In memory, at least, I spent a good chunk of the 2010s ensconced in one of the dimly lit booths in the back room of the Beatrice Inn on West 12th St., with a Smoked Manhattan and a colossal 45 day dry-aged burger dripping with d’Affinois cheese in front of me. The basement establishment, in a building dating to the 1840s, had gone through a lot of iterations over the previous century, from an Italian restaurant to a brief heyday in the ‘00s as a clubby hipster bar/social club frequented by A-list celebs. Graydon Carter, of Spy Magazine, Vanity Fair and, well, Graydon Carter fame bought the place and turned it into a mediocre, but still celeb-studded, “chophouse,” in his description.
But all that was before chef Angie Mar came on board in 2013. Once she was in the kitchen, the Bea stopped only being about who you’d see, and more about what you were eating. Mar works with meat the way Miles Davis worked with a trumpet, or Shohei Ohtani works with a baseball. She’s a master of the art — an inventive, creative, artery-clogging genius. Her greatest Beatrice hits, from her 75-day aged lavender-infused steak to her colossal tomahawks, wrapped in whisky-soaked cloth (Brenne French single malt, to be precise) for 160 days, to her insane-but-brilliant bone marrow créme brulée that was even better than having more steak for dessert, all remain firmly lodged in the memories of a generation of New York carnivores.
Chef Angie Mar in the kitchen of the Beatrice Inn in 2016, the year she bought the restaurant from Graydon Carter.
Photo by Tony Sachs
The Beatrice’s dry-aging program was done in-house, or at least in-building. “We had insane amounts of dried beef,” Mar remembers. “I’ll say this now, because the restaurant doesn’t exist anymore. I was doing it definitely illegally. I had these reach-in fridges in my office, above the Beatrice, and I had, like, $80,000 worth of beef at one time in those fridges. It was crazy. My office was basically a studio apartment that we had converted into an office. So I had, like, three desks in there and fridges just plugged in. And we were just drying beef in there. It was bananas.”
The bar program was as solid as the food, from the botanical-laden G & T served Spanish-style in a goblet, to the cherrywood-smoked rye Manhattan — one of the first smoked cocktails I can recall seeing — to the Big Poppa, which was… well, more on that later. None of it was cheap. The tomahawk steak alone could run a table up to $1,000. But a whole lot of New Yorkers considered it worth the blow to the wallet.
In 2016, Mar bought the Beatrice from Carter. It was a signature moment in NYC culinary history, in which a chummy boys’ club in an industry dominated by men became the domain of a female Asian-American from Seattle. She didn’t just become the hot celeb chef of the moment — she became a central culinary figure who helped define the whole crazy decade.
Mar was already planning a move from the dark basement digs on West 12th St. to an airier, lighter corner space a few doors away when the pandemic hit; by 2021, she’d re-thought the Bea’s concept entirely and reopened as Le Trois Chevaux, a posh, ultra-elegant, extremely French restaurant whose serene vibe — and a dress code! — was almost the opposite of that of the bustling, noisy Beatrice. In 2023, it evolved into its current iteration, Le B, which injected a little of the casual Beatrice Inn vibe back into the mix.
To mark Mar’s 10th anniversary of taking the reins at the Beatrice, she’s taking the opportunity to revisit some of its greatest hits, both food and drink, at Le B this summer. “2016 changed the trajectory of my career,” Mar says. “I went from being the girl that was working for Graydon Carter to the girl that bought Graydon Carter out of his restaurant. I think it was really time to pay homage to that.”
Le Burger — a 45-day dry aged ribeye blend, dripping with d’Affinois cheese and onions slow-cooked in Bordeaux wine.
