Delightful Discoveries at Hawksmoor | The New Yorker

Does New York Metropolis require a different steak dwelling? Furthermore, would its gastronomic horizons be brightened by the addition of an English steak house? No and absolutely not, a food items-aficionado good friend mentioned, brow arched, when I raised the dilemma. Potentially it was in anticipation of these types of skepticism that Hawksmoor, an upscale U.K. steak-household group, pulled out all the stops when it opened its ninth outlet (of ten), in Gramercy Park, final yr.

Housed in the former assembly corridor of the United Charities Making, Hawksmoor, all stained-glass windows and vaulted, ornate ceilings, recollects a Victorian library or a palatial aristocratic household. “I love the reality that generally anybody who’s at any time walked via these doorways has never witnessed this room just before, simply because it’s been closed to the community for far more than a century,” Will Beckett, a co-founder of the group, instructed me. “When you stroll in, there’s a sense of wonder. You believe you know what to count on, but basically you don’t.”

The same philosophy could utilize to the foods, starting off with the dressed oysters. To this lover of raw bivalves and tart heat, the Scotch-bonnet mignonette tasted like a considerably superior different to my normal D.I.Y. treatment—lemons squeezed to smithereens and a soup of Tabasco. One more pleasant discovery: the ash-baked beets. Cooking over coals is a theme of the establishment, the executive chef, Matt Bernero, explained to me. Keep a beet on a hearth long plenty of and it acquires an earthy depth pickled fennel and horseradish further more tease out the smokiness.

If you are at Hawksmoor, possibilities are you are a carnivore. What is refreshing about the meat here—and what mammoth slabs of meat they are—is how small the kitchen fusses with it. This is simply because 50 percent the function has been done beforehand: the beef is sourced completely from family-run farms, with cattle elevated on hay and pasture. The other 50 percent of the job is performed by the charcoal, which imparts a crisp, black exterior to the steak, an desirable contrast to its crimson, yielding inside.

It usually takes self-confidence to period the main function with absolutely nothing but salt, eschewing even butter, but, as Hawksmoor’s cuts attest, the exercise highlights the unmitigated richness of the beef. When I bit into my hunk of T-bone, which I’d ordered scarce, I was shocked by its leanness, elasticity, and nutty tang. I was, even so, also grateful for my anchovy hollandaise, 1 of five accompanying sauces on give. (Term to the smart: skip the bland, unctuous peppercorn sauce and bone-marrow gravy.)

Less than the advice of a very genial waiter, I tried out the creamed spinach, but its nutmeg and cayenne seasoning, rather of reducing the product, exuded a distracting funk. You’re better off with the Caesar or the lettuce-and-herb salad. Or, if you want to clog your arteries like a real hedonist, go for the beef-fats fries, which dial up the umami so a lot that the expense to your cardiovascular health appears virtually value it.

It was late in the food when I made the decision to get a cocktail. I had feared doing so mainly because I was specific the beverages at an English steak dwelling would be so stiff that a light-weight like me would need to be wheelbarrowed dwelling. I was happy to be improper. The two the Hawksmoor Calling (a consider on a Tom Collins) and the Shaky Pete’s Ginger Brew (“somewhere concerning a selfmade ginger beer and a shandy,” the waiter mentioned) had been so smooth that I suspected they were virgin they ended up not. This must have been why, when I purchased the sticky-toffee pudding, “the most English dessert on the menu,” according to my waiter, I was emboldened to explain to him how astonished I was that a thing so English could be so good. My companion tried using to shush me, but it was far too late. The waiter nodded with a smile. This was not the to start with time he’d heard the sentiment. (Entrées $22-$65.) ♦