The stereotype around steakhouses is that they’re boys’ clubs—cognac-hued, dick-swinging temples of T-bones and testosterone. That meaty machismo still pervades the old regime—Luger, Keens, Delmonico’s—but chophouses of recent memory (M. Wells, Costata) have attempted to break free from those he-man confines, emphasizing plates beyond stock Cro-Magnon cuts.
Bowery Meat Company makes a similar effort to distance itself from that steakhouse lineage—owner John McDonald and chef Josh Capon (Lure Fishbar) have clumsily dubbed it a “meatcentric restaurant”—but the hulking slabs of beast remain, as do token sides (wilted, oily spinach; potato in all its forms) and a finance-whale clientele, whipping out gold cards with a fervor that would leave Christian Grey breathless.
Meals in the mildly midcentury dining room begin with a Torrisian outpouring of freebies: a tile of soft bacon-rosemary focaccia here, a crispy ball of timid, more-rice-than-flesh oxtail arancino there.
While you peruse starters like broiled, butter-drenched oysters, crammed with romano and a chest-hair–growing supply of garlic ($21), or Northern Lights caviar–topped deviled “eggs” (it’s one egg, for 25 bucks—seriously), servers hoist wooden boards of raw meat around the room to tantalize diners with three-figure côte de boeuf.
Don’t be suckered by that gleaming display. If you’re going to settle for Bowery’s run-of-the-mill steaks, you’ll sleep slightly better at night knowing you only forked over one Grant for the house specialty ($54), a nipped-and-tucked fatty deckle whose mineral funk is instantly overpowered by the jarring salsa verde on top, or an Amish veal chop ($52) that, though near-cold when it arrived to our table, does boast a healthy char and well-seasoned Moorish rub of cumin, coriander and fennel seed.
Altogether, Bowery may be good enough for impress-a-client pageantry, but it sure as hell doesn’t cut it for New York.