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Nick and Stef’s Steakhouse
330 South Hope Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071
(213) 680-0330

http://www.patinagroup.com/nickStef/

Ordered Dishes:
Appetizer – 1/2 dozen oysters
Main Course – fried chicken, filet mignon; sides = gnocchi, sweet potato fries, asparagus.
Dessert – none
Drinks – iced tea; coke

Reviews:
Located right smack dab in the middle of downtown Los Angles, I had expected it to be busy, but it was not. Walking through a very quite office building (Mightypen says it was almost eerie) the only place with more that had any activity was the California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) located inside on the first floor. As we passed by CPK, I thought to myself, “I’m in for a real treat!”, since Mightypen’s taking me out. Arriving to the doorway of Nick & Stef’s Steakhouse, we were not sure if the place was open. There was no sign; no indication for those that arrive to the door. At the very least, since we have reservations, we decided to go ahead and try opening the door. Luckily the heavy door moved and we entered. This was a sign of what was to come.
The ambiance of the restaurant was deathly quiet. It was extremely quiet. I think it may have been that there was no background music playing. That’s what I found strange with Nick & Stef, no background noise. LOL, due to the lack of noise, Mightypen and I found ourselves starting to whisper because we didn’t want to bring any attention to ourselves. However, that was an unfounded fear, since the restaurant was virtually empty. There were maybe 6 tables being served while we were there.

Bread:

Pardon the picture (we didn’t grab the whole basket). The breadbasket consists of 3 different types of bread. I liked the cracker twist, but it was more for the novelty than anything. The butter was plain. The butter did not do anything to bring out the flavor of the bread. I suppose Nick & Stef simply sets the bread out and does not consider what bread brings to the meal. For me, if there is good bread, then good bread is a signal of how dinner will proceed. From my experience, if the bread offering is bad, then usually the food is bad. If you are going to serve stale bread then please spare us customers from having to eat stale bread. Why waste the money?

Appetizer- 1/2 dozen oysters.

One good reason not to order 1 dozen, there were little bits of shells or sand. I have gone to those little shacks along the waterfront and they have managed to serve oysters without the tiny flecks of shell. Nick and Stef manage to make sure that there was a little something extra in each oyster. Surprise!!!

Mightypen’s dish:

Find another specimen of fried chicken that was too salty and too greasy for the same price and I’ll congratulate you on the achievement. As restaurant food goes, you cannot really manage to mess up with fried chicken, but unfortunately, Nick and Stef does. Maybe it was the main chef’s off day and they got someone to fill in? For the fresh vegetables that go with main entree, in Mightypen’s words, just “fresh spinach leaves thrown on the plate.” You can tell by the picture that presentation was not a concern.

Iamme’s steak: Filet mignon with foie gras.

See that chunk of meat on top of the steak filet? That’s the foie gras! Okay, so the cool thing about Nick and Stef was that you can add foie gras to your steak. I’ve come to appreciate spinach, so I wasn’t too disappointed that the steak comes with spinach. However, that was the only other item on the plate. Spinach and steak. I’ll count the foie gras as an extra, since I ordered it extra. Maybe I’m being hypercritical here, since at Morton’s or Ruth’s Chris, I’d just get a piece of steak when I order steak. But I liked steak from Morton’s and Ruth’s Chris. I just simply did not like my steak at Nick and Stef’s.
Granted, having the extra piece of fois gras was nice, it was a lot nicer that they forgot to include it on the check. There is once peculiar item that I must make note in my review of Nick and Stef. In regards to the food, there was NO SMELL. Imagine this, a nice hot piece of steak (not sizzling, because for some odd reason, N&S prefer to serve their meat on cool plates) comes by and you don’t even notice what is on the plate. I mean, you see the steak and foie gras coming. But you don’t smell it!! I virtually placed my nose on top of the foie gras to smell it. As for the steak, no such luck, not an ounce of steak essence wafting through the air. Go visit a Ruth’s Chris, heck, don’t even go inside, just stand somewhere in the vicinity of a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and you’ll know that there’s meat being cooked. As for N&S, I’m basically sitting on top of my steak and cannot smell it. Have you ever had a stuffy nose and tried eating something savory? The food tastes bland right? Yep, that’s the same experience at N&S, except your are not sick.
I’m an extreme believer in that all steaks should be served piping hot. Unfortunately, N&S believes the opposite. The plate the steak came in was not even warm. So this meant that my steak cooled down quickly, leaving me with a chunk of cold meat (well, a small chunk because I was hungry). It may be because the food cooled down that there was no smell. I wonder what treatment N&S does to their food to get it to not smell. Maybe I can use the same method on my socks after long run? Well, I had enough with the unappetizing steak, on to the side dishes!

Images of the side dishes

This was called “crispy potato gnocchi” but the gnocchi wasn’t really crispy at all. Perhaps they went a little bit too far in their advertising. You can see, it wasn’t very crispy, and that was why we ordered it; we wondered what crispy gnocchi would be like. Though not what we expected, the sauce was very garlicky; which was nice, since Mightypen and I used the sauce to liven up our respective entrees.

Sweet potato fries with ginger aioli. I do have to admit, I liked these. Well, compared to everything else, this really was not a disappointment.
This is a picture of the meat locker that you can see in the hallway while heading towards the restrooms.

Technically, it’s located in the middle of the restaurant, but if you want to take a look at it, it’s next to the restrooms. Maybe they freeze the taste and smell out of the food by doing this? I swear, I am going to find out how you make food with no fragrance. I would then do same to durian and make some money.
Finally, an image of the outside:

All in all, I’d stay away from the place. Maybe we’ll come back here again one day, but there’s lots more places to try so this restaurant can be considered a miss.

Rating:
2 out of 10 Spoonfuls

Value:
$$$ (pricey!)