dylan prime for dad’s birthday (foie gras butter as grundle button)
6 November 2007
On Saturday night, my dad and brother came up from Philly to visit me here in NYC and the three of us had dinner at Dylan Prime.
And – my god. Holy crap. Zoot alor. However you want to say it, this place is fucking legit. The food was so incredibly good it was almost uncomfortable, an experience bordering on "sensual" – three grown men, moaning after bites of food, throwing their heads back and smacking their hands on the table in stifled awe – an experience that should probably not be shared between a father and his two sons. It was the culinary equivalent of getting a handjob in the same champagne room in which your dad is getting a lap dance in one corner and your brother has his wallet halfway into the dancer to your left.
The occasion for this dinner was my dad’s birthday. In October, my dad turned 52. My brother and sister and I asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he said new seat covers for his truck. I could have probably guessed that one; every present I’ve gotten for my father since I was old enough to understand gift-giving has involved his car or truck, tools, or cigarettes (and recently, guns). However, at 52, after all the cartons of Marlboro Reds, circular saws, and luxury car washes, he’s probably running out of ideas for gifts that represent manliness. Next year, I’ll have to get him a picture of a man punching another man or a lion in the face, smoking a cigarette, and building a shelving unit. Because I’m seriously running out of ideas too.
Despite the new seat covers, I wanted to buy him a nice steak. Once a month, my friend Nicole and I, rich young sexy well-read New Yorkers (one of us, at least), go out to a fancy dinner and drop $250 on steak and whiskey (for me) and non-steak and martinis (for her). I was raving about one of these dinners when my dad, who grew up as one of ten kids in a po’ Irish Catholic family in a three bedroom rowhome in South Philly, said the first time he had filet mignon was on his honeymoon – and it blew his mind. I may have cried a little after I heard that. I also may have ripped up some $20 bills, just because I can. Either way, since that conversation I’ve been trying to get my dad to come up to NYC for a nice steak, and his birthday provided a good excuse.
My brother tagged along as well, because I wanted to treat him to a celebratory dinner. My brother Dennis is infuriatingly smart and was recently accepted to his first law school, a school so good it would probably have me shot if I came within one hundred yards of its campus (and I’m pretty fucking smart). The good news is that in about five years I’m going to have a really sweet vacation home to crash at, so I’d better start being nice to him now. The bad news is that ten years from now I’m going to have conversations like:
My kid: "Daddy, why does Uncle Dennis wake up before noon, shave every day, and not cry after dinner?"
Me: "YOU KEEP YOUR GODDAMN NOSE OUT OF MY BUSINESS! Now go fix Daddy his bloody mary – his stories are coming on."
My dad and brother arrived from Philly around 4pm on Saturday and I started drinking right away. My dad no longer drinks – let’s not ask about this, thanks – and my brother immediately took a nap on the couch. But that didn’t stop me from having four calming pints of Dead Guy Ale, a delightful beer from Portland, Oregon with a nice kick (seriously, the Beer Room at the Whole Foods on the Bowery is changing the way I live my life). We watched "Bad Santa" and by the time it was over, it was time to start primping and preening for the night. And I was already feeling pretty drunk. Off to Dylan Prime we went.
One of Dylan Prime’s advantages as a steakhouse threatened to be an obstacle for the dinner with my dad. So far as I can tell, my father eats only four things: red meat, pizza, potatoes, and cheerios. This is in no way an exaggeration and is a complete list of my dad’s diet; I have never seen him eat seafood, vegetables or even chicken (who the F doesn’t eat chicken?). But what I like about Dylan Prime is its non-traditional sides. For example, every steakhouse has potatoes, creamed spinach, etc. While Dylan Prime has those items, it also has several unique sides like prosciutto and parmesan bread pudding; sweet corn, lump crab and avocado risotto; and lobster and white truffle mac and cheese. While these sides are delicious – the corn, crab and avocado risotto might be one of three best things I’ve ever tasted in my life – I have a better chance of getting my dad to eat a baby arm than an avocado (at least the former is red meat).
