The Breslin

11:49 p.m.: "You need to write about this place and you need to write about it tomorrow," said Fashionista as she gobbled down her lamb burger.

"Mmm-hmmm..." I responded while chomping on a brick of a French fry (or chip, as they call it at The Breslin).

Every other phrase out of my mouth that evening prior to eating had been "so freaking."

So freaking cool. So freaking amazing. Just pure freaking awesomeness.

In The Breslin's case, and in most of Ken Friedman's other properties (The Spotted Pig, The Rusty Knot), these simple words convey all you need to know, along with GET THERE.

For this round of FTDC (Fat Tuesday Dinner Club), we took club members to our favorite restaurants. I lead the charge by bringing everyone to Balthazar. We had a tremendous meal, got the number to their bat phone (who knew?) from our lovely waitress and it still remains a top New York City restaurant in my book. TheDude brought us to Barrio Chino, which to me was a new discovery and it blew all our taste buds away. I'm still craving their habanero/jalapeno margaritas. They are so spicy they'll light your brain on fire. Fashionista brought us to her favorite Freemans. The wait was so long on a Tuesday at 7:30 we ended up chowing down at the bar and still having a great time. It's right up there with Balthazar.

Last but not least, J-Bait sent us an e-mail of his three favorites. I'd never heard of the first two: Sammy's Roumanian Steak House or Roberto's Restaurant. But the third, The Breslin, which he hadn't been to but snuck it on the list in case any of us wanted to brave it with him, was on my must-get-to radar.

I'd recently been shifted to later hours at work. No more 4:45 a.m. Clocky spasms for me. Normally we scheduled FTDC around 7:30 so we could get in and out and I could go home and crash in a food/drink coma. I informed the group of my new 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. hours and that I could make a later dinner. Obama's speech on Afghanistan was that night and I had to stick around until nine o'clock to make sure our Web site didn't implode from clicks.

J-Bait selflessly volunteered to get to The Breslin at around 7:30 to wait for a table. I felt bad having him wait for hours, but he insisted. Fashionista e-mailed me what time I realistically thought I'd make it to The Breslin because she had a long day of earnings the next day (and she knows my notorious tardiness). I told her I'd be there by 9:20, no problem, barring any national disasters/catastrophes (Obama's Afghan speech, though while it might have qualified as such, didn't count).

9:00:01: I shut my computer down and weighed the usual cab vs. subway dilemma. Without fail, no matter which I pick, it always ends up being the wrong option. I could hop on the subway to go two stops and something would break down and I'll kick myself for not getting in a cab. On the other hand, I could hail a cab in a second then be stuck in traffic for an hour in what would have taken 15 minutes on the subway. I can't win.

Moral of this story: the cab driver is always right. You may be the customer, but you're always wrong. As soon as I questioned my cab driver's decision to go route A instead of route B, he never took his foot off the brake. We followed buses, limos and tourists driving 20mph down Fifth Avenue. I certainly got a good glimpse of all the wondrous Christmas windows (the Hotel Pierre's being the runaway winner). We would wait for the light to turn green, he'd slowly accelerate through the intersection then we'd miraculously be stopped by the next block's red light. It was mind-boggling.

I worked myself into a frenzy and with every red light I could feel a vein in my neck popping and a brain cell dying. The cab driver was killing me. We reached 29th Street and I hopped out at the first chance I could. Half of me wanted to pull a stuntman's exit and just unlock, open and roll, but I didn't want to make a scene in front of one of the hottest new restaurants in New York.

9:23: Like an ant to fallen candy, I zeroed in on what I assumed (hoped) was The Breslin entrance and flew inside. Judging by the swarms of people and cathedral-like ceilings, I'd made the right choice. I hadn't read a thing about the entrance, but the lack of blaring signage seemed about right. It's a proven fact that a place without a sign has significantly greater chances of thriving in this city than one with.

I spotted the two men and a lady of FTDC seated at the bar. Amidst hugs and hellos I kept looking all around me thinking, "My, oh my, what a place."

