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Nothing in the restaurant world lends itself to over-the-top self parody quite like a steakhouse. So you have to admire Stephen Hanson for at least choosing his gimmicks carefully. You will find no weaponry dangling from the rafters of Hanson’s steakhouse, Primehouse New York, and the menu is mercifully free of Kobe or Wagyu beef. There is, however, a discreet “Himalayan Salt Room” where special cuts of “limited availability” are set to age. And as far as I know, Primehouse is alone among local steakhouses in having its own Black Angus stud bull, named Prime, who lives on a farm in Kentucky, where he works tirelessly to sire choice beef cattle on the restaurant’s behalf.

Hanson is running a global brand now (his B.R. Guest restaurant group partnered with the international Starwood hotel chain), and if everything goes according to plan, Prime the Bull should be busy for years to come. The large stripped-down space on lower Park Avenue seems to be designed with an international franchise in mind, and looks like it could be anywhere from Vegas to Dubai. The walls of the barn-size bar area are covered in black ceramic tiles and devoid of the usual steakhouse pictures of cowpokes and steers. Nor are there folksy decorations in the lofty, grandly impersonal dining room, which looks almost antiseptically polished and clean, and also slightly monolithic, like the anteroom to some grandiose Shanghai bathhouse, or the inner sanctum of King Tut’s tomb. Diners sit in curved, black-leather banquettes, hefting big, Bowie-size steak knives, and as dinner progresses, processions of waiters stream through tall, curved archways at the ends of the room like extras on a movie set.

The steaks, for their part, are transported to the table on narrow wooden trolleys, without sauces for the most part (those cost extra) or side dishes (extra, too). But the price of entry to any reputable steakhouse is high these days, and if you have the appetite, and the cash, Prime the Bull generally won’t let you down. — Adam Platt

The restaurant is open for lunch and weekend brunch; try the sandwich made with 28-day-aged rib eye.

Beet-and-goat-cheese salad, 35-day-aged bone-in strip steak, duck fat hashed-browns, bananas Foster sundae.

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Adam Platt's Full Review (12/10/07)

Featured In

• Adam Platt's Where to Eat 2009 (1/5/09)
• Where to Eat 2008 (1/7/08)
• Restaurant Openings: Allen & Delancey, and Primehouse New York (10/8/07)