Prime Grill Revisited

As many of you know, I reviewed the Prime Grill after eating there the first week they were open to the public and gave them a lousy write-up. I felt that they deserved another shot so I gave them another try this past Tuesday night. The main dining room was completely full so rather then sit in one of their side rooms we sat outside in the cabanas. This was a great move and I would suggest to any of you that are going to PG to sit outside. The tent is heated and the setting feels quiet and intimate. Our waiter was a very polite and helpful French gentleman named Patrick.

For starters I had the “wagyu sliders”. These are two mini-hamburgers supposedly made out of steak and they cost $25. Don’t order these, not that good and certainly not worth the money. If you want to try something different, the “chef’s signature roll” is a sushi roll that has thin Asian flavored cooked meat draped over the rice as opposed to fish served with a ginger sauce drizzled over it. I thought it was fantastic. My wife’s salmon crunch roll was also quite good although we could have done without the assorted tuna sampler.

Prime Grill has a different steak that they feature as a special for each night of the week (in addition to their standard menu) and on Tuesday it’s their “Delmonico” steak. One of the things I find amazing about the Prime Grill is that they have about 8 steaks on their standard menu plus an additional 5 specials for each night of the week and all of them are different variations of a rib-eye steak. The “Delmonico” is PG’s version of a steak made famous by Delmonico restaurant in New York during the mid 1800’s. It’s about 2 inches thick and very marbled. It seemed to be lightly breaded and fried or broiled. It was juicy, flavorful, and completely delicious – one of the best pieces of meat I’ve had in a long time. For $49 it’s pricey but really worth it. It comes with 4 large homemade onion rings which were similar to the ones from Jeff’s (as opposed to the regular steaks that come with fried onion slivers) but without much flavor. Patrick our waiter brought us a wine sauce and a béchamel sauce but the steak didn’t need them.

For desert I was going to have the sorbet but when Patrick told me that they had a “milles feuille” (not sure how to pronounce it so I just call it Napoleon) as the special for the evening I had to order it (as a rule, if there is a custard type desert available, I’m getting it and this includes any crème brulee, pot de crème, flan, pudding, etc). The Napoleon was excellent – it had thin layers of soft pastry layered with custard and it didn’t have that nasty, sweet icing layer on the top that the bakery versions always have. My espresso was disappointing but alas, most restaurant espressos unfortunately usually are.

(as a side note, I have an espresso machine by Nespresso in my office that makes delicious, consistent cups of espresso every time I use it. The machine costs $350 and the cost per shot is approximately 52 cents. It never ceases to amaze me when I go into restaurants that have commercial espresso machines that cost thousands of dollars and they can’t put out a product that’s half as good as what I make in my office. Drop the fancy copper wall unit and pick up a Nespresso machine at Bloomingdale’s! At $3.50 for a shot of espresso they’d still be making a pretty nice profit margin. AArrrrgggggghh!!!)

Our overall meal was great. The service was efficient, the food was very good and the ambiance was pleasant. The one negative thing I need to mention is the cost. Our meal for 4 people came out to $504 including tip and we didn’t order bottled water or a bottle of wine (we had 3 glasses). I have come to the conclusion that while Prime Grill is certainly the nicest kosher restaurant in the local LA area, it’s unfortunately just not in my budget.