Pietro’s – An Awesome NYC Classic

Ever since I ate at Pietro’s with Steak Club 7 back in June of 2009, I’ve wanted to go back. The food was great, the service was excellent and the good times were a plenty. There’s a lot of Steak restaurants in NYC and there’s also a lot of great Italian restaurants. However, there aren’t a lot of old school Italian restaurants that also seve great chops. Pietro’s is the place to go for both! This Italian-leaning steak house opened in 1932, this restaurant passed hands when original owner, Pietro Donini passed away. In 1984, Pietro’s moved to it’s current location on 43rd St.

As we do every year, some of my friends from the music business and I get together for a yearly holiday Steak dinner. With last year’s dinner having some lack luster results, I wanted to bring it back this year and suggested Pietro’s. This was going to be exactly the vibe we were looking for.

At this point, it’s now a tradition. Start off your meal with a platter of Pietro’s delicious chicken parmesan. It’s mighty big but it you have enough people, it’s perfect to split.

 

While you’re at it, get an order of the meatballs as well. Actually, get one meatball for everyone at the table. We asked for an order to split to which our energetic and fun waiter said “are you kidding me? I’m not going to let you split meatballs, I am going to get you each one!”

It’s a part of what many of my friends consider an essential part of a steak dinner, but I can’t stand shrimp, so I didn’t have any. I’m sure the rest of my table disagreed.

It’s NEVER a bad idea to have some roughage as part of a meal this big and intense. The savoriness and intense flavor of a Caesar salad usually does the trick.

Creamed spinach. I will never understand why people love this dish but they do and its extremely popular with steak dinners. My negative nancy-ness aside, I’m sure everyone else at the table would rave about the dish at Pietro’s.

Garlicky green beans, now we are talking my style! I love love love green beans with steak and these were great.

Bring on the start of the show, STEAK! Pietro’s offers a number of steak options but there is only one way to go. Come with a lot of friends and order steak by the number of people at the table. They’ll slice up a porterhouse and serve it to everyone at the table. Look at this picture. LOOK AT IT! Holy Wow! Yes it looked perfect and it tasted that way.

You gotta have a little starch with a large steak dinner and Pietro’s offers you 9 choices! None of them will take you down a bad path but I definitely suggest the hash brown potatoes.

While your at, try a helping of the french fried onions. They’re nice and crispy and work really well with witha  juicy bite of steak.

Somehow not satisfied with the feast we had just ripped through,most of the table wanted to split desserts. While they were all good, the Italian Cheesecake (made with ricotta, not cream cheese) was outstanding and absolutely worth finishing off your meal.

2.5 years later, Pietro’s is definitely as good as I remember. It’s definably classic NYC in it’s style, presentation, location and feel. The food is absolutely awesome, the service is top notch and the vibe is fantastic. It’s good for dates, parties, corporate dinners, dinner meetings and for 8 guys who get together once a year, dress up in their Sunday best and go out to celebrate the holidays by eating steak together.

 

4 out of 5 knives
-Rev

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