"You're the only one who walked in the right entrance!" exclaimed Fashionista.

"Seriously? It seemed so obvious to me..." I said brushing my shoulder off with a smile.

"Yeah we all walked through the hotel first."

The Breslin is part of 29th Street's new Ace Hotel.

"Ohhh."

TheDude took my coat and I flew off to use the lady's room so I could wipe the stress and beads of sweat off my face. I made it through the maze of people and bar tables to ask a hostess where the restroom was.

"Through the hotel to the back and take a right."

I've never been anywhere like The Breslin in the five years that I've lived in New York. It felt colonial yet industrial, old world but new world, country but city chic, massive yet intimate. I'm reading Mark Kurlansky's "The Big Oyster" and I'm picturing The Breslin like the old oyster houses downtown that he described. It feels like a super-sized speakeasy. For a moment I was going back in time to the city's Five Points and Bill "The Butcher" Cutting and his Bowery Boys were going to peak their heads from behind the argyle curtain at the booth in front of us.

I walked over the bar-hotel threshold and into a large room with a high density of couches and well-dressed people towards the back. I left one wintry Ralph Lauren ad and walked into another. It was fairly dark, and while I was hoping for anonymity, I felt eyes following me as I made my way to the WC, like the scene in "Gigi" where Gaston walks into Maxim's with a buxom blonde. "Please don't slip, please don't fall, please don't slip and fall." I spotted the bathrooms. My refuge from the wandering eyes. There were two and they were unisex. Fine.

When I returned J-Bait offered me his bar stool and TheDude offered me a sip of his Hendrick's gin, up, with a cucumber twist. I'd already ordered my typical dirty martini, following Fashionista's move and was sort of wishing I'd tried Hendrick's. I was impressed, despite how packed and crazy the whole place was, that the bartenders were so sweet and attentive without an ounce of 'tude or pretentiousness.

J-Bait checked back with the hostess to see if our table was ready and she would routinely tell him it'd be 25-45 more minutes each time. This was The Breslin's only tragic flaw. No matter how "early" you get there, unless it's before 6 and unless you're Mario Cantone (who we spotted that night sitting behind us), you'll be waiting for a table for at least two hours.

"So....?! How was Los Angeles?" TheDude asked.

"It was incredible. MaineMan and I had the most amazing time..."

I looked at my friends smiling and shaking their heads at me. Me the disbeliever, me who was once dubious of love.

"We surfed, we drank, we ate, visited a few friends that live out there, went to Disneyland..."

"Wow, that's awesome!" J-Bait chimed in.

"And... I think I'm moving out there to be with him."

J-Bait and Fashionista already knew this. TheDude, however, did not. J-Bait's been kind enough to send me job postings in L.A. The hunt is on for openings in anything, from local news to ESPN, from agency work to communications positions at universities. TheDude just looks on as a teacher would his student. About eight months ago I flipped when he told me he'd proposed to his girlfriend of six months. While I still think that's awfully quick to realize you're with the one, I finally get it. And I acknowledge how silly I'd been to question these feelings.

10:45-11:15p.m.: At some point between martinis number 2 and 3, we were seated. The place was still packed like the dinner hour had just begun.

We'd been staring at the menu for the past hour so we knew what we wanted, we were starving and we were ready to move onto wine. TheDude ordered a bottle and we went around ordering our meals. Our blonde, smiley Scottish waitress was quite cute and bubbly and was quick to tell us what they were out of. Unfortunately they were out of the one thing I'd planned on trying -- braised shin of beef -- so it was lamb burger for me. I've become a vegetarian, but you can't go to one of April Bloomfield's restaurants and eat vegetarian. It's sacreligious. I'm not allergic to meat, I've just recently decided to stop eating it by the herds. Trying the burger would not kill me, it just killed my will power.

For starters, I went with the Caesar salad and Fashionista, TheDude and J-Bait ordered the onion soup with bone marrow.

