In this economy it is difficult to resolve bailouts and $125 per head dinners and as Craig LaBan found at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House, it’s even harder when the cooking is mediocre.

Del Frisco’s unmistakable DNA as a chain, meanwhile, surfaces all too often in the mass-produced character of its cooking, and the hard sell of its service. We felt the push at the host stand, where they reflexively sent diners on time for their reservation into the bar, when the oily waiter welcomed us with the old “And of course we’ll be drinking sparkling water?” line, and when the sommelier answered my query for a bottle in the $80-to-$100 range with opening suggestions at $125 and $250.

One Bell – Hit or Miss

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Barclay Prime is launching a new menu exclusively for its bar and lounge. The new pub menu will feature gourmet takes on bar food bringing pretzels, wings and mac and cheese to the luxe steakhouse. The new menu kicks off Friday. Of course the high-end steak menu Barclay is known for is still available as well.

Check out Executive Chef James LoCascio’s take on bar food after the jump.

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Another steakhouse is in Craig LaBan’s sights. He gave Stephen Starr’s Butcher & Singer 3 Bells, how will the Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse fare?

Forget all the steak house hype, David Snyder says Del Frisco’s Double Eagle has what it takes in the food category too.

Given the chain’s New Orleans roots, it’s not astonishing that Del Frisco’s seasons its food generously. Steaks receive a liberal dusting of kosher salt, black pepper and a little butter at the finish. Yet all of the natural flavors of these perfectly cooked cuts still shine through. The 16-ounce prime strip delivers the signature bouncy texture you expect. I still dream about tender pieces of 22-ounce bone-in rib-eye melting on my tongue. But the long bone tomahawk rib-eye steals the show. This tender, dry-aged specimen also gets a week of wet aging, giving it deep, distinctive flavors. Even if you’re hungry enough to finish all 32 ounces, you’ll instinctively want to save some to take home as an excuse to keep the mammoth bone as a trophy.

Stop and Frisco’s [City Paper]
Del Frisco Double Eagle Steak House [Official Site]

Have you all heard enough about steakhouses yet? Can you even stand one more piece of info about them?  Of course you can! You love them. Or love to hate them. Or both, we can’t really tell.

The eagle-eyed KleInsider noticed that some of the menu prices at Union Trust have been slashed significantly since the original menu was released. Like that Wagyu strip just lost $50 off of its original $150 price, among others. You can check out his whole comparison list here. The current Union Trust menu is available on their website. Union Trust told Klein it was a ‘printing error’ and that the current (cheaper) prices were what diners were actually charged all along.

Also over at the Inky, architecture critic Inga Saffron delves into the many bank-to-steakhouse transformations with a focus on Union Trust and Del Frisco’s. There are some interesting highlights, especially the staggering quantities of  cash they each spent on renovating these grandiose spaces.

What’s up with Union Trust’s menus? [The Insider]
Changing Skyline: Grade-A Prime Locations [Inquirer]

It’s been three months since Foobooz last mentioned our endless and unconditional love for the best food writer in town,  Rick Nichols.

Since the boss is on yet another of his glamorous trips abroad, the Advisory Panel is manning the Foobooz ship for a few days, which means it’s going to be ALL RICK, ALL THE TIME! Squeal!!! Eeeek! Swoon!

We jest, but can you deny the deft and mighty pen of the master? In today’s Inky, Rick meditates on how the recession is affecting local restaurants from the grand dames (burgers at Le Bec) to the lowly “red gravy joint” on Passyunk Ave. (free jug wine), but it’s here that the Nicholsian touch is most evident:

The gossip attending the bumper crop of new steak houses grows thick with gleeful schadenfreude: Did you hear about the steak-house opening that had to be catered because its ovens were on the fritz? About the steak house that’s luring off-duty strippers to happy hour with free drinks and meals? The steak house that can’t make proper steak tartare?

Wowzers. Do you see how he managed to work that gleeful gossip (and strippers!) right in there without saying who each one was? Masterful.

On the Side: Mon dieu! A burger and fries at Le Bec [The Inquirer]

In Craig LaBan’s review of Butcher & Singer he states, “Butcher’s overly chirpy manager might restrain herself from incessantly interrupting meals to blather on about the retro nostalgia. Her uninvited monologues (four at my first meal) and forced introductions were a saccharine distraction.”

It’s one thing to say the service was cloying in general, but another to single out an employee. Should Craig LaBan have called out the manager for being chatty?

Craig LaBan visits Stephen Starr’s Butcher & Singer and finds plenty to sing about at the red meat mecca.

Butcher doesn’t mess around with its signature commodity: The meat here was outstanding and perfectly cooked. This was especially true of the 28-day dry-aged porterhouse, which had a sublime tenderness and mineral complexity, even a faint sweetness, that wore just enough funk for a dry-aged connoisseur. Double-size it into a 32-ounce broiler-charred slab for two ($74), like the plump lovebirds behind me did, and indulge in a T-bone romance.

The rest of Butcher’s steaks are wet-aged, which I’m not typically fond of, but chef Shane Cash has mastered the technique (a little air-drying) to eliminate the common metallic aftertaste. Both the New York strip and filet mignon were exceptional. And the 18-ounce Delmonico, sourced from exclusive Four Story Hill Farm in Northeast Pennsylvania, was possibly even better than the porterhouse, with a buttery beefiness that revealed itself in waves of layered savor.

Three Bells – Excellent

Butcher & Singer [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Butcher & Singer [Official Site]

Union Trust has swung its doors wide and we have the opening day menu, complete with the option of a vertical steak tasting featuring four long bone ribeyes aged 56, 49, 42 and 35 days, cooked to specification and split four ways.

A 12 oz filet is priced at $45 and the 28 oz long bone dry-aged ribeye tops out the menu with a  price of $94. The rest of the menu finds oysters, clams, caviar, plus various options of chops, bones, ribs and fish with some intriguing sounding starters.

Union Trust Menu (PDF)
Union Trust [Official Site]

Are any of you wondering what Union Trust, the $12 million steakhouse that is scheduled to open this Friday, might be like? How it might be different from the other two steakhouses in town located in former banks? Us too!

The entire staff of Foobooz attended the opening party on Saturday night, along with what may have been anywhere from 1,200 to 2,500 other people, and we’d love to tell you all of the details, but it was so crowded that it was impossible to discover anything useful about what the restaurant will be like in its normal state of operations. We can tell you that the restored ceiling is beautiful because it was the only thing we could get an unadulterated view of at this Philadelphia Rat Fuck.

Back in November, Foobooz attended the Del Frisco’s opening party, which was also packed to the gills and we thought it might be fun to do a compare/contrast of the special Philadelphia weirdness of both opening parties. Check it out after the jump.
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