Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House is a place of glamour, excitement, red meat, and much more. It pulsates with the rhythm and energy of Midtown. Its soaring, two-story-high windows offer a spectacular view of Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, and the parade of pedestrians along Sixth Avenue. Broadway's theaters are just a block or two away.
Inside it's an imposing palace of high ceilings, winding staircases, balconies, woody columns, a back-lighted bar, wall decorations, massive art pieces, and wine cellars that offer diners 1,300 selections from a stock of nearly 30,000 bottles.
And it's the ultimate choice for impressing a client or celebrating a special occasion. The menu tells much of the restaurant's story: Its fresh, not frozen, USDA aged prime beef is shipped to Del Frisco's from the Midwest twice a week. Its warm loaves of bread are baked daily, and all its salad dressings and desserts are housemade.
Del Frisco's isn't about red meat alone. Lobster, fish, lamb, osso buco, and veal chops receive equal billing, but it's about the best in basic, understandable food: shrimp cocktail, crab cakes, Caesar salad, and meat and potatoes (prepared four ways).
Steaks are boldly seasoned with salt and pepper and sport an agreeably charred surface. Guests are asked to cut into the center of their steaks before eating them to ensure they are done as ordered. My 24-ounce porterhouse was the medium-rare, mineral-flavored beauty I anticipated as was my wife's two towering, juicy, eight-ounce lamb chops. A pristine halibut, kissed by a touch of citrus-y vinaigrette, was an appropriate pick for delicate eaters while a 22-ounce portion of rich, broiled Australian lobster tails certainly wasn't too much of a good thing. The spinach supreme, the mother of all creamed spinach, and an order of king-sized onion rings were all the side dishes needed by four hungry diners.
Consider the heft of the entrées when ordering appetizers and target the lighter choices: no-filler crab cakes napped in lobster sauce; super fresh, briny oysters on the half shell; and shrimp any which way.
Full or not, order dessert, even if two or more share one. Select the luxuriant swirl of strawberries, vanilla ice cream, and Grand Marnier in the Strawberry Romanoff; the decadent, gossamer chocolate mousse in a chocolate cup; and especially the huge wedge of exemplary six-layer lemon cake. It, like Del Frisco's itself, is a wow!
1221 Sixth Ave. at 49th St., 212-575-5129; www.delfriscos.com
Richard Jay Scholem was a restaurant critic for the New York Times Long Island Section for 14 years. His A La Carte Column appeared from 1990 to 2004. For more “Taste of the Town” reviews, click here.
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