Hungry for a big steak, none of us feel at all cheated by the Bistro Steak-frites — a 10 oz. slab of Black Angus rib eye crowding our plates — on the $35 Restaurant Week dinner at Porter House. It is gently charred, really rare, meaty and full of flavor. (On the $24 lunch, it’s hanger steak.) We have a choice of sauces. I’ll take Béarnaise for dunking of frites. The Caesar is straightforward, no fancy stuff, with a good anchovy tang in the dressing. The endive and field green salad with blue cheese, walnuts and a mustard vinaigrette is a fine alternative. I like the fresh corn niblets in the Road Food Warrior’s chowder, not wickedly creamy, but creamy enough. If I hadn’t been dreaming of cow all day, I wouldn’t be upset at all by the grilled organic Scottish salmon Andrew has chosen. (“Farmed, yes, but in a good way, and sustainable,” Chef-owner Michael Lomonaco assures us.)

        We’ve splurged by adding two sides from the regular menu. Hashed browns are always a steakhouse must for me. Karen wants her favorite spinach in New York — the house’s leaf spinach sautéed with garlic and cream and topped with thick cuts of Applewood smoked bacon. It’s not easy for me to pass up macaroni and cheese — “truffled,” I think the server offers — but I don’t really need to have everything. (Certainly not more than twice or three times a week.) Besides, there’s dessert. I’ve just realized that Wayne Harley Brachman, one of my all time favorite pastry chefs, is the spirit behind the restaurant’s American classics. I first fell in love with his sweet patriotism at Mesa Grill so many years ago, we aren’t stopping to count. The choices: real old fashioned New York cheesecake with a tart slick of raspberry and blueberry, mango coconut sorbet or flourless chocolate tart on caramel streaks. It’s not one of these melting numbers but a spiffy contained coffee-enriched tuffet. (“I got that reading Julia Child’s “Mastering One,’” says Brachman. “She was always adding coffee to chocolate. And it’s American chocolate, Guitard from San Francisco, bitter sweet.”)

        Since we’re four, we can taste all three, doubles on cheesecake, and then the house sends out a gift of chocolate ice box cake, blueberry cobbler and strawberry shortcake. That’s a cheat of course. But this is more than just chef wooing critic. It’s about two older guys making a success with beef on the 3rd floor of a shopping mall (after Jean-Georges gave up on VSteakhouse). It’s about being first to write about Brachman’s irresistible sundaes all those years ago. It’s about memories of celebrating Lomonaco’s food at Wild Blue in Windows-on-the-World. It’s about Lomonaco stopping at the optician in the World Trade Center concourse to pick up his eyeglasses on the morning of September 11, 2001…and racing away as the building began to crumble. It’s being alive — still playing the game. Time Warner Center. 4th Floor. 10 Columbus Circle between 60th Street at Broadway. 212 823 9500. Sunday through Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. 5 to 10:30 pm. Friday and Saturday 11:30  am to 3 pm, 5 to 11:30 pm.