But much to my surprise and delight, my dad was rather flexible with his tastes on this particular evening, in large part because of the encouragement of me and my brother. We started off with four appetizers: the lobster bisque, the goat cheese gnocchi (with lobster and crisp prosciutto in pesto broth), the scallops (with roasted sun chokes, broiled tomatoes and citrus sage sauce), and the pork belly tater tots (with apple cider veal stock reduction). I didn’t get to try the lobster bisque because my dad ate the whole thing. So I guess he got over his fear of seafood, or he otherwise thought it was a bowl of creamy looking ketchup. The goat cheese gnocchi was delicious but tantalizing; not only was it a small portion, but, as a fattie, I grew angry trying to eat it, as I tried in vain to get the doughy gnocchi, the moist lobster meat, and the crisp, hard prosciutto in every forkfull. When I succeeded, I was rewarded with a delicious and unique combination that makes my mouth water as I write this. But the process of eating it was like trying to teach a bear to sew. If no one was looking, I would have used my hands and been much happier doing so.
I like scallops, but I’ve always thought there’s only so much you can do with them, and the man who first wrapped one in bacon pretty much ended the discussion right then and there. Still, and despite the fact that studies have shown that I can eat up to 40 scallops in one sitting, these tasted delicious with my Manhattan. But it was the pork tater tots that blew me out of the fucking water. Delicate, juicy, tangy pork in a lightly fried coating, with the most lively sauce – the apple cider veal stock – I’ve had in some time. Each element complement each other perfectly. I rate food on a scale of bad, good, great, and WOW. This was a WOW food. If it’s possible to have sexual feelings for a tater tot, then I do, my friends. I do.
Next was the main course: 11oz filet for me, 11oz filet for my dad, and surf and turf for my brother (thanks again for that, Dennis). Like many steakhouses, Dylan Prime offers a choice of chapeaux, which is the French word for "stuff you can put on top of your steak," as well as side sauces (actually, it’s the French word for hat, I think). My brother and I went with the foie gras butter chapeaux and the bordelaise sauce, and my dad decided on the bacon and cheddar chapeaux with peppercorn sauce.
Um, yeah.
In either my sophomore or junior year of high school, my buddy Jim discovered something he called "the grundle button" (bear with me here). The grundle – also called the choada, choate, or taint – is the area between a man’s balls and his asshole. Jim discovered that while masturbating, if just before climaxing a man applies pressure to this area (thus, "pushes the grundle button"), the intensity of his orgasm is greatly increased. Every guy at the lunch table left school that day and went home to push his grundle button, including yours truly. I remember when I first tried it I was standing in the shower masturbating, and when I pushed the grundle button and climaxed, I nearly fell, fainted, right there in the shower. It still stands as one of the most powerful orgasms I’ve ever had; the only way I can describe it is that it felt like someone pushed the "reset" button on my whole body – my mind was completely wiped clean, I was without any conscious thought, and I may have actually lost consciousness for a millisecond or two. It was, very literally, breathtaking, and also very nearly an out of body experience. To this day, I push the grundle button, but it’s too intense for regular use. I will do it only on special occasions (my birthday, an especially good week at work, any time a girl is wearing a blouse and she moves a certain way so that the shirt stretches and I can see her boobies between the shirt’s buttons, etc). The goodness and intensity of your standard orgasm is more than enough for me for everyday use, thank you very much.
This is the best way to describe the effect that the foie gras butter chapeaux and the bordelaise sauce has on the filet mignon at Dylan Prime. By itself, the filet is a masterpiece, the zenith of culinary refinement, 11oz of juicy, tender meat, simmering on the plate and satiating the appetite. It is simply and totally delicious.
But when you add a healthy pat of foie gras butter, the richest, creamiest butter known to man, and the bordelaise sauce, so rich and smooth in itself, you are entering a world of delight that few human beings will ever experience. I have neither the store of superlatives nor the writing ability to articulate what this filet with foie gras butter and bordelaise sauce did to me as a diner, as a person, and, eventually, as a saint of the Catholic Church, except maybe to say that it felt like someone pushed the "reset" button on my whole body – my mind was completely wiped clean, I was without any conscious thought, and I may have actually lost consciousness for a millisecond or two. It was intense, supremely rewarding, and changed the way that I view life, people, trees, babies. I will live differently and I will live better having eaten this steak.
