On The Bone, Princeton

Matt sometimes gets a craving for a giant slab of red meat, and really, who could blame him. My friend Bim gets the same hankering at times, and since it seemed that the stars were alligned on this particular night we decided to all meet at On The Bone in Princeton to satiate their craving. Elegantly and somewhat modernly decorated On The Bone is located inside of the DoubleTree hotel on Route 1 South. I find that hotel restaurants are usually pretty consistant food and service wise because... well... they kind of have to be.

We were all crazy hungry so we decided to order appetizers in addition to our meals. Matt and Bim chose to share the chicken quesadilla, and this bad boy was monsterous. Seriously, half of it was seriously like a meal, let alone an app. It was stuffed to bursting with chicken, peppers, onion, and cheese then topped with roasted corn, salsa, and sour cream and THEEENNN drizzled with a chipotle sauce. Sooooo much quesadilla. And it was good! With all of those ingredients it sounds like it would be flavor overload, too much nonsense, but surprisingly it worked well.Bim was crazy hungry so he also ordered the onion soup. When you order onion soup you expect a mini crock (usually those brown ones? you know what I mean). Soooo not the case here. What was placed in front of him was nothing short of absurd. I mean, look at it. It's fair to say it was a practical volcano of soup. What was really impresive, though, was that the soup was real, honest to goodness onion soup... not that light brown watery nonsense. This had a crazy deep dark color which means that the onions must have been cooked wayyyy down, the fond scraped, the cheese bruleed. Presentation of this dish was also fun. Yay.

I started my meal with one of the items off of the 'small plates' menu. It was listed as Manchego cheese with fig puree, and I figured since it was indeed a 'small plate' there would just be a tiny taste, enough for me to enjoy, but still have plenty of room left for my meal. I was instead presented with 6 crostini with 6 large wedges of cheese and a baseball sized dome of fig puree. I'd hate to see what their big plates look like....Long story short I'd probably order differently the next time as A) this was a lot of cheese for a small plate and B) the crostini were not done particularly well. Bim ordered the full rack of Saint Louis style ribs for dinner. These were delicious! The meat literally fell off of the bone, and the sauce was awesome... dare I say it was saucesome. Bahaha. Hysterical. But seriously, it was the exact kind of sauce that I adore and associate with barbeque. Thick and sweet, with a heavy hit of smoke and dare I say a bit of spiciness. I loved these (stole two from him over the course of the night) and so did he... Matt's a fan of sauceless ribs, but what does he know? Even with Matt and I helping him out, Bim was still able to take home an entire half rack. Portions = HUGE

Matt ordered the bone- in New York strip. It was cooked exactly right (as you would hope from a steakhouse, afterall). The sear on the meat left it with a nice, seasoned crust and the inside was pink but not dripping blood, a perfect medium. The cool thing about On The Bone is that every single piece of steak that comes out of their kitchen is aged for at least 21 days. Also fun to note, every piece of steak that comes out is bone- in, including the filet mignon. Fun, right? Anyway, Matt's steak was served with a trio of sauces... a bleu cheese sauce, a bernaise, and a glace de viande. These were all eh. They didn't add a lot of flavor, they were totally unnecessary to the meat eating experience, and they weren't particularly good. Luckily they were on the side and easy to ignore. The onion rings were exceptional.... crunchy, salty, not greasy just freaking perfect.

I ordered a burger, which is odd for me, but hey, it's what I was craving. Another bonus about On The Bone? You can pile your burger high with bonus toppings (mushrrom, bacon, sauteed onions, fancy cheeses) for not extra cost. Bonus! I decided to top my angus beef bad boy with smoked gouda cheese, mushrooms and onions. The burger was good... really beefy and flavorful, but not too fatty and greasy. The gouda (which I have never before used on a burger) was a treat... the smoke brought serious flavor. It was great. It was also huge. I ate about 1/3 of it and packed the rest in to come home. Who can eat this much!? Sad note about the fries, though. They were too greasy, big bummer.

The final bonus to this place is that it's reasonable... beyond reasonable, in fact! We were really surprised to see that with the 4 appetizers, the 3 dinners, a dessert and a bottle of wine (and a partridge in a pear treeee) that we got out of there for about $125. They have a killer prixe fix menu that is available during the week, and specials that change daily. They are also on restaurant passion dot com, which means that they often offer deals at big discounts (buy a $50 gift certificate for $25 kind of thing).

On The Bone

http://www.ontheboneprinceton.com/

4355 Route 1

Princeton- 08540

609 514 2663