Delmonico’s was a steak restaurant I recall going a long time ago. I wrote that the steak kind of sucked because it wasn’t flavorful or fatty. Now that I’ve gone through an extensive journey in steak world, I’m curious how my palette has updated itself. We went to this restaurant mainly because it apparently is known for its Baked Alaska, my favorite dessert. Fortunately, they offered this dessert option in their restaurant week menu at $60 per person, which includes choice of 1 appetizer, 1 entree, and 1 dessert.

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.

We were around the Bloomingdales area running some errands back and forth around the Midtown East area and decided to take the risk of looking for a restaurant without making reservations since we normally eat dinner fairly early. This Quality Italian seems to be from the same owners of Quality Meats and Quality Bistro which are on my list. Quality Italian is a modern take on the Italian American steakhouse tradition, and the prices are probably on the mid to high range.

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.

This place is across the street from Food Cellar. It’s nestled in a garage and used to serve a lot of steak dishes. The menu has changed into a more casual patio like experience (I am guessing just for the summer). When we arrived, there was no table service. Instead you have to go to the counter and place your order there. The menus are shown via QRCode. After you place your order, you carry the utensils, dishes, and drinks back to your table.

We were looking for a decent steak place that was walkable from where we were. The best steak house in my opinion in the city is Keen’s Steakhouse, so expectations were set pretty low. This venue is fairly nice. It’s close to Smith and Wollensky and located inside some hotel. This was one of the few steakhouses at this time that had hardly any people, so one can only think that this place wouldn’t be that good.

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

Got the rare strip. It was pretty good for $30 for 14 oz. Not a lot of fat on it. I think the price keeps getting cheaper because not a lot of people go to this.

New York strip was so so. Cream of spinach was not good. There were lots of tendons in the meat. The lava cake dessert was good though.

Skirt steak was pretty good. Very affordable. Good date spot I think.