And my dad and brother felt the same way. It was during this main course that our table turned into the champagne room scene. We did not speak for twenty minutes, using only non-verbal phatic communication, grunts, gestures, eye rolls, fist pounds, and a well-placed "Wow" or "Oh my god" now and then to express our rapturous delight.
I suppose I should tell you about the sides, but to be honest I’m so emotionally drained from reliving this experience that I’m afraid I won’t do them justice. We ordered the prosciutto and parmesan bread pudding, the baby baked potatoes (with roasted garlic, parmesan cream sauce, bacon and chives), the creamed spinach, and the truffle corn and potato cakes, and, suffice it to say, all of them were excellent. (I was, however, devastated that the restaurant no longer offers the corn, crab and avocado risotto.)
I also suppose that I should tell you about the rest of the night. I wound up getting extremely drunk, the four beers before dinner, the two Manhattans at dinner, the beers in my apartment before going out, and the countless beers and shots I had with my brother and his friends all conspiring to leave me bereft of memory and destroy my Sunday. I woke up at 1:30pm on Sunday afternoon (it should have been 2:30pm, but for daylight savings time), in bed with my dress shirt and one (!) shoe on. I had five missed calls and eight missed text messages. Whoops. I was supposed to spend Sunday partying with my buddies, celebrating the NYC Marathon, Pats-Colts and then Eagles-Cowboys. Instead, I left my apartment once and may or may not have called my doctor to request a CAT scan, convinced my brain was hemorrhaging. So one of the Top Five Worst Hangovers of 2007 kept me couch-ridden on a huge party Sunday. Again, whoops.
But it was all worth it, since my dad and brother thoroughly enjoyed the meal. My brother said he couldn’t recall when, if ever, he had a meal that good (one more free weekend at the vacation home, baby!) and my dad actually said it was "the best birthday dinner ever" - and this without cigarettes, tools or his truck. Simply amazing. What’s more is that I convinced my dad that he should come up to NYC for dinner more often, so hopefully our steak dinners will become a regular thing.
(The foie gras butter chapeaux and the bordelaise sauce, however, I don’t think I can make that I regular thing. I don’t want to burn myself out, lest I wind up on the Bruckner Expressway sucking dick for sacks of White Castle burgers. I’m not saying this isn’t going to happen; just that I don’t think I want it to.)
And – my god. Holy crap. Zoot alor. However you want to say it, this place is fucking legit. The food was so incredibly good it was almost uncomfortable, an experience bordering on "sensual" – three grown men, moaning after bites of food, throwing their heads back and smacking their hands on the table in stifled awe – an experience that should probably not be shared between a father and his two sons. It was the culinary equivalent of getting a handjob in the same champagne room in which your dad is getting a lap dance in one corner and your brother has his wallet halfway into the dancer to your left.
The occasion for this dinner was my dad’s birthday. In October, my dad turned 52. My brother and sister and I asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he said new seat covers for his truck. I could have probably guessed that one; every present I’ve gotten for my father since I was old enough to understand gift-giving has involved his car or truck, tools, or cigarettes (and recently, guns). However, at 52, after all the cartons of Marlboro Reds, circular saws, and luxury car washes, he’s probably running out of ideas for gifts that represent manliness. Next year, I’ll have to get him a picture of a man punching another man or a lion in the face, smoking a cigarette, and building a shelving unit. Because I’m seriously running out of ideas too.
Despite the new seat covers, I wanted to buy him a nice steak. Once a month, my friend Nicole and I, rich young sexy well-read New Yorkers (one of us, at least), go out to a fancy dinner and drop $250 on steak and whiskey (for me) and non-steak and martinis (for her). I was raving about one of these dinners when my dad, who grew up as one of ten kids in a po’ Irish Catholic family in a three bedroom rowhome in South Philly, said the first time he had filet mignon was on his honeymoon – and it blew his mind. I may have cried a little after I heard that. I also may have ripped up some $20 bills, just because I can. Either way, since that conversation I’ve been trying to get my dad to come up to NYC for a nice steak, and his birthday provided a good excuse.
My brother tagged along as well, because I wanted to treat him to a celebratory dinner. My brother Dennis is infuriatingly smart and was recently accepted to his first law school, a school so good it would probably have me shot if I came within one hundred yards of its campus (and I’m pretty fucking smart). The good news is that in about five years I’m going to have a really sweet vacation home to crash at, so I’d better start being nice to him now. The bad news is that ten years from now I’m going to have conversations like:
My kid: "Daddy, why does Uncle Dennis wake up before noon, shave every day, and not cry after dinner?"
