Since moving full time to the East End of Long Island, my NYC lunches are few and far between. Most of them involve a chopped salad bar (even the New York Times talks about the craze this week), and a sprint back to work. So when the opportunity to have lunch at Brasserie in midtown arose, I jumped on it.
Apparently, the entire city decided to step it up for lunch today for as I descended down the steps into Brasserie there was already a line 10 people deep waiting to be seated.
The line moved briskly and I soon found myself sitting in possibly the loudest restaurant in the history of the restaurant world. The noise wasn't music, it was people - loud, hungry people.
The subterranean space is quite striking. TV screens line the bar and show patrons walking into the restaurant. Part voyeurism, part efficient. My eyes, however, were on the food. Massive burgers with oozing cheese kept skating past me as I munched on some crusty baguette with butter.
I stayed strong (burgers were on the menu for a BBQ that night) and ordered the chicken paillard instead.
Food came almost instantly. The chicken was pale and buried under a pile of frisee encircled by grape tomatoes. I almost spit out my first bite of chicken. It was not paillard. It was a barely cooked split breast with no seasoning and not pounded thin. I tried to find a few more edible bites but wound up mainly eating the tomatoes and frisee before surrendering my plate to the waiter.
The food all around me looked amazing: a scallop dish had me drooling, a steak caesar salad glowed and each burger looked better than the rest.
So I chalk it up to a bad choice, but, hey, at least I saved some calories.
Until our next Berger,
KLB
Brasserie
100 E 53rd St New York, NY
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