The Breslin At The Ace Hotel Reopens As A Burger Joint

If you really love eating meat, there were few Manhattan restaurants more exciting about ten years ago than April Bloomfield's The Breslin, located right off the aggressively hip lobby of the Ace Hotel and rich in delights like Bone Marrow Butter, Fried Head Cheese, Stuffed Pig's Foot, and most famously a Charred Lamb Burger. The Breslin as such didn't survive the pandemic, and Bloomfield parted ways with the place in January, but last month a spinoff of sorts opened in the same location, the more singularly focused Breslin Burger.

The kitchen here is now led by longtime Breslin hands Ryan Jordan, in the executive chef role, and Patrick Smith as chef de cuisine. Together they are cranking out at least seven different kinds of burgers (and burger-like sandwiches) for the impossibly cool crowd that, at least on the evening we went, still pack themselves into the Ace lobby. Bloomfield's legendary Lamb Burger is the only dish that survived the revamp intact, and even the accompanying fries have changed, now cut less thick and only twice-, instead of thrice-, cooked.

Rather than eat our way down memory lane, last week my companion and I skipped the Lamb and ordered three of the Breslin Burger's new creations, led by the Double Patty Beef Burger, which was griddled smashburger style and topped with some good house pickles, a generous ration of bacon, and a nice amount of cheddar cheese sauce. The Fried Pork Rib Sandwich was a monster of a meal, a thick slab of pig meat in a crunchy tonkatsu-style crust, loaded with an onion-y slaw and drenched in white sauce.

The sleeper hit of the night was probably the Surf Burger, for which chef Jordan uses the old Breslin Seafood Sausage recipe, but now the scallops and shrimp have been reshaped into patty format, which sits below a pile of frisee and saffron-tomato mayo. This was delicious, really capturing the juicy sweetness of the sea meat. Other sandwich choices include a Veggie Burger made from things like carrot, mushroom, walnut, and lentil, with spicy mayo and pickled green tomatoes keeping things lively; and, for high rollers, a $40 Dry Aged Rib-Eye Burger with foie gras.

There are a number of drinking snacks here as well, and the two we had were excellent. I love Deviled Eggs, feel like I never have enough of them in my life, and Breslin Burger makes a stellar version of the picnic-time classic, punctuated by a cascade of smoked trout roe. Pickled Herring is another dish I could happily eat about ten times as much as I actually do, and here the fish was strong and tangy, lolling in a mound of sour cream to smooth it out, some water crackers fanned out for an appropriately neutral delivery system.

The list of less-fishy starters includes Loaded Fries with cheddar and bacon, Chopped Herbed Caesar Salad, and a crock of Smashed and Charred Cucumber. Draft beer, canned and bottled beer, wines of various hues, and $16 cocktails are at the ready to satisfy all of your alcohol-related desires. You can also get a number of these dishes at the Ace's "Lobby" bar, which now has outdoor seating on Broadway.

The layout of Breslin Burger is exactly the same as it's ever been, the lighting remains dim, and the carnivore-celebrating aesthetic is still very much on the "more is more" end of things. In fact, the only decor difference from pre-pandemic times that I could discern was the humorous defacing of many of those old photographs, as if, as one crew member put it, someone's kid brother had torn through the place with a marker.

Breslin Burger is located at 16 West 29th Street, off the lobby of the Ace Hotel, with an entrance between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, and is currently open daily from 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. (212-679-1939; breslinnyc.com)