My Restaurant Week 2018 Experience- Maxwell's Chophouse

New York Restaurant Week is held twice a year and its an awesome opportunity to try some of the best restaurants in the city for a fraction of the best. Even though the menus are special and sometimes doesn't include the restaurants' greatest dishes, the quality of food and the restaurant ambience is still there. In my opinion, Winter Restaurant Week options are always better than the summer options (maybe because when its freezing outside there's nothing else to do but eat?) so I usually participate around this time. Lunch is priced at $29 for 3 courses and dinner at $42.

This year my friend and I reserved a table for weekday lunch at the NoMad steakhouse, Maxwell's Chophouse, near our offices. The steakhouse didn't have really good reviews on Yelp, but I had heard good things about their service and the Restaurant Week menu looked delicious so I decided to give it a try. It turned out to be amazing!!! The food was so delicious that I seriously considered coming back, although the $62 full price of a steak may be a little out of my budget. As expected the service was impeccable- our coats were whisked away for complimentary coat check, our leftover food was quietly packed up for us and held at the host stand for when we were ready to leave, and our waiter was so attentive it felt like private dining.

I ordered the New York strip steak and my friend ordered the Atlantic salmon and our food came with a basket of free bread! My steak was seasoned perfectly and not overdone (I don't like the taste of burnt meat) or underdone (I also find the taste and look of bloody meat to be highly unappealing). The tuna tartare cannoli was an interesting concept as I had never seen tartare presented in tiny cannoli before. The combination of the tuna with the avocado dressing was beautiful. I loved it! The portions were surprisingly big- I was expecting tiny portions since it was fine dining and New York after all- but all of our courses were decently sized to the point that I actually had to take a lot of the food home to eat later #smallstomachproblems.

I highly encourage you all to try out Restaurant Week in whatever city you live in because it is such a good deal! I definitely ate more than $29 worth of food and it gave me an opportunity to try out a restaurant that I otherwise would have not probably had the chance to. If you live in New York, there is still one more week of the Winter Restaurant Week and you can check out the participating restaurants here.