Wolfgang’s Steakhouse

For our first Valentine’s day, Ken and I decided to celebrate on Saturday night at Wolfgang’s Steahouse in Tribeca. I had never visited the steakhouse before but Ken was in the mood for steak when we were brainstorming ideas for places to go on Valentine’s day and I agreed that it was a good idea. The steakhouse is located next to one of my favorite restaurants, Il Mattone, and was opened by waiters from Peter Luger’s. Our reservation was for 8:30 but the restaurant was so packed that we weren’t seated for another hour (which was a huge bummer because we were both starving).

The restaurant reminded me of Del Frisco’s in midtown because the crowd all looked a little older (at other steakhouses, I’ve noticed the customers skew towards men but they’ve usually all been a little younger than the people at Wolfgang’s). We had a general idea of what we wanted to order (steak, bacon, and wine) but then also added the Wolfgang salad:

The salad was simple but surprisingly good; half a head of lettuce served as the bowl that was filled with tomatoes, large chunks of shrimp, onions, roasted red peppers, green beans, bacon, and tossed with a lighthouse vinaigrette. The salad was slightly underseasoned but I’m guessing it’s because the bacon was so overseasoned that they wanted to balance it out. The waiter tried to dissuade us from ordering the extra strips of bacon because we were also ordering the salad with bacon, but seriously, how can you not order the thick strips of bacon when you visit a steakhouse?

The bread basket was pretty plain – although I’m not a huge fan of onion bread I think Peter Luger’s bread basket is still a lot better than the bread from Wolfgang’s:

I lent my camera to David and Laura for their vacation to Brazil so I was stuck with an older camera that didn’t cooperate after our bread basket. The rest of the pictures are from my iphone (and I didn’t want to use flash!) so they’re little dark. Our steak for two, medium rare:

The steak had a much crunchier crust than other steaks I’ve had (a very interesting crunch) and I was surprised how well it was cooked (I feel that most places in New York tend to undercook steak). We also ordered a baked potato and creamed spinach:

Midway through the meal, I was starting to fill up (I was so hungry that even though I wasn’t a huge fan of the bread I had more than I probably should’ve). We ate ¾ of the steak and I ate all of the creamed spinach and my baked potato. I thought we were finished but Ken wanted to get dessert, so we ordered the chocolate mousse cake:

As we were stuffing our faces with the chocolate mousse cake and the rest of our wine, Ken surprised me with one more gift for Valentine’s day: a trip to St. Martin! We had a wonderful Saturday night at Wolfgang’s and then celebrated on Monday by bowling (I won two games, Ken won the last game). I’d definitely return to Wolfgang’s; it wasn’t too expensive, the food was very good, and my only gripe was the amount of time it took to get our table.