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On my first visit to Jeffrey Chodorow’s new midtown beef palace, the Kobe Club, I sat at the tip end of the bar, which, as you may have heard, is shaped like a samurai sword. I dined on three kinds of Kobe beef (the “Samurai Flight,” for $225), each one stuck with a paper flag denoting the beef’s country of origin. The sheer novelty of a steakhouse devoted solely to Kobe beef compelled your faithful critic to name the restaurant one of the city’s top new steakhouses in the magazine’s annual roundup of the best new places to eat in 2007. This was an error. On further inspection, Mr. Chodorow’s restaurant seems to me less like a steakhouse than a bizarre agglomeration of restaurant fashions and trends, most of them bad. The glorification of Kobe beef, of course, is one of these. Tired Japanese themes (samurai swords dangling from the ceiling, edamame in your mashed potatoes) are another. So are the complex menus, the egregious pricing, the unceasing bongo-beat soundtrack, and the zebra-striped, unisex bathrooms done in what might be described as a neo-seventies Bob Guccione motif. — Adam Platt

Note

In a town filled with loud, incessant, and annoying restaurant soundtracks, this is the loudest, most incessant, and most annoying.

Ideal Meal

Chopped salad, creamed corn, Japanese Wagyu strip loin.

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Adam Platt's Full Review (2/12/07)
• Gael Greene's Full Review (1/15/07)

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