Monkey Bar is a restaurant from the same people that are behind Au Cheval and 4 Charles in NYC. The Monkey Bar has a rich history dating back to the 1930s, where it formerly served New York City’s upper social class. In 2022, it reopened under the ownership of the 4 Charles team, and they created a menu that was very similar to the aforementioned restaurants. I was craving for prime rib, so I wanted to give this a try since I am reluctant to snipe 4 Charles reservations.

This restaurant is a fairly close walk east of Rockafeller Center. I stumbled onto this restaurant as I was looking for something new and solo-friendly for a Saturday. It turns out that this restaurant has a Friday/Saturday prime rib prix-fixe menu, which has my attention. For $65 per person, you get 3 courses: a caesar salad, prime rib with french fries, and a choice of dessert. That doesn’t seem like a bad deal to me.

The Grill was always something on my bucket list not only for a prime rib trolley, but also for Baked Alaska, my favorite dessert. Every place makes this different, so it’s fun to see different interpretations. In addition, this restaurant has always been difficult to get reservations timely, so we were able to book this a few weeks out for 5:30 PM on a Friday evening. The restaurant is located in the Seagram building, and the entrance is located off of 52nd St.

One of our traditions that will be coming back soon is eating out on Fridays after work. We’ve been exploring the heart of midtown area and trying to walk into restaurants without reservations. We tried to go to one of the Cuban restaurants, but unfortunately they required a 40 minute wait. This restaurant wasn’t too far away, but they did have prime rib on the menu. When we arrived, it seems there was some show going on, but we were able to sit at a small table in the bar area.

For this memorial weekend, we wanted to go somewhere out of town, but we had to cancel plans including non refundable bus passes. I’ve been watching the Cooking Channel as my background noise, and they had an episode of steak. My partner hadn’t been to Keen’s, and I thought this would be a great time to introduce them to it. I had been here back in 2018 for the first time, and it had a very delicious, if not the best, prime rib.

For the first visit and not pictured, we got the aged rib eye for 2. It was surprisingly good and flavorful. The applewood smoked slab of bacon was thick and tasty. For 2 people, it’s enough to just get 1. The prime rib on the bone was super thick and good. Like Keen’s, this is a monster and can probably be shared by 2 people. I would say the thickness of this was probably close to 1.

The cream of spinach tastes like Lawry’s. The horseradish cream was good. The prime rib not as good as Keen’s.