A Perfectly Cooked Steak

Sometimes you have a meal that makes you realize how crappy most of the food you've been eating really is. And makes you realize the talent of a good chef. And the importance of a perfectly cooked steak. Let me stress this: Perfectly cooked.

I have been oh so lucky to experience a handful of meals like this in my life. The ones that at the end, leave you so full and content, but sad that you can't start the whole thing over again. Last night, I had one of those meals.

My roommate Claire's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Barnhardt, and sister, Mary Rives, happen to be in New York for the next couple of days and graciously offered to take poor Ramen and street meat budgeted me out to dinner at the River Cafe in DUMBO, Brooklyn (which, thanks to a mid-dinner google search, we discovered, stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).

When we arrived at the restaurant, there were hundreds and hundreds and flowers covering the front door and entering the lobby, the flowers didn't stop. The fragrance of fresh roses and lilies couldn't help but stop me in my tracks. Mary Rives filled me in that the River Cafe was voted the number 1 most romantic restaurant in the City.

Mrs. Barnhardt and Mary Rives are both wearing beautiful necklaces created by Mary Rives who is a ridiculously talented jeweler. I think I will definitely have to showcase some more of her pieces on the blog another day. Each table was set with it's own, completely different, centerpiece. Let me tell ya, these people do a good centerpiece.

Ok, people. Let's talk food. I started off with this perfectly cooked shrimp over mushroom risotto and creamed corn. The shrimp were sort of spicy, but perfectly offset by the creamy and flavor packed mushroom risotto. People. Mushroom risotto. THIS WAS JUST MY APPETIZER. I mean, I could've stopped there and been happy, but it was just the beginning! 

I am typically not a huge steak orderer, but after not having a good piece of red meat for the last oh, I don't know, 6 months, my body was craving beef like nobodies business.  And I knew that if I was ever going to have a good steak in my life, it would be at this restaurant, so I decided to go for it. 

Sidenote: "You'll eat this bloody to feed your blood." 

If you know what this is a reference to, I will love you forever. 

Not only was the steak THE. MOST. AMAZING. STEAK. EVER. but then, they just pushed it way too far over the edge and served it with a mushroom and shallot wine reduction AND a little piece of magic they called "blue cheese fondue." Basically, melted blue cheese baked around gratin potatoes. I mean...

I have no clue how to express the amazingness. No, seriously. Like, I don't know what to type right now. I am literally, literally at a loss for words. 

The view to the city over the river was crazy crazy crazy beautiful. 

And as if I needed to eat anything else for the rest of my life, I got the most ooey gooey toffee cake my little heart could ever imagine served with, what else, more toffee and the fluffiest whip cream in the existence. 

If this whole post sounds like I'm bragging, it's because I am. If you are angry at me for dropping this here without any real payoff for you, I understand. I'll take the heat. This is just like watching the Top Chef finale sitting on the couch with a bowl of cereal. It just doesn't seem fair. Well, my loves, life's not fair, but really really amazing meals with really special people make you forget about the unjustness of life for a little bit and marvel at the wonder of something as simplistically breathtaking as a perfectly cooked steak. 

Thank you again, Barnhardts!!! Our meal at the River Cafe is a meal I will not soon forget.