American Cut Celebrates Pastrami and the Everything Bagel

Chef Marc Forgione’s marvelous crusty latkes with chicken fat crisps, that $10 carrot.

          Marc Forgione has a passion for everything bagels. He’s got a yen for pastrami, too, and a homeboy feel for Tribeca, where he’s just added American Cut to his restaurant real estate below Canal. (Only weeks after scoring a hit at Khe-Yo, the Laotian kitchen of his long-time chef de cuisine on Reade Street.)

The waiter chops and tosses the authentic 1924 Caesar at the table.

          I’d be content here making a dinner of the original 1924 Tijuana Caesar salad chopped at the table and those crunchy potato pancakes with ribbons of chicken fat and a dribble of sour cream –“latkes,” it says on the menu, assuming you talk New Yorkese too.

You can try not to eat these giant everything biscuits. But then, you only live once.

          After slowly and methodically devouring the warm, oversize “everything” seeded biscuit, with dabs of cream-cheese laced butter, it’s no wonder I barely make a dent in the first-rate “New York City 20 oz. bone-in ribeye” with pastrami spicing that my friend and I are sharing. It’s just what I want in my steak: seriously rare, smartly caramelized, chewy but not too, with a smack of smoke and bravura deli spicing.

          The “20 Clove Chicken” with pumpernickel croutons proves excessive the way I’ve over-ordered.  I don’t like it anyway, stuffed into roulades with garlic confit binding the arid meat. I would definitely prefer a recognizable half bird, crusty and crackling.  

          At American Cut, Forgione has fun playing off his heritage as the son of Larry Forgione, the Godfather of American cooking at An American Place where Marc apprenticed at 16. And he channels James Beard, the family Deity.

          Recalling this sprawling gymnasium of a space in its last several incarnations, I’m dazzled by the expensive, brassy Las Vegas look -- the black leather booths and the drop-dead lighting. The easy verve and confidence of the staff so early is unusual too. But then, Forgione had a chance to practice and iron out the kinks on this theme at the first American Cut in Atlantic City.

          That Tanqueray or the Ketel One martini will cost you $16, but the bartender will shake or stir it on a silver tray before your eyes. And check out the cute little pickle stuck in your olive. My pal finds it a delight and asks for two more.

          Our waiter presents the Caesar in its wooden bowl for our inspection before chopping it.  (Forgione did extensive research on the original. “We measure the mixings in the kitchen to be sure it’s perfect, then let the waiter smash it at the table,” he confides a few days later.) Of course there will be An American Place crab cake, but with a twist: it’s coated in cornflake crumbs and served with smoked oyster remoulade and Charleston slaw. At $18, it ought to be enough for two. In our case, it definitely is.

          The menu offers to top any steak, wet-aged or dry – from $32 for the hanger to $135 for the 42 oz. Tomahawk for two – with a Feather Ridge farm egg, smoked bacon, bone marrow, foie gras or Forgione’s signature chili lobster ($27.00).  No thanks. The pastrami spicing is enough gloss for me.

          Sunchoke-spiked spinach with fontina tastes like spinach, rather than the green mucilage of some creamed versions. The two of us are basically so happy we can only laugh at the audacity of our $10 glazed carrot.

          I’m disappointed in the “apple pie.” I should have questioned those quotation marks on the dessert list. A lattice of tough, tasteless pastry balances atop an oval of ice cream, a couple of brioche doughnut holes and apple balls.  Chic indeed, but no standin for real apple pie.

          After that, the waiter delivers some childhood memories – a minted chocolate that’s fine but not quite a York mint patty – and a nutty something to remind us of a Girl Scout cookie.  Still, it’s chocolate and a cute way to say goodnight.

          A friend has reserved for the following week and frankly, I’m eager to taste more. I persuade our caboodle to share the “Surf and Turf” for two: a 42 oz. Tomahawk steak with a spicy 2 lb. lobster at $175.  “But we’re four,” protests our leader, who clearly believes more is more.  He has brought two bottles of elegant Cos d’Estournel from his cellar which the sommelier has skillfully decanted.

          With dinosaur-size biscuits, four starters and a raft of sides, it will be enough, I assure him.  After a bit of a wait, the oversize crab cake and Hiramasa tartare wrapped in a pounded filet afloat on a fragrant dashi broth make the rounds.

          We cant resist the big iceberg wedge with Neuske’s bacon and Maytag blue cheese that’s better than Mom’s. It comes with the house steak knife – American Cut incised on the blade. A scattering of snails, short rib meatballs and James Beard’s classic salad of chopped onion and flat leaf parsley trick up the marrow bone.

          The seven or eight thick, blood-red slices of steak disappear quickly. One small chunk of over-cooked lobster in the shell is enough for me. But we are all mopping up its spicy sauce with chunks of toasted Texas bread.

          We’re rotating a rash of sides – caramelized onions under a thick coverlet of Gruyere, esculent porcini-potato galette with garlic cream, fat Kennebec fries with sea salt and vinegar, and broccolini, a desperate nod to something green.  Our benevolent wino cleans up the platter, finishing off the fatty top edge of the steak and liberating chunks of meat still on the long bone.

          The chef emerges grinning to make sure we’re having as much fun as he is. He insists we order the crackerjack sundae. It’s a proud cartoon, piled high with crackerjack clumps, a non-deductible charitable gift for your dentist. There are four long spoons to snare the caramel lurking at the bottom.

          The sommelier pours warm Jameson on the “Carbomb,” chocolate bread pudding with Jameson butterscotch, and Guinness ice cream -- a muddy strikeout with our crew. We prefer pumpkin mascarpone cheesecake with ginger graham crust, spiced gelée and pepita brûlée.  We’ve spent $110 per person (without the $25 corkage we were quoted on the phone).

          Forgione hopes his menu playfulness and a deliberately relaxed style of service will soften the impact of the top-heavy decorator glitz. “Every day I tell the staff, ‘go out there and have fun’,” he tells me.

          The rebel is still there. He’s the battling Iron Chef, of course, and there’s the stand-up tomahawk tuft on the top of his shaved head. But he’s still his father’s son. Dad and Mom came by for dinner last week. “Your restaurant is grownup now,” the patriarch observed. I hear the triumph in Marc’s voice as he tells me.

Photographs may not be used without permission from Gael Greene. Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.

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