As someone who lives in a winter snow zone (the southern part of New York State), I share a love-hate relationship with Mother Nature that by this time in February tilts towards the latter.  So it is difficult for me to imagine the deprivations of far snowier, bitter cold climes of the northern and western parts of the state, where snowfalls are measured in feet rather than inches.
    Syracuse is located in the northeast corner of New York’s Finger Lakes region and won the Golden Snowball Award for the most snowfall in the state from 2002 to 2011, with an average of ten feet per year and the distinction of being the city in American that gets the highest annual snowfall.  Yet my stalwart friends in Syracuse simply shrug when I ask them about being continuously under assault by blizzards, explaining that, like all cold weather people, from Kodiak to Kennebunkport, they are so used to it and plan so well for it, that it’s just part of their daily lives.  Snow falls, plows come through, you dig out and get on with your life without whining.  That done within hours of a snowfall, the natives have come up with myriad things to do during the winter, whose record temperature was -26 degrees in 1936.
    In fact the city has proclaimed itself the “official home of the misunderstood season.”  Of course,  the Syracuse University basketball and hockey seasons are in full swing, and Labrador Mountain ski park is just 30 minutes away, with 22 slopes.  Art museums and galleries are respite from the cold and warming to the soul.
    Many of the Finger Lakes wineries are open throughout winter for tastings and tours, at a time when the vineyards are dormant and winery owners have more time to spend with visitors.  (For info:  http://fingerlakestravelny.com/wineries )
    Since clearing the streets of snow is a given in Syracuse, a downtown walking tour is a capital idea—a slow stroll will take under two hours—not least because the city has some impressive historic architecture, built on the wealth created by timber, salt, potash and nearby crop lands, all easily shipped on the Erie Canal and a network of railroads.  Indeed, in many ways Syracuse was a true gateway to the west at a time when it was still pretty wild.  Water is still drawn from Skaneateles Lake, considered one of the cleanest in the country.
    Begin your walk in the wide-open Clinton Square (above), anchored by its 1910 Soldiers & Sailors Monument dedicated to those who died in the Civil War, surrounded by a reflecting pool used in winter for ice skating.  The Third National Bank Building, done in a rust-colored Queen Anne style (on the left in the photo of Clinton Square), and the Victorian Gothic-style Syracuse Savings Bank (in the middle of the photo of Clinton Square) are joined by the limestone Gridley Building (on the right), the Romanesque City Hall (right), and the newly restored Hotel Syracuse; once one of the grandest hotels in America, opened in 1924, it is now a Marriott-managed property.
    The restoration not only polished clean the hotel’s magnificent interiors (right), it unveiled a 40-by-6-foot mural depicting 20 key events during the first 100 years of Syracuse’s history, which had been ignominiously covered over with mirrors in the 1980s.  Now it looks rapturous, showing in vivid colors events like the discovery of salt springs near Onondaga Lake, and the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy.  The Grand Ballroom is once again magnificent, while all the white-and-gray bedrooms, now 250, down from 600 (average rate $300 per night) have been completely modernized with the most up-to-date amenities.
    You can get a palpable sense of the hotel’s history simply by enjoying a cocktail in the clubbish Cavalier Room off the lobby, while a more contemporary look marks the restaurant Eleven Waters (right), a sunny American bistro serving everything from an excellent onion soup gratinée ($7) and the locally beloved Syracuse salt potatoes ($7) to luscious merlot wine-braised short ribs with mashed root vegetables ($19) and a main course of hearty macaroni and cheese ($14) made with New York cheddar and Gouda, tomato bacon jam and grilled chicken.  The spiedie chicken Cobb salad with buttermilk dressing ($12) is bountiful and very good, and all dishes are listed with suggested New York State wines by the glass.
 
  To appreciate a Syracusan’s sense of winter, it’s worth quoting the line from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Snow Storm,” of how “the housemates sit /Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed /In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.”  Or John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl” on the end of the  frigid ordeal:    

                We felt the stir of hall and street,
                The pulse of life that round us beat;
                The chill embargo of the snow   
                Was melted in the genial glow;
                Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
                And all the world was ours once more!

