Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecote

We ventured into the very heart of Manhattan’s midtown financial district on a hot and muggy evening for an early dinner at this cheap(ish) and cheerful(ish) steakery. We three former colleagues dine quarterly, usually (but not exclusively) on steaks of mutton, beef, pork, and more recently, their pescatarian equivalents.

We are therefore no strangers to New York’s famed and venerable chop houses. Somewhat to our surprise, the most senior member of our threesome chose Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecote for this dinner — not entirely out of character given his man-of-the-people vibes, but from a retired Fortune 100 President, perhaps a tad eyebrow-raising.

It turned out that his New York office for his latest executive chairmanship was in the very same building as Le Relais. And having decamped to the Hamptons on a semi-permanent basis and therefore tethered to the bus/train schedule, we agreed to accommodate by meeting at 5:30pm, right at opening.

The short queue of diners that had already formed by 5:25pm was a mixture of tourists and young office workers straight in business casual.

We were seated promptly and rushed a little by the well-rehearsed staff to order. There being only one set course on offer — salad, hanger steak, frites, accompanied by Le Relais’s secret sauce, all for $38 — we were left only to decide on starters and wines from their laminated menus, which were too swiftly carried away.

This being a factory of steak frites — a conveyor belt in fact, not dissimilar to the conveyor-belt sushi found in many a basement of Tokyo office towers — we made the mistake of throwing a spanner in the works by being too slow in ordering cocktails, which upset the flow of service and caused our beverages to arrive well into our salad course.

When the main course arrived, my steak was indeed cooked rare as I had requested, but — perhaps inevitably given the price — the steak itself was flavorless and without texture or body, almost to the point of blandness. The famed secret sauce added much needed flavor and seasoning, but not much else.

The highlight of the dinner was actually the almost perfectly crispy, thinly cut frites, reminiscent of the type served by the better Michelin Guide French restaurants on either side of the Atlantic. We ended by sharing the Le Feuilleté de Framboise and La Crème Brulée de London, neither of which were memorable.

Over dessert, our Hamptons-based friend recounted how on his frequent business trips to Japan over the years, he has settled on a routine of going to his closest conveyor-belt sushi restaurant, and eating only the shrimp and scallops, his two favorites.

He had a point. He know what he likes, he knows he’ll enjoy it every time, he knows what the price will be, and the repetition does not deter him. He takes comfort in the familiar. That neatly summarizes why this otherwise kitschy, undistinguished establishment was completely full of largely young, hungry diners by 6pm, with a queue forming outside. They mind not the uneven service, the laminated menus, the lack of depth of flavor of the secret sauce.

They come because they know what they’ll get, they know they have liked it before, and they know what the price will be. In other words, they come for the conveyor-belt steak — but mostly for the frites.