French dip is having its day.
The roast beef-and-jus sandwich, long an also-ran to pastrami-on-rye, is now the toast of places from Minetta Tavern and Anton’s in Manhattan to Brennan & Carr in Sheepshead Bay. It’s long been a menu favorite at beloved chain Hillstone.
The buzziest of all is just-opened Salt Hank’s at 280 Bleecker St., the first-ever eatery from social media sensation and cookbook writer Henry Laporte, who has 2.6 million follows on TikTok and 1.6 million on Instagram as @salt_hank.
Laporte’s head chef, Daniel Rubenfeld, is an alum of Thomas Keller’s chophouse TAK Room. It shows in how the prime rib, from meat maestro Pat La Frieda, is carefully sliced and shredded to tongue-tingling perfection.
The 10-inch-long baguettes are delivered fresh every morning from crazy-popular nearby bistro Frenchette.
Those credentials, and Laporte social media following, wouldn’t mean a thing if Salt Hank’s French dip wasn’t so good. It’s the only thing on the menu — no burgers or other sandwiches — save for remarkably crisp, matchstick-thin fries ($6), house-made limemade with just-right sweetness and a few canned sodas.
The $28 French dip is big enough to food two people with big appetites. It delivers miraculous mouth feel along with rich, multi-tiered flavor. The fine-cut beef is dipped in jus before being layered with provolone cheese, caramelized onions and an aioli flavored with horseradish, chives and roasted garlic.
It emerges from the oven warm, moist and begging to be devoured. Some customers use their hands only, but I preferred a fork to pick through layers of crunchy crust, fluffy sourdough, and yummy tangles of shredded beef and melted cheese.
The jus itself was a rich, complex revelation — I could almost have it as a soup all by itself. It’s generously served in a large cup, unlike some other spots where you barely get any. T
The restaurant is a plain, comfortable room with formica-top tables, a counter with a half-dozen seats and pictures of Laporte’s book, Salt Hank: A Five Napkin Situation. Customers line up at a kitchen counter and wait for friendly staff to bring them their orders, while grooving to a soundtrack that hops from Notorious B.I.G. to Cardi B.
Laporte himself works on the line, putting the finishing touches to assemble the sandwich. On my visit, he was wearing a cap that said, “Lo Siento” – Spanish for “I’m sorry.”
But there’s nothing to be sorry about, unless you get there too late for the 75 pounds of beef they go through each day.
While Salt Hank’s purports to stay open until 5 p.m., they usually run out of beef by 3 p.m. Get there early — and hungry.
