Daily News | With big chops for big bucks, Fiore Rosso and Bardea Steak reimagine the luxury steakhouse
to intensify flavors. Their sprawling “meat kingdom” offers no fewer than five different breeds of steer, as well as dishes with elk, ostrich, and kangaroo that frequently arrives with pyrotechnical fanfare — billowing smoke, tubes of bubbling lychee cream — that assure tableside drama.
The main event, of course, are four cuts of steak that, with just salt and live fire, produced consistently excellent results, from the mineral complexity of the dry-aged Double R Ranch ribeye to the Creekstone bistecca Fiorentina, whose T-bone adds more flavor to its tenderloin side than most filet mignons can ever dream of. The Snake River Wagyu rib cap is smaller than most, at just 8 oz. for $85.
One sip of my stiff Tuscan Manhattan, or the brawny Valle Reale Montepulciano d’Abruzzo from the all-Italian wine list , and I was ready to move on to this menu’s many other virtues — a plump take on veal Milanese with tonnato sauce; a vibrant tuna crudo with green tomato acqua pazza. And especially pastry chef Michal Shelkowitz’s desserts. Her butterscotch budino is so good it’s basically cheating.
Thankfully, not all these meats are fermented in koji. You can order a Piedmontese bone-in ribeye, an Aberdeen Angus strip that descends from the original Scottish breed, fat-laced Australian Wagyu grilled tableside over the coals with harissa ssamjang, or the deeply savory flanken of Chianina grilled Korean barbecue style.