A Restaurant Opens in Midtown With Swinging Tomahawks and Flaming Bacon | Eater NY
"At 514 Lexington at the corner of 48th Street near Grand Central, I encountered a new 6,000-square-foot, two-pronged restaurant that combines a 50-seat fast-casual cafe and a 106-seat brasserie. The cafe offers a dozen salads and sandwiches and made-to-order items from an open kitchen — burgers, the Road Runner chicken sandwich consisting of an entire chicken leg, foot-on, and a clothesline-bacon BLT — with prices from $12 to $20 and beer, wine, and cocktails, aimed at office workers, hotel guests, and commuters. The brasserie riffs on classics (a tomato gratin in place of French onion soup served with a raft of garlic bread smothered in cheese) and includes playful dishes like a crab cake pretzel raft, clothesline bacon, spinach ricotta duck egg ravioli, and straighter mains such as salt-brick chicken with Job’s tears grains, Brussels sprouts, and mushrooms; appetizers run $17–$30, mains $33–$55, and burgers start around $25. The showpiece is the swinging tomahawk — a tomahawk for two aged via Burke’s patented Himalayan curing process and theatrically delivered hanging from hooks over a smoking bed of hay for about $160. Designed by Mancini Duffy, the space balances whimsy and polish (a giant Humpty Dumpty at the entrance, brown leather booths, sea-foam green velvet chairs, pink Himalayan salt wall accents and sculptural chandeliers), with the salt wall tied to Burke’s dry-aging approach; the cafe side is bright black, white, and gray with marble tables. Burke says the two-concept format helps “amenitize” the newly renovated 277 Park Avenue building, and the restaurant opens for dinner on December 7 (4–10 p.m., kitchen until 9 p.m., bar until midnight) with lunch service starting December 12." - Melissa McCart
