Review: Prime Meats

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It’s a well-known fact that Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli—i.e. The Franks—run a pair of popular Italian “spuntinos” in Carroll Gardens and the Lower East Side, serving exquisite small plates, pasta and crusty sandwiches. What isn’t so well known is that the Franks have quietly been making a killing with their line of spicy Sicilian olive oil, a top seller in many of the Tri-state's Whole Foods locations, where a liter goes for around $25. It’s an important point to bring up while discussing their latest restaurant, Prime Meats, located a couple doors down from the Brooklyn Frankies. Money, it appears, has given these olive-oil barons the time and means to create a precise, but soothingly casual, little restaurant with a handsome 1890s feel. It's obvious that nothing was rushed in the launch of this location, including the menu of perfectly sourced dry-aged beef, Teutonic sausages and wilderness-to-table curiosities. —MR

Prime seating
The Franks prep you very nicely right off the bat: Prime Meats is a sharp little sucker. A narrow entryway, flanked by the bar and a few booths, opens up into a larger, if modest, dining space at back—all decked out in darkwood paneling, exposed brick and crimson wallpaper. Much has been made of the place's inspiration—an old "Prime Meats" sign salvaged from a butcher shop along Flatbush Avenue—and its vintage spirit informs the entire joint. The bar itself has no stools, which actually pulls off a neat trick: It encourages non-diners not to linger needlessly, allowing ample elbow room for people actually waiting for their table. And hooey, the wait can be unpredictable: On one night, we waited for over an hour; on another, just…five minutes. —ALL

A bar worth bellying up to
Months before serving its first weisswurst, PM soft-launched as a cozy bar. Like then, the current bar menu focuses on pre-Prohibition classics (Aviation, Manhattan, Sazerac with applejack) as well as some spirited spins. Tequila and loganberry liqueur is the foundation of potent scramble; The Waterfront (fernet branca, branca menta and ginger beer) is beyond herbal, but worth your palate’s trip through a pine barren. Draught beer is a strictly German/Belgium affair, less a couple choice Sixpoint offerings. —MR

Good cop: Cured meats, mushroom and egg, red cabbage salad, rib-eye steak
Not for the faint of flavor here: At PM, it's all about bold, hearty and meaty. A wonderfully versatile charcuterie board set the tone, sourced from purveyors both local (Schaller & Weber) and foreign (a mysterious German brand, which they prefer to keep a secret)—I particularly enjoyed the jerky-like "hunter's sausage." A bed of sautéed wild mushrooms, delicious and garlicky, came with a poached Amish egg atop it, begging you to pull a Humpty Dumpty and crack its eggy goodness all over. Fearing it was all a bit too heavy too soon, we retreated to the refreshing red cabbage salad—perked up with balsamic and walnut oil—before a major whopper arrived: a sublime rib-eye. It came, we're told, from Kansas' Creekstone Farms, and was so good, we asked two friends we'd bumped into at the bar to try it with us. They nodded and chewed approvingly, which was something we found ourselves doing all evening. —ALL

Bad cop: Bad pretzels. That’s about it—more good cop!
A homemade pretzel, a must at the Franks’ new Café Pedlar, was a rare miss. The home-baked doughy knot arrived tongue-searing and tough, and tasted almost like microwaved bread whose magic had gone bust (nope, it wasn't microwaved, though). But that's about all serious issues we had—in fact, there rest of the bread offerings were hardly stale. Taking a note from David Chang, there’s a charge—two bucks gets you two types of sliced bread (walnut raisin and Orwasher health), orange whiskey marmalade, fresh berries and very salty fresh butter. The impressive streak continued. Weisswurst was served with great ceremony, arriving in a boiling pot of water; our server suggested we pull it out, let cool and precisely slice lengthwise. The mild innards tasted of pork and sweet cream, cut beautifully with a sweet mustard. A platter of choucroute garnie in June? Why, yes please! Tender pork belly and calf tongue were nice, but the smokey knackwurst was transcendental—recalling the finest memories of crisp football Saturdays in Wisconsin. —MR

Spare some change?
The most intriguing part of PM is that—despite our already winning meal there—it remains a work in progress, with more changes afoot. According to the staff, the menu continues to evolve every week, and already the place has moved away from the Euro notes of its opening menu (Auf Wiedersehen, pork goulash). Nowadays, it hews more closely to its American sensibilities, and quite successfully so. We're told that the restaurant will soon dry-age its own meats, and, in a few months, they plan to convert a space next door into a 60-seat dining room. There isn't even a door to get there yet—the Franks plan to knock down a wall to create an entrance. But already, they've knocked down any doubts that Prime Meats is one of the more exciting restaurants to open in the city this year. —ALL

Photo by Sam Horine

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