As you might expect, the tables at Kobe Club are teeming with pink-faced gentlemen alternately fiddling with their BlackBerries and hoisting goblets of earnestly decanted red wine toward the sword-cluttered ceiling. Everything about the place is designed to contribute to the sense of bacchanalian excess, including the thirteen varieties of steak toppings (the foie gras butter costs an extra four bucks), the cocktails (try the odd-smelling though aptly named Death by Whiskey), and even the creamed corn (mixed, not unpleasantly, with sake and white truffles). It’s a surprise, then, that the desserts are so mundane. Of the goopy crème brûlée, the lady on my right said, “This is a nothing crème brûlée; it’s not crème enough.” The perfunctory wedge of cheesecake got similar reviews. “Stick to Sara Lee,” she said. The most imaginative item was a dish of chocolate-covered “Rice Krispies,” served, like caviar, with crème fraîche and (stale) blini. My guest regarded this concoction in stony silence. “Who do they think we are,” she said at last, “a bunch of schmucks?”

No Stars
Kobe Club
View Menu
Address: 68 W. 58th St., nr. Sixth Ave.; 212-644-5623
Hours: Dinner, Monday through Wednesday 5:30 to 11:30 p.m., Thursday through Saturday till 2 a.m.
Prices: Appetizers, $11 to $24; entrées, $25 to $39. Wagyu, $35 to $390.
Ideal Meal: Chopped salad, creamed corn, Japanese Wagyu strip loin.
Notes: In a town filled with loud, incessant, and annoying restaurant soundtracks, this is the loudest, most incessant, and most annoying.
Scratchpad: If you’re a Wagyu fiend, Kobe Club rates one star. Otherwise, keep away.

Related:

• Archive: “Restaurant Review”
• Articles by Adam Platt
• Table of Contents: Feb 12, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!