Is the food delicious at New York's fastest-growing ghost kitchen?

i was a fan I first encountered Bobby Flay's cooking in the late 1980s when he was chef at Miracle Grill, bringing a flavor of the Southwest to the East Village, then moving to Mesa Grill near Union Square. I followed his career for decades as he built a restaurant empire and became a popular TV personality appearing on 17 shows. Having missed a few of his restaurants before, I was intrigued when I heard his Bobby Flay steaks were being featured as one of the chef's choices at the new Wonder Ghost Kitchen and Food Hall, at 128 W. 23rd Street near 6th Avenue in Chelsea.

Wonder, a food hall and ghost kitchen from entrepreneur and former Walmart e-commerce president Marc Lore, is focusing on restaurant delivery and takeout, with its first location opening in 2023 and already in New York City. The company currently has 12 locations open, including six in New Jersey and one in Pennsylvania. This will be the first of 100 stores scheduled to open by 2025. After spending $60 million on recipes and restaurant concepts from partner chefs such as Marcus Samuelsson and José Andrés, Wonder describes itself as “a new type of food hall with iconic chefs and top restaurants.” expressing. There are no food stalls and very little seating, making it more of a ghost kitchen with an emphasis on delivery. From what I've seen at three different locations, the staff is responsible for about 200 different dishes from multiple menus.

Bobby Flay Steak is one of nearly 10 restaurants in the Chelsea location, offering a menu that includes three steaks and a selection of apps, salads, and sides. To get the full steakhouse experience, I ordered an appetizer of thick-cut bacon ($11). I also ordered a 16-ounce ($34) rib-eye steak, medium rare. I added creamed spinach ($9) and mushroom mashed potatoes ($9) as side dishes. The total bill, including tax, came to about $72.

My order arrived at the pick-up counter 13 minutes later, packaged in a foil container. The steak itself was large, boneless, and cooked rare rather than medium rare. It was good meat, nicely fatty, with a rough bark on top like a black potato chip that eventually flaked off. The bacon app was awful, fibrous and sticky. The creamed spinach was equally bad, with lots of cream and crunch on top. The potatoes were tasty, but they were too salty and had grated mushrooms in them that I couldn't tell. The food was like an SNL skit and was about the same price as a regular steakhouse for a sit-down meal, minus the service and booze.

The Chelsea location is a small space, tastefully decorated in dusty grays and forest greens. There's a rack with about 15 menu items on one side of the room, and a touchscreen next to the counter where delivery people take orders. Across Wonder locations, about half of the establishments (15 out of 29) appear to be associated with celebrity chefs, while the rest serve up generic fare like chicken wings, sushi, and burgers.

I decided to explore the menus at the other locations, visiting three of Wonder's locations in the East Village, Chelsea, and Hoboken, focusing on restaurants and chefs I've eaten at elsewhere, though Eater reports that the food hall will have more cooking equipment than just “rapid-cook ovens, water baths, and fryers.”

M's Fried Chicken and Waffles street bird Written by Marcus Samuelsson ($13)
The breast, cut in two, breaded and fried, had a hard coating and the waffle was cold and small. Grade: B

Classic Brisket Sandwich Tejas BBQ ($13)
The bun, pickles, and raw onions were all good, but the brisket, said to have been oak-smoked and barbecued at a Houston chocolate factory, tasted stale and rubbery. Grade: D

Paella de mariscos iota Jose Andres ($27)
The paella for two was hearty with lots of seafood, but the squid rings were brown and didn't taste fresh. Moreover, a large amount of liquid had accumulated at the bottom of the container. Grade: B

cavatelli with sausage and mushrooms Walnut Lane By Jonathan Waxman ($18)
Again, there was some thin liquid splattered on the bottom of the container, but the pasta was perfect and the sausage was plentiful and delicious. Two types of mushrooms were stacked on top of each other. Grade: B+

Spicy Pepper and Feta Sandwich Yasas By Michael Simon ($10)
After watching Simon on numerous cooking competition shows, I know he makes the world's most boring sandwich: chopped raw vegetables and crumbled cheese on pita bread that's old enough to be used as a catcher's mitt. It's strange to see. Rating: D

Original Square Pizza Di Fara Pizza ($27)
In this replica of Don DeMarco's Sicilian pie, the thick, flaky crust was exemplary, the tangy sauce, the slightly unusual cheese (listed as burrata on the menu) but with DiFara's signature shake of Romano, and the fresh basil he used to toss in every pie was omitted.

saag paneer Chai Pani Written by Meherwan Irani ($17)
The flavor was good and I would have rated it better except for the lack of spinach, the watery sauce, and the fact that it was delivered cold. The basmati was great though. Rating: B-

A $72 order from Bobby Flay Steaks? A B-.