Dirty French is the latest in the slew of restaurants from the Major Food Group - they also produced Carbone, Torrisi (RIP), Parm, Santina and ZZ's Clam bar. Clearly you can see that I've been a fan of theirs since I've visited about every single one of them and for the most part, loved them all. So of course I had to try their latest opening, Dirty French. It's located in the Ludlow Hotel and if you've lived in NYC long enough, you're kind of sad at how much this part of the LES has changed. When I first moved here, it was still gritty and seedy but now it's full of luxury condos and now a super expensive hipster hotel. I'm generally not a fan of hotel restaurants and I actually didn't know that this was in a hotel until we showed up but it was too late to back out.
Despite having an 8pm reservation on a Saturday, the place wasn't super packed yet but since it's the LES, the restaurant was fully hopping until almost 11pm when we left. The vibe is most definitely edgy and trendy and since I was in jeans, tank top and flip flops, I didn't really felt like I fit in too much but luckily no one made me feel weird about it. At first glance of the menu, my initial reaction was that it was overpriced for what it was. Most entrees were over $30 which is seriously ridiculous. Random funny story, my menu had different prices than Kristen's and the waiter told me that I had an "older" menu, which I thought was very weird.
I ordered the beet salad to start and then Mark and I split the hanger steak and country ribs together. They brought out this amazingly delicious warm bread that was more like a naan or flat bread with this creamy herb flavored butter. It was heaven and might have actually been my favorite part of the meal. I was trying to restrain from eating the entire plate of it. The beet salad was actually a very substantial portion complete with red and golden beets and paired with cashews and super strong stinky roquefort cheese. There was so much of it that I was having a hard time finishing it but I really enjoyed it. Krush had ordered the mussels for the table and I had a bite of it and the broth was delicious with bites of crab in it. As for the main entrees, the hanger steak was perfectly cooked, for me means it was practically black and blue. It was super medium rare and melt in your mouth. Mark and I both loved it but my only compliant was that the pepper coating on the outside was too heavy and salty. The same can be said for the country ribs (pork). There were 3 giant pieces and they were also covered in a heavy handed pepper spice blend. It was a bit overwhelming for me to eat both kinds of meat with this much seasoning on it. Luckily the quality of both meats were excellent and the rib, while not 100% fall off the bone, did easily pull away with a few cuts of the knife. There were also some side dishes for the table: pomme frites and haricot verts but they were so far from me and I was so full that I didn't even try them. Given how full everyone was at dinner, I'm not sure how or why we ended up ordering dessert. We got an order of beignets and a lemon tarte. The lemon tarte was more like a key lime pie but in a good way. It was super sour and tart which is how I prefer my desserts. The beignet was nice and fluffy and served with a giant helping of caramel sauce.
After a long day of eating and drinking and then more eating and drinking, I was totally ready to go home even though this place was hopping by the time we finished our meal at 11pm. We also had a celeb sighting while eating - Gabrielle Union and Dwayne Wade showed up around 10pm for dinner. They are an incredibly stylish looking couple. Overall this is a super fun place to go if you're looking for a girls night out and really want to do it up. If it wasn't for the high prices and heavy handed seasoning, I probably would have given it 4 forks or higher but it's hard to justify that when I'm not 100% sure I would run back to this place any time soon - not because I had a bad time, but because there are lots of other Major Food Group places that I would go back to first before coming here. Total bill: $108/pp with tax, tip and lots of drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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