Ok so I was really intrigued by the 150 and 220 day aged steaks reported by @Clayfu recently. Stopped by for dinner to check it out, inquired about it but I think I ended up concluding there was only 100ish day on the low end and the 365 day anniversary limited edition. Waiter seemed confused about the availability of the 200 day… oh well. Went with the bone-in 100ish day for $57
The good: The aging was tasty and better than one I ordered from La Frieda a few years ago. Definitely more mushroomy than bleu cheese. Good QPR for $57
The bad:
steak came out medium as I ordered but looked like it received the count Dracula treatment. This steak was sliced very thin, salamandered without any fat and came out basically bone dry… The Luger thing does not have a universal application. Less is more…
I had a tough time ordering a salad or appetizer, everything just sounded so heavy and overdone. I really just wanted a simple green salad… or some steamed veges. There really isn’t a lot of variety on the menu.
The dining room, augh. This has got to be one of the most dark depressing places to be in - feels like they were going for a speakeasy / saloon type vibe but when the IDs presented the plan, they decided to significantly scale back on the budget. It really felt unfinished & cheap. & WTH is up with the window at the kitchen, you can’t see anything besides the heads of the chefs.The flow of the room was awful too. @Chowseeker1999 laid in pretty heavily on them too I felt Maggiano’s is a much more pleasant place to be.
The stupid $950 knife. Seriously he wants to charge $950 for a knife maker’s trainee knife??? To make things worst, it really wasn’t very sharp. Someone was slacking off the sharpening duties. I’ll take my off-the-shelf Laguiole knife any day. Frankly would have cost him less money & sweat than forging his own knives and would have left a better impression.
The place was basically crickets at peak dining hours… made the depressing room even more miserable. For APL’s sake, I hope this is an anomaly.
The same few adjectives keep ringing in my head throughout dinner - cheap, diner, cafeteria, austere, airport dining, bad hotel chain restaurant, theme park dining. Thank god I didn’t bring anyone with me. Honestly for a steakhouse that typically relies on expense account dining, APL really fell short. I’d be seriously pissed if someone brought me here for an expense account dinner. It was the antithesis of a steakhouse and not in a good way.
The rare 150-day-plus tomahawk I had a few months ago was great. The restaurant seemed perfectly nice to me, though I was there around 5pm and there was lots of daylight.
I get what you mean by cafeteria décor but to me it wasn’t disqualifying. Food quality trumps ambiance every time and during my visits the food was generally
excellent, especially the dry-aged steaks. I would never order a steak cooked beyond medium rare anyway (I prefer rare plus, if the restaurant is able to be that precise), so perhaps that was a contributing factor to your bone dry experience.
Good points @robert@tiberiusnero about the keeping it at rare / medium rare with these lower moisture longer aged meats. Wished my waiter had mentioned that and fail on my part for not factoring that in. But there was definitely a failure of execution my night there - meat color was fine, just devoid of any moisture. See pic, there’s absolutely no liquid of any sort on the plate.
@tailbacku it was a 106 (+/- a few days) day aged bone-in strip steak, I think maybe around 12 - 14ozs. Indeed an excellent price for the product.
My typical dining out is in hole-in-the-wall joints / street stands so ambience is generally not a consideration. But man… when you’re paying $100+ / person for a meal, it should be an okay place. This was truly one of the most depressing dining rooms I’ve been in. Thought it’s worth mentioning if you plan to bring guests there.
@Clayfu okay no fair, you went with an insider… minor detail worth mentioning
I’m still baffled at how the steak was bone dry if it was cooked to medium. I dry age my own steaks at home and granted the longest age I’ve done is 45 days, but at medium, the steak should still be moist and tender as can be.
A picture of the pre cooked steak would tell a lot. Dry aged steaks do not need to be rested before carving as most of the moisture content is from intermuscular fat content and juices don’t really run bleed out. Really, if the steak was cooked medium, the steak must not have had a good amount of intermuscular fat, thus causing it to be dry.
It’s pretty simple as long as you have patience and fridge space. I do recommend you get a separate fridge if you intend to dry age on a regular basis. The seriouseats article is an excellent starting guide.
One thing I’ll point out is that dry aging results in A LOT less edible meat than what you started with.
We recently had the wedge salad with thick cut bacon (not shown), fuck dat fries (not shown), sweet cream biscuit, that our waiter said was made with some ‘gee wiz’ technique. ,
their ‘melt in my mouth’ signature short rib
and their super tasty dry aged 341 days bone in New York cooked medium rare. It looked like a T-bone with the filet side not served.
The felony knife was not the menu.
I felt Maggiano’s is a much more pleasant place to be.
okay no fair, you went with an insider… minor detail worth mentioning 
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