The Golden Dishes of 1998

Sesame-Crusted Tuna with Miso Cream Sauce

This is for the Wall Street outcast, the guy who can talk the talk (which doesn't seem so hard to me, consisting as it does of "buy" and "sell") and walk the walk but still doesn't quite fit in. What must it be like to wear the red suspenders, smoke the contraband cigars and quaff the '53 Margaux yet be sneered at by your peers because of questionable personal orientations? What a curse to be a Wall Street vegetarian.

How do such people endure the ridicule? Those of us who have never been any closer to Wall Street than our 401(k) plans don't know a lot about the inner workings of brokerage houses, but we do know that the steak house of today is the cathouse of yesteryear, and a mandatory rite of passage is a forty-eight-ounce porterhouse on the bone. What does a man do when his fell arbitrageurs laugh at his choice of entrée? "Nice baked whitefish, Chad."

The tuna at Bryant & Cooper Steak House is a sure way to impress sneering omnivores. Other than sushi made from great white fish shark, I can think of no manlier seafood dish. As prepared by chef Christopher Mandzik (and usually only Thursdays through Sundays), this is a ten- to twelve-ounce chunk of sashimi-grade tuna rolled in toasted white and black sesame seeds, seared and served with a sauce so outrageous I'm sure it boosts the fish up to the cholesterol level of prime beef. The sauce is half heavy cream and half milk that is reduced and flavored with rice wine and miso. For added fire, a chunk of wasabi comes on the side. It's fish, but it tastes like Asian-influenced filet mignon.

Eating this dish will get a man a lot of respect on Wall Street, almost as much as running a hedge fund that doesn't collapse.