WHEN does a restaurant formula start to feel tired? Not when you’re tired of the formula, but when the formula itself begins to lose its fizz.
BLT Prime’s great executive chef, Laurent Tourondel, earlier launched BLT Steak and even better, three-star BLT Fish. He says of Prime: “This restaurant is about beef, and all other meats as well.” But for our money, after four visits, an awkward number of entrees fall short of their red-blooded promise.
Buzzing BLT Prime has plenty going for it – including the best appetizers and salads I’ve ever had under a steakhouse roof, marvelous mushrooms and enough complimentary goodies to feed the whole Flatiron nabe. We’ve paid $20 elsewhere for the fine charcuterie plate that BLT Prime lays on gratis.
There’s smart wine and cocktail service by dapper, floor-prowling sommelier Fred Dexheimer. The house swarms with the army of smiling managers-in-suits that new places briefly deploy until critics and scenemakers have moved on.
The convivial, airy setting is framed by white walls, burled wood tables and suede banquettes, a skylight, a sexily lit mezzanine and an open kitchen.
But the 900-pound gorilla in the room is a 25- foot long, blackboard-like wall panel listing every item on the menu. It includes no fewer than 27 entrees, a range maybe beyond any joint’s ability to pull off consistently.
Many choices shine: supple barbecued beef brisket ($28) in sauce that for once is not a bath; rosemary-marinated lamb T-bone ($36) brimming with unadulterated flavor; and mouth-melting, braised veal osso buco ($33) in nuanced, not quite sweet tomato-wine sauce.
Pleasingly chewy, Kobe-style American skirt steak – $44 for 10 quickvanishing ounces – packs a flavor payload richly redolent of charcoal, red wine and blood. More, more!
But after wondrous starters like salad that tucks goat cheese, Oreolike, between roast red beets ($11), dry-aged, USDA prime porterhouse ($79 for two) – the benchmark cut – comes as a letdown, tasty enough but no more.
Such a pedigreed specimen should have more moisture and concentrated flavor. An array of sauces helps, but why deny us the beast’s natural juice found in every traditional steakhouse from The Palm to Uncle Jack’s?
New York strip ($45), although gorgeously charred, will do nothing to upset timid palates. Again, where’s the juice? Rosemary-marinated chicken ($24) was overcooked and dry, the skin waxen and done no favors by a layer of bread crumbs beneath it.
Incredibly from a Tourondel kitchen, every seafood entree I tried was mediocre. Dry, tough swordfish ($33) would be run out of BLT Fish. Curiously rigid Dover sole was a $45 party-pooper. Seared tuna ($28) rounds got the job done but without distinction.
Cakes and pies ($9) tasted just out of the fridge. Banana cream pie channeled the sweet gooey pleasure of midnight diners. But chocolate “devil’s food” proved to be praline-chocolate; berries crumble lacked crumble; brick-hard pecan pie registered as dietetic and lemon meringue as stale.
Tourondel plans to open more BLT’s. More power to him. But I hope he remembers to be the great French chef he once was at Cello. Steakhouse chains, like The Palm in 20 cities, are a slippery slope. Is anyone looking forward to BLT Acapulco?
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BLT PRIME
[.. 1/2] (Two and one-half stars)
111 E. 22nd St. (212) 995-8500