• Porter House New York

  10 Columbus Circle, fourth fl.; 212-823-9500

  Sure, a pasture-raised, grass-fed, artisanally correct beef chop is an edifying and admirable thing. But ask any hardened steak loon around town and he or she will tell you that the smoothest, richest, most satisfying beef still comes from well-marbled (and, most likely, chemically enhanced) steers filled to bursting on silos of corn. But at Porter House New York, in the Time Warner Center, it turns out that you can have your artisanal rib chop and eat it, too. Chef Michael Lomonaco gets his chops from Brandt farm in Southern California, where they raise roly-poly Holstein dairy cows fed on a natural-grain diet for 300 days. The end result is a fatty, flavor-rich, politically correct chop, one which Lomonaco rubs in Cajun spices, blasts in one of his high-octane ovens until properly charred, and serves the way all great steak should be served, on the bone.

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine