If I’d had more than 24 hours to myself in New York, then I can only begin to think of the cultural and artistic activities that I’d have enjoyed. Opera, cinema, Broadway, the Met – the list is endless. But if you’re only here for a short time, it’s eating and drinking that has to offer you the city’s finest entertainment, a truly interactive form of joyfulness that gives you all of Manhattan’s buzz and energy and brio from the comfort of a well-upholstered seat. Happy days, indeed.
I have never visited the city without having a fine steak, and so it was incumbent on me to try the Benjamin Steakhouse on 41st St, a short walk from Grand Central station. I had heard near-legendary things about Benjamin, part of a small group that has diversified into seafood in its newest restaurants, but which is proudly, even defiantly, carnivorous in this flagship outpost.
As soon as you walk in through the low-key entrance, you know that you’re standing on the shoulder of giants; the black and white photographs of the great and good may be a fixture of New York restaurants, but there’s an exception here, as everyone is looking genuinely delighted with the excellence of their meals.
As well they might. This is a serious place, serving serious steak with an Italian-American accent. The charming Michaela walks over to introduce herself and welcome us to the restaurant, and offers some sage suggestions as to the best ways to enjoy the comprehensive menu: “Old Fashioneds and Manhattan cocktails are a must-have, and there’s an r in the month, so it’s oyster season. But obviously you’re here for the steak, aren’t you?”
It was a rhetorical question, of course. I’d eyed up the 2-person sharer of the Porterhouse a while before, and it was almost an effort of will not to embrace it in all its bovine glory. But propriety has to be observed first, and, after all, the cocktails were very, very good indeed, just as the oysters – a mixture of the creamier, more luxuriant West Coast Ones and the sharper, tangier East Coast variety – were an absolute joy in and of themselves.
Then it was steak time, and oh readers, I can only convey the delights of a properly cooked bit of USDA beef, with a char to make you think of the pleasures of what superb meat should taste like. My dining companion works in the wine trade and so he perused the menu with the authority of a gentleman who knows his red wines; he ordered a bottle of 2016 Chateau Phélan Ségur with the aplomb of one who knows these things, and it was the perfect pairing to the Porterhouse.
There was a clever nod to restraint, in the form of a creamless creamed spinach, as well as very fine steakhouse fries, but it was the steak that we were there for, and it didn’t disappoint in any form. A dessert of tiramisu was every bit as good as we’d have expected, but this was a temple to perfectly cooked meat, and we left singing appropriate hallelujahs.
The next day, shortly before I left Manhattan for JFK and a London return, there was just time to pop round the corner from Fifth Avenue and dive into one of New York’s finest boutique hotels for a cocktail and lunch. The Whitby Hotel is one of the British group Firmdale’s three hotels in the city – including the peerless Warren Street in Tribeca – and it combines its founder Kit Kemp’s precepts about style, comfort and Anglicised chutzpah. It’s nigh-on impossible to book a room there – it remains one of the hottest places in town – but there was space for a meal, and, as I sipped on a superb Old Fashioned while perusing the menu, I counted myself very lucky to have got in there.
The dishes on offer will be familiar to anyone who’s been to the Ham Yard or Soho hotels in London, but they are executed with brio and panache. A starter of tuna tartare comes with yuzu and tahini emulsion, and is excellent; my companion and I are both in carnivorous mood for our mains and so there’s a good-natured tussle over which of us should have the beef fillet and which should plump for the skirt steak au poivre. (I went for the fillet and it was superb, although truth be told, I did find myself casting an envious glance at his frites.)
The wine list is, as ever, well chosen; I asked our charming waitress to see if she could find the same Bordeaux that I’d very much enjoyed at Warren Street earlier in the year to accompany the mains, and the alternative that she came up with, a fine Santenay from Domaine Jessiaume, was every bit as good. A finale of banoffee tart was a splendid conclusion to a fine repast.
And, indeed, to the past 24 hours in New York. I had been cossetted, challenged, stimulated, stretched and generally been given a thorough going-over, Manhattan style. I had, in other words, been to a marvellous party, and I couldn’t have liked it more.
