sure it actually had any extra tastiness, anyway.

BBQ Bliss

In defense of the Big Apple Barbecue, my friend Ash arrived right at start time on Sunday morning and said she was able to get quite a sampling of pig before the lines got crazy. And they do offer a fast pass that lets you skip the line . . . for $100 per person. I like that each vendor only sold one type of pork and one side, and I like that they did a great job of giving each tent the same sort of sign telling what was on their menu and how much it cost. However, maybe next year the workers with purple flags on tall poles who were supposed to be marking the end of each line could stop chatting with the crowd and actually mark the ends of the lines, ifyouknowhatImean.

Not that I’ll be there to see it, since Kamran and I have agreed to treat each other to a nice sit-down dinner at any of the local barbeques next year instead.