Chef Michael Mina Opens His Fanciest Steakhouse Yet

Even though he has opened over 30 restaurants, chef and restaurateur Michael Mina admitted he has butterflies about opening one in New York.

Adjacent to Central Park, Bourbon Steak debuts today, May 21, at 160 Central Park South at Seventh Avenue, inside the JW Marriott Essex House New York. The Egyptian restaurateur who grew up in Washington State made his mark on the West Coast and elsewhere — with restaurants in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Las Vegas, and D.C., among others — but his early years in New York were the ones that helped shape his career, Mina says.

The new 300-seat restaurant is a homecoming of sorts for Mina, who attended Hyde Park’s Culinary Institute of America and worked at the opening of Tribeca Grill with the late Gerry Hayden and legendary pastry chef Claudia Fleming, as well as for Charlie Palmer at Aureole.

When he left New York in 1989, Mina headed to San Francisco, where he joined chef George Morrone to open Aqua in 1991. Multiple James Beard Foundation Awards followed, including Rising Star Chef of the Year (1997) and Best Chef: California (2002). By 2003, in partnership with Andre Agassi, he started Mina Group; transitioned Aqua to his namesake restaurant by 2010; and landed a Michelin star. Since then, he has opened seven locations of Bourbon Steak in places like Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles; the internationally focused Bungalow Kitchen in Marin; Mina Brasserie in Dubai; and Japanese Pabu in San Francisco, among others.

Fast forward to the present, with the chef leaning into his Egyptian heritage with a cookbook, My Egypt: Cooking From My Roots, set to publish in October. The book showcases his personal exploration of regional Egyptian cooking, Mina says.

Now that he’s made his mark out west and his kids are grown up, he felt it was time to open in New York. “To do New York, you have to do New York,” he says. “There’s an intensity to a New York kitchen,” he says, with chefs who “have a desire to really perfect their craft.”

This location of Bourbon Steak has been two years in the making. “I’d had 37 offers for opening in New York,” he says, “and this is the one that feels right.”

Michael Kleinberg/Bourbon Steak

Michael Kleinberg/Bourbon Steak

The restaurant is a luxe fine-dining spot with some old-school flourishes, with a kitchen that focuses on technique and sourcing, sharing purveyors with chefs like Charlie Palmer and Thomas Keller. Mina will also home in on presentation on the plate and via trolleys: one for the raw bar, another for filleting fish, another for cutting steak, and of course one for dessert. Chef Bryan Ogden — who has worked under Charlie Trotter, and his father, chef Bradley Ogden — helms the kitchen with Mina.

Rey Lopez/Bourbon Steak

Rey Lopez/Bourbon Steak

Starters kick off with the raw bar, including sea urchin, shrimp cocktail, and seafood towers ($16 to $105), as well as seafood appetizers like soft-shell crab ($32) or bacon-wrapped scallops with foie gras emulsion ($31). Also on the menu is Mina’s most famous dish, the tuna tartare that’s on every one of his restaurant menus, in lieu of bread service, duck fat fries with pastrami spice are delivered to every table.

Past the seafood, there’s a mix of fancified classics, like pinwheel brioche with black truffle butter, a wedge salad, onion soup gratin with black truffles, and fontina gnudi with peas and morels ($27).

An eight-ounce filet starts off the wood-fired steaks ($72), with options like the 32-ounce dry-aged porterhouse ($180), as well as an ultra-luxe, eight-ounce, A5 wagyu strip loin from Japan ($135). Seafood mains are sheathed in salt (sea bream) or phyllo (Dover sole). For the super fancy, there’s a foie gras trolley ($225) and a Maine lobster pot pie with fingerlings, vegetables, and a lobster Cognac emulsion ($130).

Rey Lopez/Bourbon Steak

Pastry chef for the Mina Group, Veronica Arroyo rounds out desserts with a beignet tower ($26), black-and-white cookie bites, and a flambeed chocolate fondue ($22 per person).

In terms of design, the restaurant incorporates trees and greenery that mirror nearby Central Park inside the Art-Deco space designed by AvroKO (Oiji Mi, Quality Bistro). It’s flanked by a swanky bar and lounge that has “a little bit of a vibe,” Mina says. The lounge also serves lunch and is open later than the dining room, from noon to 1 a.m. daily. It has its own more casual menu happy hour menu from 3 to 5 p.m., with a burger ($28), beer battered fish, and a trio of classic cocktails ($22).

Mina says he is not in New York to compete with the city’s biggest-name chefs. Even with a fancy menu, his aim is more modest. “I hope to enhance the landscape of the city,” he says. “If I could hear anything about this restaurant, I want to hear that people are glad that this is in New York.”

Rey Lopez/Bourbon Steak