Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Prime Meats (no. 7 of 12)

We are definitely not getting to all 12 restaurants. But we did visit Prime Meats last week. And overall, it was meh. Though related, Prime Meats is not as tasty as Frankie's. The food is good. The ambiance nice. The service was fine. Nothing wrong with the place, but it's not one of the places we'd decidedly return to.

So what did we have?

We started with oysters from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They were excellent - fresh, briny, juicy and visually appealing.

SOS followed that with her typical first-time-in-a-restaurant-order of a burger. This $18 burger was fine, almost too fine. The patty was a perfect cylinder that exactly met the bun's edges. The toppings were all sliced uniformly and were seemingly fresh. In the end, the burger had two downfalls. First, she asked for it to be medium rare. After finishing it, there wasn't a drop of "juice" on the plate. It was too medium and not juicy enough. Second, it had no soul. It felt like a picture postcard representation of a burger. Maybe in 2011 Brooklyn, we're too used to some burgers having a strong bacon taste while others have a unique crust and others have a good deal of salt within the meat. This had no character, no soul.

I ordered the choucroute garnie. It's a classic Alsatian dish and the preparation was fantastic. The sauerkraut was equally sour, rich, and cabbage-y. Delicious. And the meats were rich and slightly gamy. We loved it.

We ordered a quartino of the most bland, unappealing wine I can remember. Strangely, it came from the very reputable negociant - Joseph Drouhin. This wine tasted watered-down.

Total, with tax and tip came to $80. Not crazy, not a value. Very meh.

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