Restaurant Review: St. Anselm

Photo Via Immaculate Infatuation

St. Anselm

I never thought I would find myself waiting over two hours to eat out at a restaurant, even in New York City. I also never thought I would do it willingly.

I've eaten at St. Anselm before; I was there with my friend and his cousin. We had a great meal, but didn't have the full experience. What I did remember from this trip, other than getting a glass of wine spilled on me, was that the steak was immaculate, cooked to perfection, and damn tasty. I've been hoping to bring my girlfriend here for months. When we were both in the mood for a great steak, this was the time to do so.

The one thing off the bat with St. Anselm is that you better clear your schedule to eat here. While you’re at it, you may want to give away your first born child and cut off one, maybe even both your ears in the process. This place doesn't take reservations, which in this day and age is completely unacceptable—but the steak is unreal, and people seem to have no problem with waiting. Why, we had 15 two-tops in front of us on the waiting list to get seated. I put my name down at 6:30 on a Saturday believing we would only be waiting max, one hour. The grand total wait time was two hours and fifteen minutes. We thought we planned it so well, but apparently not as well as other savvy diners in Williamsburg. I won’t harp on again about the app they use as a ‘virtual hostess’, but let’s just say that thing sucks and needs a major user interface rework. It did, however, get our wait pretty much spot on.

We went down the street and had to order some food to hold us over on our wait. This reminds me of my weekends spent in Philadelphia in college; My friends and I would always go to the same brunch place where the wait would sometimes run up to an hour on busy days. Starving and hung over, we would actually go across the street and put down two slices of pizza before sitting at our table, and we were not alone. We waited at the bar for an hour and a half, ate a pickle plate and some fries, got a little bit drunk because we had empty stomachs from an earlier hike, and actually had enough time to go back to my apartment and take my dog out before returning to eat our real meal. This was completely contrary to what we thought our night would be like hours earlier. But oh, the food.

We were seated first available at the bar, which aside from being slightly uneven in places, was a perfectly fine experience with full view of the open grill/kitchen. We perused the menu that we looked over earlier and settled on three appetizers, a steak shared between the two of us, two sides, and a bottle of wine. Our appetizers were: Radishes with sea salt and butter which were just coming into season, crispy artichoke hearts with lemon aioli, and whole sardines grilled to a crisp with lemon. The radishes were fresh—three types. (Daikon, common, and watermelon) My only gripe with the dish was that the butter wasn't softened, but I was in the mood for the flavors. Not the best I've had, but not the worst. The artichoke hearts were great with the aioli. It was a punch of flavor that left me wanting more. I could see myself sitting down to a few beers while popping bikes of those in my mouth for hours. The sardines, however, were the hands down winner.

Whole, big, fresh sardines, none of this preserved in salt or pickled bullshit, were charred and served on the bone with the head on! Show me another place in Brooklyn, hell, even in Manhattan that serves sardines like this. This was the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to the dining public in Williamsburg. Wait two hours to get a seat in our restaurant, order the sardines if you’re in the mood, but debone the damn fish yourself! I loved it. I’m sure not everyone could take on the task of delicately deboning a small oily round fish while keeping the fillets intact and not pulling a small pin bone off of the spine. I’m sure not everyone knows that you can actually eat the bones, tail, and head of a sardine with only minimal work with a toothpick afterwards. If you’re in the know and don’t mind the possibility of a small bone getting jammed in your esophagus, get these sardines. Savor them. Close your eyes and love them. And for god sake eat the head—it’s the best part.

Photo by Jillian G. Via Yelp

Thoroughly satisfied after our appetizers and no longer starving to death, we waited for the main event; a 41oz, monster, bone-in Angus Wagyu-style rib eye from a hand selected farm in California. We waited 45 minutes for this sucker to get grilled to perfection and rest before it was served to us whole with the bone sticking out of the plate. Remember the opening credits to the Flintstones? Yeah, it was like that. The fucking thing wasn't even cut—we did however get some instructions on cutting it against the grain. I am not lying when I tell you that I could have cut this steak with my spoon; it was that tender. After slicing off half of the steak and serving it along with the creamed spinach gratin and grilled fingerling potatoes, I was ready to take my first bite. Sitting there with beef fat melting down my cheek, my eyes glazing over in pure ecstasy and slightly drunk from too much wine, I write this sentence with all of my heart still in that place I was not so long ago. Read this sentence carefully readers, and when you're done, read it again. The steak was the best I have had in my entire life. The steak was the best I have had in my entire life. It was worth the wait. It was worth the hunger paints, the slight attitude from the host, the smirk on his face when he told us the wait was two hours, the anger we both felt at that moment and the uncertainty of whether or not we should really wait to eat at this place. It was better than any three Michelin star place in Manhattan, better than any aged steak you can buy from your butcher, better than Peter Luger. Reliving that moment over and over again in my head as I write this review I truly pity vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, and the whole lot of people that just don’t enjoy red meat, because I found my salvation in this steak. There is a heaven, and it was on my plate at St. Anselm.

Photo by Chris D. Via Yelp

The rest of the meal wasn't important. Yes, the spinach and potatoes were great. Yes, the atmosphere was wonderful and the restaurant warm and inviting. The wine was spectacular and moderately priced. The dessert, homemade vanilla ice cream with pig cracklings and hot fudge was amazing too. I even overlooked the most annoying human being drunkenly yelling at the top of her lungs about giving blow jobs to her boyfriend two seats down from me—none of it mattered. I was sold by that point. It was just icing on the cake to find the check much lower than both of us expected it to be and half of the price anyone would pay for the meal we just had. We paid our bill, kindly thanked our bartender/waiter who served us so skillfully all night, and set off in the brisk April evening happily waddling back to my apartment.

I’ll sum up this whole review with a story I almost forgot until sitting down to write this; Heading back to my apartment before eating at St. Anselm, still wondering how much longer we had to wait and if we had time to take my dog out for a walk, we had our game plan. When we got up to the apartment I would harness my dog while my girlfriend used the bathroom, she would take the dog out while I used the bathroom, and we would hightail it back to the restaurant just in time for our seating. The first part held true, but we got called right as she went out with the dog and I panicked. Would they give our seat away after all this time? We ran. We actually ran the fifteen minutes to the restaurant so they wouldn't give our seats away. They didn't  of course. Little did we know they would have held our seats into eternity, or close that—a great little detail... but this isn't the point. Riding up to my apartment, two men came onto the elevator. They were talking loudly about needing to pick up a guitar and how they, “Thanked god they didn't wait the two hours to eat at St. Anselm!” We both openly started laughing when they said that. Apparently the world is a small place or this restaurant is just that good. Those guys didn't know how wrong they were. I hope they get a chance to eat there soon and realize just how big a mistake they made that night, but it was them or us. I’d gouge out eyeballs and break jaws to get my chance to eat at St. Anselm over another group. They could ditch the waiting list all together, instead hosting a Wrestlemania-style, tag-team, street match between couples for the next available seating. I would grab a trashcan, smack it over another guys head, break his girlfriend’s Gucci heels, and suplex them both onto the cold concrete to eat there instead of them—actually, I think I just had an idea for a new TV show. 

-Adam at Tipped Mixology