Photo by Tony Sachs
That means the Bea’s fabled burger — which she’d already reintroduced on a very limited basis at Le B’s bar — is, for now at least, back on the menu restaurant-wide. For me, it’s the signature burger of the wild decade of excess that was the 2010s, and is still, in these head-spinning, joy-sapping times, up there with the best burgers New York has to offer. The colossal patty, mostly ribeye augmented by short rib and chuck, is cooked medium rare, tender and juicy without getting mushy or soggy. The patty is enrobed with gooey, dripping d’Affinois cheese (a type of Brie) and topped with onions slow-cooked in Bordeaux wine until they’re so soft they melt into a jam-like consistency. No condiments are provided; none are needed.
Le Burger, as it’s now named, is served in a custom-made brioche bun that miraculously absorbs all the beef’s juices without falling apart. At the Beatrice it was served with fries; now it comes with potato straws. I turned my nose up at the straws until I actually had a taste of them. I have no idea what magic was done with them, but they’re more than passable, they’re addictive. The burger, made with meat dry-aged for 45 days, is treated with the same reverence as steak, and that’s reflected in the price — between $60-74, depending on beef prices. It’s the most expensive burger that’s not slathered in truffles or caviar or served with a diamond ring on the side … but for burger fiends like me, whose dreams have been haunted by its memory, it’s worth every cent.
The best accompaniment to Le Burger is the Samkus. Mar explains the name: “Much of the [Beatrice Inn’s] cocktail program was originally developed alongside my longtime creative partner, Antanas Samkus. Antanas sadly passed away from cancer two years ago, but his influence and the team he helped mentor continue to shape the menu today. One example is the Smoked Manhattan, which we renamed the ‘Samkus’ in his honor.” Nowadays, chain restaurants offer smoked cocktails and home cocktail smoking kits are commonplace. But more than a decade ago, the Smoked Manhattan was a big deal, especially when it was presented inside a smoke-filled crystal decanter that was opened tableside. Back then, it was made with rye whiskey and cherrywood; nowadays, it’s made with Japanese whisky and smoked oolong tea (sourced from Mar’s mother in Beijing), and as a result it’s a gentler but no less flavorful drink.
The Samkus cocktail at Le B, mid-preparation (that’s the glass getting smoked).
Photo by Tony Sachs
The Samkus should be your second cocktail of the night. The first should be the M. Wallace, formerly known as the aforementioned Big Poppa. “We named this, obviously, after Biggie Smalls,” says Mar, “and now we call it Monsieur Wallace, because obviously this feels like a more grown-up restaurant. This cocktail has not changed at all, except the name.”
As it should be. Whatever its name, it’s now, as it was then, a simply extraordinary cocktail. At heart it’s a sour, with yuzu, yellow Chartreuse and egg white shaken until frothy. Truffle-infused gin gives it an extraordinary pungency and a stunning sweet-tart-umami trifecta of flavor. Creamy and velvety, the glass is rimmed with gold dust — and there’s a fair amount of it swirling around atop the drink as well. It’s over-the-top, a tad ostentatious, and hits just as hard as it did a decade ago.
I wasn’t the only one who loved it. “I have this amazing picture of Rose McGowan when she shaved her head,” Mar says. “Remember that era? She was out at the Beatrice and she had a shaved head and she had bold lips. And she was holding this cocktail. It was, like, the thing.”
Other longtime Beatrice favorites are making their return, including a large breast of duckling flambéed tableside. It’s still one of the best pyrotechnic shows in town, and topped with fresh cherries from Washington State, it tastes just as good as the flames look. The famed lavender beef is back, as is the cote du boeuf, topped with charred prawns, blackberries and garlic confit, which was considered the entry-level beef dish at the Beatrice. Other classics, both food and drink, will be rotating in and out throughout the summer-long gastronomic look back.
If you missed the Beatrice Inn the first time around, now’s your chance to taste the legend, in the more tranquil environs of Le B, but with Angie Mar still at the helm. And if you were there, it’s a chance to take a Proustian trip back in time — plus a chance to check out some of Mar’s brilliant current-day fare (don’t sleep on the calves’ brain ravioli, I’m just saying).