Me: "YOU KEEP YOUR GODDAMN NOSE OUT OF MY BUSINESS! Now go fix Daddy his bloody mary – his stories are coming on."
My dad and brother arrived from Philly around 4pm on Saturday and I started drinking right away. My dad no longer drinks – let’s not ask about this, thanks – and my brother immediately took a nap on the couch. But that didn’t stop me from having four calming pints of Dead Guy Ale, a delightful beer from Portland, Oregon with a nice kick (seriously, the Beer Room at the Whole Foods on the Bowery is changing the way I live my life). We watched "Bad Santa" and by the time it was over, it was time to start primping and preening for the night. And I was already feeling pretty drunk. Off to Dylan Prime we went.
One of Dylan Prime’s advantages as a steakhouse threatened to be an obstacle for the dinner with my dad. So far as I can tell, my father eats only four things: red meat, pizza, potatoes, and cheerios. This is in no way an exaggeration and is a complete list of my dad’s diet; I have never seen him eat seafood, vegetables or even chicken (who the F doesn’t eat chicken?). But what I like about Dylan Prime is its non-traditional sides. For example, every steakhouse has potatoes, creamed spinach, etc. While Dylan Prime has those items, it also has several unique sides like prosciutto and parmesan bread pudding; sweet corn, lump crab and avocado risotto; and lobster and white truffle mac and cheese. While these sides are delicious – the corn, crab and avocado risotto might be one of three best things I’ve ever tasted in my life – I have a better chance of getting my dad to eat a baby arm than an avocado (at least the former is red meat).
But much to my surprise and delight, my dad was rather flexible with his tastes on this particular evening, in large part because of the encouragement of me and my brother. We started off with four appetizers: the lobster bisque, the goat cheese gnocchi (with lobster and crisp prosciutto in pesto broth), the scallops (with roasted sun chokes, broiled tomatoes and citrus sage sauce), and the pork belly tater tots (with apple cider veal stock reduction). I didn’t get to try the lobster bisque because my dad ate the whole thing. So I guess he got over his fear of seafood, or he otherwise thought it was a bowl of creamy looking ketchup. The goat cheese gnocchi was delicious but tantalizing; not only was it a small portion, but, as a fattie, I grew angry trying to eat it, as I tried in vain to get the doughy gnocchi, the moist lobster meat, and the crisp, hard prosciutto in every forkfull. When I succeeded, I was rewarded with a delicious and unique combination that makes my mouth water as I write this. But the process of eating it was like trying to teach a bear to sew. If no one was looking, I would have used my hands and been much happier doing so.
I like scallops, but I’ve always thought there’s only so much you can do with them, and the man who first wrapped one in bacon pretty much ended the discussion right then and there. Still, and despite the fact that studies have shown that I can eat up to 40 scallops in one sitting, these tasted delicious with my Manhattan. But it was the pork tater tots that blew me out of the fucking water. Delicate, juicy, tangy pork in a lightly fried coating, with the most lively sauce – the apple cider veal stock – I’ve had in some time. Each element complement each other perfectly. I rate food on a scale of bad, good, great, and WOW. This was a WOW food. If it’s possible to have sexual feelings for a tater tot, then I do, my friends. I do.
Next was the main course: 11oz filet for me, 11oz filet for my dad, and surf and turf for my brother (thanks again for that, Dennis). Like many steakhouses, Dylan Prime offers a choice of chapeaux, which is the French word for "stuff you can put on top of your steak," as well as side sauces (actually, it’s the French word for hat, I think). My brother and I went with the foie gras butter chapeaux and the bordelaise sauce, and my dad decided on the bacon and cheddar chapeaux with peppercorn sauce.
Um, yeah.
