Heartland Brewery and Rotisserie, New York, N.Y.

Our lawyer friend and Californian John came to New York City this past weekend, the same time I was there, except his mission was to watch the final baseball performance from Yankee Stadium on Sunday. Ian and I met up with John at his hotel after he got settled in Saturday night, planning to take him somewhere nice for dinner. It turned out, however, that this was John's very first ever trip to NYC, so we embarked upon an abbreviated nighttime walking tour of midtown Manhattan, including a venture up to the top of the Empire State Building.

After our tour in the chilly New York night, we stopped in at the Heartland Brewery and Rotisserie there in the Empire State Building for a late supper. John's a big beer fan, so it seemed like an appropriate place to take him. The place was busy when we arrived, but they were, nevertheless, able to afford us immediate seating in their downstairs dining room.

Service was rather slow both after we were seating and throughout the evening, though I liked our waiter, who seemed responsible but over worked with too many tables. The only real problem we had was that one of Ian's beer glasses came to the table with a large L-shaped crack in it, but the waiter immediately rectified the problem once we pointed it out.

John ordered the maple-cured pork loin, the pork getting a maple syrup and bourbon glaze and being served atop a bed of maple-glazed sweet potato purée. He reported the pork was juicy and very good.


On the waiter's recommendation, I got the smoked chicken salad, but substituting the smoked chicken for rotisserie chicken. The mixed greens base included dried cranberries, pecans, and a blue cheese-balsamic vinaigrette. It was fine as far as chicken salads go, though nothing particularly outstanding.


Ian ordered a Caesar salad with dressing on the side, a bowl of chicken noodle soup (the noodles were penne pasta), and then later an order of spicy fries. He also got a sampler flight of six of the in-house brewery's beers. I took tiny sips of all of them, and the only one I really liked was the India pale ale (IPA), a strongly bitter, hoppy brew that Ian didn't like at all, but I reveled in the bitterness. There was also an oatmeal stout that tasted a lot like espresso with hints of chocolate. John, having been a brewmaster in his past, took over the beer education lessons for Ian, since it's not an area of my interest or expertise.




For dessert, Ian and I split a chocolate chip cookie pie, or at least we were supposed to have. This was a warm, thick, chocolate chip cookie in a pastry crust topped with vanilla ice cream. The literally three small bites I got were tasty; Ian unapologetically snarfed down the rest of the pie as though he were inhaling it. I was rather annoyed that the waiter only brought us spoons with which to eat a piece of pie. Had to ask him for a fork. :-/



After dinner, we walked the tired John back to his hotel. I think Sunday after I left to return to Washington, John and Ian got together for a late lunch, but I've not yet heard a full report on that yet.