Or I wonder what a $130 steak tastes like.
You don’t just walk into Cut and ask for the number 3 combo. After you reserve two for dinner at this posh Beverly Hills restaurant, you cancel that upcoming spring vacation to Cancun, you tell your significant other about moving back the wedding date, and if you have bill collectors calling, you may want to enter a witness protection program. This is a place George Clooney will bring his latest girlfriend, where Arnold may ask you for a light, and Barack Obama will stare at you the entire evening. I have been nervously eyeballing this place since first seeing it on Mr. Gold’s list. I’m from Covina by way of East LA, folks, where fine dining was Sizzler and Pizza Unlimited.
Mulling over the menu for Cut can be a fun exercise, though; what to get, that asparagus side for 17 bucks or the summer salad for sixteen smackers? The petit filet mignon for sixty bucks or the extra-thick pork chop for forty? But look at those desserts. I wonder what the chocolate bread pudding with salted caramel and coffee ice cream tastes like? The creamed spinach with organic fried egg caught my attention and the warm veal tongue salad intrigued me. Now I despise tongue almost as much as I despise mayonnaise. But when Gold tells me to order the warm veal tongue, well, I’ve got to do it. As I have talked to people about this restaurant, I am surprised at how many told me I was crazy to even consider going. “I would never pay a hundred dollars for a steak” has become a common theme. “Okay, but would you pay a hundred thirty for one?” is my smart aleck reply. How was I going to find someone to go with me? So I downloaded the menu, highlighted the Japanese wagyu steak and sent it to Katheryn, a co-worker. I jokingly wrote “what a great deal, Nebraskan corn-fed wagyu for under 150” She said, “let’s go
.” I cancelled my summer vacation plans, checked my dwindling portfolio and nervously sent the thin reply “okay” to her inbox. We were on for the 29th of January.
I couldn’t pick a better dinner partner. Katheryn is a diamond, as kind and as genuine as they come. She’s very intelligent and articulate and simply one of the best people I know. She got the filet mignon, I got the New York Sirloin, we shared two sides, dessert, two appetizers, two drinks, valet parking (17 bucks, kids) all for what it would take to pay for two of those $130 steaks. The veal tongue salad did not make me forget my disdain for that meat, but the steak couldn’t be better: perfectly peppered on the outside, pleasantly pink on the inside. The creamed spinach with egg was so good that I eagerly anticipate making my own version of it. The dessert, by the way, was a crème brulee banana cream pie, garnished with mini chocolate balls. Impeccably conceived, rich but not overly sweet, it is a culinary and architectural masterpiece.
I experienced Cut with a friend not as stranger and it made the experience
enjoyable. Men, please do not take your first dates to Cut. You do not want a bad first date to cost you three Benjamins even if she does look like Malin Akerman. If you want to impress her point to the building as you’re driving on Wilshire, which is carved into a handsome, polished hotel. If you must, take her inside the restaurant, where giant sized pictures of Cate Blanchett, Arnold, and Obama adorn the walls. (Katheryn thought the pics fit in, I thought them rather creepy). But for a first-time dinner? Pink’s on La Brea is open late.
You don’t just walk into Cut and ask for the number 3 combo. After you reserve two for dinner at this posh Beverly Hills restaurant, you cancel that upcoming spring vacation to Cancun, you tell your significant other about moving back the wedding date, and if you have bill collectors calling, you may want to enter a witness protection program. This is a place George Clooney will bring his latest girlfriend, where Arnold may ask you for a light, and Barack Obama will stare at you the entire evening. I have been nervously eyeballing this place since first seeing it on Mr. Gold’s list. I’m from Covina by way of East LA, folks, where fine dining was Sizzler and Pizza Unlimited.
Mulling over the menu for Cut can be a fun exercise, though; what to get, that asparagus side for 17 bucks or the summer salad for sixteen smackers? The petit filet mignon for sixty bucks or the extra-thick pork chop for forty? But look at those desserts. I wonder what the chocolate bread pudding with salted caramel and coffee ice cream tastes like? The creamed spinach with organic fried egg caught my attention and the warm veal tongue salad intrigued me. Now I despise tongue almost as much as I despise mayonnaise. But when Gold tells me to order the warm veal tongue, well, I’ve got to do it. As I have talked to people about this restaurant, I am surprised at how many told me I was crazy to even consider going. “I would never pay a hundred dollars for a steak” has become a common theme. “Okay, but would you pay a hundred thirty for one?” is my smart aleck reply. How was I going to find someone to go with me? So I downloaded the menu, highlighted the Japanese wagyu steak and sent it to Katheryn, a co-worker. I jokingly wrote “what a great deal, Nebraskan corn-fed wagyu for under 150” She said, “let’s go
.” I cancelled my summer vacation plans, checked my dwindling portfolio and nervously sent the thin reply “okay” to her inbox. We were on for the 29th of January.I couldn’t pick a better dinner partner. Katheryn is a diamond, as kind and as genuine as they come. She’s very intelligent and articulate and simply one of the best people I know. She got the filet mignon, I got the New York Sirloin, we shared two sides, dessert, two appetizers, two drinks, valet parking (17 bucks, kids) all for what it would take to pay for two of those $130 steaks. The veal tongue salad did not make me forget my disdain for that meat, but the steak couldn’t be better: perfectly peppered on the outside, pleasantly pink on the inside. The creamed spinach with egg was so good that I eagerly anticipate making my own version of it. The dessert, by the way, was a crème brulee banana cream pie, garnished with mini chocolate balls. Impeccably conceived, rich but not overly sweet, it is a culinary and architectural masterpiece.
I experienced Cut with a friend not as stranger and it made the experience
enjoyable. Men, please do not take your first dates to Cut. You do not want a bad first date to cost you three Benjamins even if she does look like Malin Akerman. If you want to impress her point to the building as you’re driving on Wilshire, which is carved into a handsome, polished hotel. If you must, take her inside the restaurant, where giant sized pictures of Cate Blanchett, Arnold, and Obama adorn the walls. (Katheryn thought the pics fit in, I thought them rather creepy). But for a first-time dinner? Pink’s on La Brea is open late.
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