Orderinny

My sis and I are avid watchers of Food Network shows. She is particularly tickled by this show called Throwdown with Bobby Flay, where Flay, a big name chef in the New York food scene basically travels around the country challenging amateur/professional cooks on their specialties, and loses, most of the time, spectacularly. Intrigued by his celebrity and skeptical about his cooking skills we like other celebrity chef collectors decided to vist Mesa Grill to taste his brand of Southwest American cuisine.
The restaurant was large, airy, with brightly colored walls to evoke the Southwestern style. The burgundy banquette with printed cowboys provided the kitsch factor. The food in general was good. In fact, the bread basket, filled with a variety of sweet and savory baked goods and redundant chili relish was rather tasty. I couldn't get enough of the mini jalapeno puffs, glistening with butter as I pulled them apart. Ruoying on the other hand found the raisin scones just as buttery and irresistible. Cornbread and a pecan/cranberry bread rounded up the sinful quartet.
The entrees were spicy, thanks to the liberal addition of jalapenos. A pair of poached eggs on sweet potato and chicken hash was a riff on classic eggs benedict. The hash, studded with jalapenos was sweet, salty, and spicy at the same time, but a little deficient on the chicken. I preferred Ruoying's omelette to my hash however. I found out that goat cheese tastes really good with eggs, and also neutralizes the piquantness of fresh sliced peppers. Two hefty slices of ham accompanied the eggs, glazed with a sweet apricot sauce and tasted like jerky. Biscuits that were meltingly buttery and fluffy completed the plate. The portions were generous to the point of huge, with my mounds of sweet potato hash seemingly self-regenerative. No matter how hard I worked at it, it remained largely intact.
As we left the restaurant, we spotted some cookbooks, signed by Mr Flay on display for sale next to the hostess stand. I am sure, many of our fellow diners like us are drawn to Mesa Grill by the celebrity factor. There's not quite as much drama at the restaurant as compared to Throwdown, but at Mesa Grill, at least you are assured that the food is tasty.

Mesa Grill
102 5th Avenue
www.mesagrill.com