The sides are excellent. Appetizers are fine. My 18oz bone-in strip was good, not great -- cooked to a proper blue but underseasoned and lacking in the funkiness and depth of flavor of the best dry-aged steaks. Two of the other three steaks we ordered we also enjoyed.
So why the 2 stars?
Although it was not "my" meal, I would be remiss in not mentioning the $100 "Snake River Farms" 6oz filet my stepmother had. I would not have fed it to a dog. It wasn't just that it was badly overcooked -- it looked worse than something that came out of a Cesar tin and tasted like microwaved hamster meat. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was easily the worst steak I've ever tried and one of the worst bites of food I've ever had in a restaurant. And I put "Snake River Farms" in quotations because I've had beef from Snake River Farms before and it bears no resemblance to whatever they put on the plate here.
By the way, nobody asked why my stepmom unloaded 3/4 of her steak onto my plate, and why it went mostly uneaten from there.
I see no point in bothering to give NAO another chance when one can go to Jacobs (far and away the best), Harbour Sixty, Barberians or Morton's instead. God forbid I come back here and lose this time at "steak roulette."
P.S. I also found the knives to be incredibly unwieldy. They're not as sharp as they look, and the combination of their large size, big steaks, and relatively small plates make them tough to maneuver.