Dylan Prime
62 Laight Street (between Greenwich and Collister)

After a really long subway ride to TriBeCa (thank goodness the AC worked!) through this horribly hot and humid day, I made my way to Dylan Prime. I was craving a good meaty night, so looked at this place as a possibility. It's a hike to this place from Midtown East, having already run back-and-forth from the Financial District, but I did it anyway.

I dined last week at its sister restaurant, Devin Tavern, and had a lukewarm experience, so wondered if this place would be better or not. Sadly, it was not...

The place was rather dark, and it is difficult to read the menu and winelist in that darkness. I like the decor -- from what I could see. However, they should have put more barriers up with the men's restroom. Sorry to be so graphic, but when I am at the urinal, I really don't like seeing my table when someone opens the door... Big minus here.

My first choice of wine was not available -- they had taken many things out from the list online. Oh well. The second choice, a sangiovese from Tuscany, was quite nice. The service was pretty fast and efficient, though the busboy has a bad habit of spilling water everywhere.

The starter was a rather salty gnocchi with lobster and prosciutto. It wasn't bad, but nothing special. The broth was a bit lacking and really didn't fit the context of the dish. So it was a bad mixture I think, not the flavours but the texture. This is like eating dumpling with a hard muck of a sauce. Just didn't work.

Drinking more of the wine, I was hoping for an improvement for the main course -- the "very rich" (as my waitress said) smoked bacon chop. I was hoping for something really nice, maybe something akin to the German Rippchen -- but I was totally wrong. What came out was a charred mess, covered in crusty and burnt barbeque sauce! A good piece of meat ruined! And the side of mushrooms was basically burnt and dry -- much like in Devin Tavern the other night. This is a kitchen problem!

I hoped the sorbets would ease my disappointment, but it didn't. One of them came out like an iceball, with chunks of white ice. Ridiculous. This is just a bad kitchen, from the top down. The only thing that was interesting was the "dessert cocktails" -- of which I had the "peach cobbler". This was actually quite good...the only good thing all night.

The thing that really ticks me off as I left is that this is clearly a failure in the kitchen, the fault of the entire chef hierarchy. The menu items were damaged, the mushrooms at both restaurants were a shambles, and it was just horrible. I would recommend staying away from both of these places until they re-think the whole thing. But if the problem is so high up, it may not be salvageable...

Ugh...

Food: C-
Atmosphere: B-
For Lone Diners: B