Christo’s Steakhouse

Last Saturday, Ken and I were lucky enough to have a car for the day! Ken went golfing in the morning and rented the car the entire day so I took the opportunity to add in a trip to a super store for some shopping. We ended up going to BJ’s in the Bronx and stocked up on enough home cleaning goods to last us a lifetime (so many swiffer wipes! And Glad garbage bags! And Clorox wipes!) Afterwards, we drove to dinner at Christo’s Steakhouse:

The steakhouse is located in Astoria, Queens, in a neighborhood that had kids running around on the street playing baseball (and jumping over fences to do so). A very cute neighborhood that had wider streets and had lots of people sitting outside enjoying the beautiful evening.

We started off with the bread and the tapenade:

The restaurant is a steakhouse but has a lot of Greek touches – the tapenade had a nice flavor and was an interesting change considering all of the steakhouses usually only have cold butter.

For a starter, we shared the octopus salad:

Warm octopus with salad and a light vinaigrette – really well cooked (not too chewy) and very lightly dressed with the vinaigrette, capers, and red peppers. The portions were also huge! Ken and I really enjoyed the octopus and I thought it was served at the perfect temperature.

For our salad course, I ordered the Greek salad:

A change of pace from the usual steakhouse salad but a light and refreshing choice from the beefsteak tomatoes and onions or Caesar salad.

Ken ordered the special salad that the waiter told us about – radicchio, arugula, and fried goat cheese:

Ken thought the salad was a little too bitter and we ended up sharing the majority of my salad. He actually ate a good amount of the salad (and we were saying we shouldn’t have ordered so much if we had known the portions were so large) but when the waiter took his plate away, it looked like he hadn’t even touched it!

For Ken’s main course, he ordered the ribeye, cooked medium:

And I ordered the NY Strip with the crab dressing, medium rare:

We also ordered the lobster mashed potatoes:

And the broccoli rabe:

The steaks were both very good good, although I really regretted ordering the steak with the cream sauce and crab dressing because they have a large variety of sauces that all tasted very good on Ken’s steaks. The steak was really delicious and flavorful on their own and there wasn’t a need to add any additional flavor (but sometimes at steakhouses, I love the cocktail sauce/secret sauce they place on every table). The cream sauce made it a little too heavy and I didn’t end up finishing my dinner. Ken’s ribeye was really flavorful and had good marbling.

For dessert, we shared the blueberry cheesecake:

A little too warm but really creamy and delicious.

I loved the feel of Christo’s; it felt like a family restaurant where everyone knew each other (in fact, the owner was going around to the tables because I think a lot of people were regulars and they were catching up). An anniversary party was across from us with the family celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and a date was next to us (they might have been celebrating their first wedding anniversary). We both enjoyed the meal and would love to return – they even have a sushi chef on the weekends so there is definitely something for everyone!