Cut - New York
CUT is Wolfgang Puck’s first New York City restaurant, and it’s located in the elegant Four Seasons, one of the city’s grandest hotels, now the most reliable place for some of the best steak in the city. With meat selections sourced from across the country, this is an eye-opening dining experience, with masterful touches from an accomplished chef.
With generous views of hustle-bustle lower Manhattan, CUT is a white tablecloth oasis of quiet and calm, where local power brokers sit side-by-side with wide-eyed tourists to enjoy some of the best prime steak in the city.
The starting seafood is among the best you’ll find in any steakhouse, anywhere, including Tokyo. Carefully sourced and expertly prepared, seafood specialties like Hokkaido scallop carpaccio and Japanese fluke sashimi are light while still tickling the palate for the main event, which is, of course, red meat.
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Grilled over hardwood and charcoal, and then flamed under a 1,200-degree broiler, the steaks are, under Wolfgang Puck’s watchful eye, a cut (get it?!) above what you might have come to expect, even in New York City. There are steak selections, designated as coming from Illinois, Kansas, Idaho or New York State, and it’s interesting to compare the unique qualities, the flavors and textures, of each. “The steaks,” says Pete Wells in the traditionally very tough “New York Times,” “presented bare, on white plates, are excellent.”
Steak is prepared with cheffy attention to sauces (Armagnac and peppercorn, Cognac grain mustard and others) that reflect the French influence on one of America’s (actually Austria’s) most renown and recognized culinary masters.
Desserts, too, represent the classic tradition. There’s baked Alaska, a dish that is now rarely seen on menus, and of course, chocolate soufflé, a light and pleasing conclusion to a memorable meal.
Prices are relatively reasonable, given the quality of the dining at CUT, but for those on a budget, there’s a prix fixe lunch menu with all the quality of the dinner menu (value priced, though with admittedly fewer selections than at dinner time).
