Michael Mina is an award winning chef and restaurateur that currently runs and operates over 40 restaurants worldwide. He opened this restaurant in the JW Marriott Essex House, right across from Central Park south and near Columbus Circle. This is his love letter to the classic American steakhouse. Bourbon Steak has multiple locations in the United States, so it’s not an entirely new restaurant. I picked this restaurant particularly because of their prix fixe menu that seems to give a pretty good spread of what this restaurant has to offer.

We won the theater lottery to watch another play in the Theater district. This was on my list for some reason, and it was conveniently very close to the theater. The menu seemed quintessential Italian American type food, and as a bonus, they also have a 3-course theater menu prix fixe for $55 per person. I was able to make a reservation pretty easily for 2 for 5:30 PM on a Wednesday night.

We’ve walked past this restaurant several times eating at various restaurants prior to watching a theater show. Tonight, we had to eat something before our 7 PM show. We made a reservation for this restaurant for 5 PM without any trouble. When you walk in, it seemed like a very bustling restaurant. Looking at the menu prior, I didn’t find it all that interesting, but we thought this was a good day to try it since we had to eat fast.

One of the nice parts of living and working in Manhattan is that there is so much you can do and improvise after work. We had a show at 8 PM from winning a lottery, so it was easy to meet up after work and look for something to eat. Pre-theater prix fixe menus are a nice thing. They are basically a small tasting menu that won’t fill your belly too much, and the price is reasonable.

We had yet another show to catch, so we decided to look around the Bryant Park area. I stumbled onto Charlie Palmer, and it had been on my list of steak places to try. What was nice about this place specifically is they offered a 2-course pre-theatre menu for $49 which included a starter and entree. If you wanted dessert, you would have to pay an additional $10. Lucky for us, we weren’t that hungry, so a 2-course meal sounded fine for us.

We’ve been to Boucherie before on 6th Ave near the West Village. We expected the food here to be similar but not the same as that location. I was craving for prime rib, and disappointingly, all the other places in the city were pretty expensive at $70 and up. But this restaurant had roast beef for a reasonable price, so I was expecting it to be similar enough to satisfy that hunger.