In either my sophomore or junior year of high school, my buddy Jim discovered something he called "the grundle button" (bear with me here). The grundle – also called the choada, choate, or taint – is the area between a man’s balls and his asshole. Jim discovered that while masturbating, if just before climaxing a man applies pressure to this area (thus, "pushes the grundle button"), the intensity of his orgasm is greatly increased. Every guy at the lunch table left school that day and went home to push his grundle button, including yours truly. I remember when I first tried it I was standing in the shower masturbating, and when I pushed the grundle button and climaxed, I nearly fell, fainted, right there in the shower. It still stands as one of the most powerful orgasms I’ve ever had; the only way I can describe it is that it felt like someone pushed the "reset" button on my whole body – my mind was completely wiped clean, I was without any conscious thought, and I may have actually lost consciousness for a millisecond or two. It was, very literally, breathtaking, and also very nearly an out of body experience. To this day, I push the grundle button, but it’s too intense for regular use. I will do it only on special occasions (my birthday, an especially good week at work, any time a girl is wearing a blouse and she moves a certain way so that the shirt stretches and I can see her boobies between the shirt’s buttons, etc). The goodness and intensity of your standard orgasm is more than enough for me for everyday use, thank you very much.
This is the best way to describe the effect that the foie gras butter chapeaux and the bordelaise sauce has on the filet mignon at Dylan Prime. By itself, the filet is a masterpiece, the zenith of culinary refinement, 11oz of juicy, tender meat, simmering on the plate and satiating the appetite. It is simply and totally delicious.
But when you add a healthy pat of foie gras butter, the richest, creamiest butter known to man, and the bordelaise sauce, so rich and smooth in itself, you are entering a world of delight that few human beings will ever experience. I have neither the store of superlatives nor the writing ability to articulate what this filet with foie gras butter and bordelaise sauce did to me as a diner, as a person, and, eventually, as a saint of the Catholic Church, except maybe to say that it felt like someone pushed the "reset" button on my whole body – my mind was completely wiped clean, I was without any conscious thought, and I may have actually lost consciousness for a millisecond or two. It was intense, supremely rewarding, and changed the way that I view life, people, trees, babies. I will live differently and I will live better having eaten this steak.
And my dad and brother felt the same way. It was during this main course that our table turned into the champagne room scene. We did not speak for twenty minutes, using only non-verbal phatic communication, grunts, gestures, eye rolls, fist pounds, and a well-placed "Wow" or "Oh my god" now and then to express our rapturous delight.
I suppose I should tell you about the sides, but to be honest I’m so emotionally drained from reliving this experience that I’m afraid I won’t do them justice. We ordered the prosciutto and parmesan bread pudding, the baby baked potatoes (with roasted garlic, parmesan cream sauce, bacon and chives), the creamed spinach, and the truffle corn and potato cakes, and, suffice it to say, all of them were excellent. (I was, however, devastated that the restaurant no longer offers the corn, crab and avocado risotto.)
I also suppose that I should tell you about the rest of the night. I wound up getting extremely drunk, the four beers before dinner, the two Manhattans at dinner, the beers in my apartment before going out, and the countless beers and shots I had with my brother and his friends all conspiring to leave me bereft of memory and destroy my Sunday. I woke up at 1:30pm on Sunday afternoon (it should have been 2:30pm, but for daylight savings time), in bed with my dress shirt and one (!) shoe on. I had five missed calls and eight missed text messages. Whoops. I was supposed to spend Sunday partying with my buddies, celebrating the NYC Marathon, Pats-Colts and then Eagles-Cowboys. Instead, I left my apartment once and may or may not have called my doctor to request a CAT scan, convinced my brain was hemorrhaging. So one of the Top Five Worst Hangovers of 2007 kept me couch-ridden on a huge party Sunday. Again, whoops.
But it was all worth it, since my dad and brother thoroughly enjoyed the meal. My brother said he couldn’t recall when, if ever, he had a meal that good (one more free weekend at the vacation home, baby!) and my dad actually said it was "the best birthday dinner ever" - and this without cigarettes, tools or his truck. Simply amazing. What’s more is that I convinced my dad that he should come up to NYC for dinner more often, so hopefully our steak dinners will become a regular thing.
(The foie gras butter chapeaux and the bordelaise sauce, however, I don’t think I can make that I regular thing. I don’t want to burn myself out, lest I wind up on the Bruckner Expressway sucking dick for sacks of White Castle burgers. I’m not saying this isn’t going to happen; just that I don’t think I want it to.)
