Credit where it’s due: The ribeye is a thick, handsome beast, freakishly well-marbled, rallying with age. It’s a star. But draped over the ribeye, like a luxurious crimson caftan, is a super-fatty, extraordinarily delicious cut known as the deckle, the calotte, or the ribeye cap.
Visually, the cap does not make much of an impression. At Bowery Meat Co. in Manhattan’s East Village, you’ll find it neatly rolled and sliced—a helix of fat and muscle—with dark, seriously crisp edges and a rare center, on a spill of buttery mashed potatoes. They call it the Bowery steak, and though it looks precious compared with more hulking bone-in steaks on the menu, its flavors are big: intense, mellow, and long.
Josh Capon is the chef here, and he occasionally paces the room in whites, congratulating a table on its ambitiously large orders, or joining in as some tipsy family launches into an off-key, off-rhythm, totally sweet rendition of Happy Birthday for their grandma. Capon is also the chef behind Lure and El Toro Blanco, and his newest restaurant draws the same crowd. There are bankers in their summer pastels, loyalists to Butcher King Pat Lafrieda’s meat, luxe business meetings from out of town celebrating a new deal, and dates casually dropping $140 on a côte de bœuf for two.
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