    There is no question that Austrian-born chef-entrepreneur Wolfgang Puck was one of the central figures in what was christened “New California Cuisine” back in the 1980s.  Based in Los Angeles, he first made a splash as chef at the ultra-trendy celeb haunt Ma Maison, then as chef-owner of Spago, whose casual chic and grill-centered cooking was an enormous boost both to Los Angeles dining and to American gastronomy.
    Puck also had an impish look and a Schwarzenegger-style accent that made him bankable at a time when chefs were emerging as stars, and he was enormously successful in being bankrolled to open restaurants, pizza chains, packaged foods and TV shows under Wolfgang Puck Worldwide Inc.  But, despite his worldwide ventures, except for an Express eatery at JFK Airport, Puck has shied away from NYC, a city known to send celeb chefs packing after a season.
                                                                                                                            Photo by Amanda Marsalis
    So, much was expected from CUT By Wolfgang Puck, a branch of the original steakhouse in Beverly Hills that won universal praise, including my own naming CUT the best new restaurant of the year in Esquire for 2006.  The NYC operation, in the Four Seasons Downtown Hotel, is the sixth CUT in the chain, including those in Las Vegas, Singapore and Bahrain, no two looking alike, and this newest is 180 degrees in atmosphere from the sunny, spacious original. 
    The NYC restaurant’s doors open to a clamorous bar with intensely red neon lighting to your right--and I have not altered the photos' color--and a modest-sized 82-seat dining room on your left (private dining lies beyond).  The room has its windows blocked out; the dominant color is black, with glaring red accents; the chairs are a boudoir purple; the curtains shiny gold; on one wall is written, sounding like a particularly lame line from Fifty Shades of Grey: "Sometimes you know it in your head, the chef whispered. Sometimes you feel it in your stomach, she smiled, buzzed."
    The service staff, under the very affable  general manager Louis Smeby, is as attentive as possible, even when the  place fills up around eight o’clock—when ninety percent of the guests seem to be men who, once they’ve doffed their jackets, cause the noise level to soar to just shy of ear-aching, bolstered by piped-in rock music. Indeed, the whole atmosphere seems intended somehow to express a NYC power crowd’s self image,  but instead looks a lot more like a posh steakhouse in a Lake Tahoe casino resort.
    But you come for the steaks, and to a list of about 16 different cuts, Puck has added an admirable swathe of first courses, salads, side dishes and desserts, pretty much a Xerox copy of the Beverly Hills restaurant (also in a Four Seasons hotel).
    But first, as at the Morton’s steakhouse chain, a waiter comes by your table brandishing outrageously expensive wagyu beef, all wrapped in white napkins that make these heavily marbleized cuts look more like Spam than beef.  And since wagyu and Kobe beef, or whatever restaurants choose to call such cuts, have now become as widely available as Idaho potatoes on steakhouse menus, this presentation is a tad twee.  A couple of morsels, served to us as compliments of the house, tasted very much like the grease that oozes out of a fatty steak.
    There is a fine selection of breads and guests receive a peppery gougère to pop in the mouth. I also enjoyed both the lustrous tuna tartare ($23) and beef tartare ($21), beautifully presented in two tiers of a polished wooden box.  A lobster and blue crab “Louis” cocktail ($24) had a fair amount of the latter but mostly shreds of the former in a sticky tomato-horseradish sauce.  Thinly sliced veal tongue ($18) came with artichokes in a soupy sauce of too-tangy lemon and salsa verde.   The best of the starters was a generous bowl of delicate tortelloni stuffed with sweet pumpkin and liberally tossed with sage butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano ($18), a dish the best Italian restaurants in town would be proud to serve.
    Our table tried three cuts of meat and one seafood dish, avoiding the wagyu at $25 per ounce (six ounce minimum).  The 20-ounce bone-in New York sirloin ($58), aged 28 days, was excellent and impeccably seared and cooked at 1,200 degrees, the meat with an assertive beefy flavor.  Not so, though, a mushy bone-in ribeye, also 20 ounces ($59), which had very little beef flavor at all. It was simply bland.  Double lamb chops with a cilantro-mint raita yogurt ($58) were of excellent quality,  from Elysian Fields in Pennsylvania.
    Most disappointing was a roasted Dover sole meunière with preserved lemon and parsley ($58).  While appending the meaningless term “Dover” to common sole is supposed to suggest a nice, fat, thick fish, the example at CUT would hardly qualify. It was a small specimen, fairly tasteless and lacked the extraordinary lavishing of butter that this classic should have.
    Pureed Yukon Gold potatoes ($10) and French fries ($10) were good, but broccoli di rabe ($10) was chewy and needed oil and garlic. Cavatappi pasta with “Mac & Cheese” ($14) will win no points for savory complexity.
    Zairah Molina’s sumptuous desserts show something of the old Puck verve: a perfect chocolate soufflé with crème fraîche (left), roasted hazelnuts and gianduja ice cream ($14) and rich, buttery Seckel pear and almond-oat crumble with Armagnac date ice cream ($12).
    CUT has an excellent, if high-priced, wine list (not on its the website) with wines by the glass $12 to $36, and the now requisite signature cocktails, running a whopping $18-$25; beers start at $9.
    At the end of a night at CUT you should come away saying, “I have just had the best steaks ever,” but that wouldn’t be true.  They are only the most expensive steaks, and the décor will do nothing to convince you that this is downtown Daddy Warbucks-Goldman Sachs-Jamie Dimon NYC.  Classy is not a word that leaps to mind.  CUT  looks more like a place where the color commentators at ESPN would hang out in Bristol, Connecticut. 

Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner.