1) With the BruniCurve™ on haitus until October 26th, Marian Burrows dons her elastic-waisted pants and heads to Ben & Jack's, the latest of the Peter Luger spin-offs. (Smart, we have to say, to send a woman to a steakhouse, as men are so easily bought by red wine and porterhouse.) While she was quite pleased about hers and Jackie Mason's friendship, she was only one-star (but that is a real one star, mind you) happy with the food and service in the midtown dining room. But perhaps of equally important note is her thinly veiled hatred for Luger:
One night some slices of a porterhouse were tough, but on two other visits, all were tender, juicy and full of flavor: what you always hope a steak will be, but seldom is. Then on a fourth visit the steak was slightly chewy and not very beefy in flavor. Filet mignon, though cooked to death at the diner's request, was still tender. Another evening, a medium-rare fillet was also tender, with flavor as good as that cut of meat can have. But it was dry. A rib-eye steak was tender but flavorless; lamb chops were not memorable. In both cases the meat was not much different from what I had recently sampled on a visit to Luger.With Strong having hated on Luger recently too, we've got to wonder if all of these folks leaving the Brooklyn establishment has taken its toll. More on this soon, we imagine. [NYT]
2) Tables for Two at Tides this week: As the hour gets later and the line outside dwindles away, Tides turns into a cozy little social club that any neighborhood could love. [NYer]
Seven more on the other side.
3) Sietsy in a rare appearance in Manhattan checks in on the year-plus-old Landmarc:
Chances are you'll find exactly what you want to eat somewhere on the folio-size menu. In the mood for something bar-like and predictable? Order the burger ($14) or the fried calamari with a spicy tomato dipping sauce ($9). Kinky? There's an appetizer of three roasted marrow bones that looks like a miniature Three Mile Island, with a haystack of pickled purple cabbage set between the reactor towers. A generous half-loaf of toasted bread comes alongside; use it not only to mop the liquid tallow, but also smear it with the browned and jellied bits that lurk on the inside circumference of the bones, extracted with a tiny wooden scraper.For a guy who writes for the Voice he's got a unique idea of kink. But, that said, we do like to hear that the Tribeca go-to is on track. [VV]
Elsewhere, Rubenstein is a big fan of Centrico; Bernstein makes a fool of himself in Little Korea; $25 and Under at Kredens in Queens; Hodgson jumps the gun on Thor by about six months after she did the same disservice to Cercle Rouge two weeks ago; and the early word on Cookshop.