I eat a lot of Caesar salads. In fact, I'd just eaten one two nights before with my family at the Elms Tavern in Ridgefield. It was so fishy my dad and I almost wanted to send it back. The Breslin, however, did it just right. The dressing wasn't fishy, but the croutons were. And it was the perfect amount of anchovy that you could taste, but it didn't overwhelm the flavor. This Caesar was the best I've ever eaten anywhere. The dressing was a unique blend of bitter and sweet herbs and I wanted to lick my plate when it was over. It was the coldest salad I'd ever eaten too. It almost felt like it came out of the freezer which added to its crispness and freshness.

I tried a big spoon of the soup and my eyes rolled to the back of my head. It was the richest, most potent spoon of onion soup I'd ever tasted. What Breslin's soup was lacking in gruyere it made up for it with the bone marrow. I watched around me as spoons dug against the bone and whipped up onions to go along with it.

You cannot go to The Breslin if you're not starving. And don't judge by its portions. Their portions are deceptively small but the flavors are so rich you'd die if they gave you any more.

"Is that April cooking?" asked Fashionista.

"Oh my god, it totally is..." I noticed her as well.

"How cool is that?"

"AH! She is so bada**. I can't believe she's here!" We all felt a little starstruck. I can count on one hand the chefs I've actually seen at work in their restaurants. I won't forget this.

"I think that's Ken Friedman too. I've seen him at The Rusty Knot and I swear that's him," I whispered as a large, domineering man with a seven o'clock shadow in a crisp, light blue button-up shirt swept by our table, ran over another employee to talk to one of the servers at the credit card machine.

Fashionista and I followed up the appetizers with two lamb burgers and thrice-cooked chips, while the gents ordered the smoked belly with pork mashed potatoes for two. I don't think I'm a huge fan of lamb burgers. It was a little overcooked and dry. I would have preferred a juicy beef burger. The thin white layer of feta seemed a bit lost and confused - it wasn't melted but was just resting sliced and uncooked on top. The worst part for me was the dry bun. As you can see by the picture there was no unity going on here with this burger. I like it when all components blend into one and this wasn't really happening with the lamb burger.


The highlight of the burger dish was the little cup of four to five "chips." These were not your mother's or father's chips, even if they are from the U.K. These things were like what a giant's order of French fries would look like. They were huge, dramatically elongated cubes. I felt I could throw one and probably wound someone with it. I bit into one and similar to my reaction to the onion soup, I followed it up with, "Oh my GOD!" A crisp outside with a soft, mush inside. Perfect. They were so rigid and stiff they reminded me of Yucca fries.

Unfortunately I didn't have the room to finish all of them, which ask Fashionista, is unheard of when it comes to me and fries. I was that stuffed.

The boys shared what looked like a gourmet version of the infamous bacon explosion, made famous this past Super Bowl. I stole a small bite and it was the juiciest, most tender, melt-in-your-mouth belly I'd ever tasted. The boys dug in and didn't look up until it disappeared.


I stole a few bites of the mashed potatoes and they tasted like dessert they were so smooth and delicious.

12:10 a.m.: Sadly we were so stuffed, the Scottish Shakira brought us the dessert menus and we couldn't even look at them. The place had finally emptied out and we were solo at The Breslin.

I reached my school night tolerance level. I was drunk and stuffed and all I could think about was getting home to my bed and saying goodnight to MaineMan.

He would ask me about my night, and I would tell him it was special and he would love this new mountain-lodge-meets-Manhattan restaurant. He would tease me for being so easy to succumb to eating meat. I would tease him for... nothing.

I am ready for a change, and I'm ready to move for someone I'm crazy about, but I don't know if I'll ever be ready to leave behind the great friends I've made in this city and the restaurants and evenings I've shared with them. I left The Breslin wearing "I HEART NY" on my sleeve. Will I ever find Ken Friedman's touch in Los Angeles? Don't answer that.

*no reservations, expect a long-ass wait*
16 W. 29th Street, between Broadway and 5th