Yesterday’s lunch

January 25, 2015 • 2:45 pm

TRIGGER WARNING: Meat! If you don’t like it, don’t read further. Moreover, all comments about how bad it is for your health, or remarks on my diet, will be deleted.

*****

Yesterday a kindly reader took me to a fancy steakhouse in Chicago: David Burke’s Primehouse. I’ve been there only once before—in 2011, when a few of us took Sam Harris out for dinner after his talk on The Moral Landscape (story here).

Since I don’t eat at the famous Chicago steakhouses very often (check the menu!), I brought my camera along to document the luxurious viands, for I knew the meal would be excellent, and I hoped to talk my way into seeing the meat-ageing room downstairs (I heard that they’ll sometimes give a short tour).

Burke’s is famous because all the steak served in his restaurant has half a genome from a single Black Angus bull, one affectionately named Prime 207L, bought for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Here’s the banner, depicting the bull, that greets you as you walk downstairs to the ageing room:

P1070833

And here’s Prime with chef David Burke. The restaurant proudly advertises Burke as “the first chef to own his own bull.” And that’s no bull!

prime-bullThe manager who gave us our tour (more below) said that Prime, who lives on a farm in Kentucky, is permitted to service three cows per day, six days a week. (Yes, every male will comment to himself about that!). He added that even when Prime goes to the Big Pasture in the Sky, they’ve frozen enough of his sperm to make steaks for years to come.

And here’s our meal: two aged ribeyes, together containing a complete Prime207L genome. I got the 40-day ribeye, and my host the 55-day. There’s also a 75-day-aged steak that costs $79, a substantial increase over the lesser-aged ribeyes. You’ll see the reason for the price differential below.

Along with the ribeyes I had a glass of stout (right), and we shared broccoli (not my choice!), and two tasty side dishes of tempura vegetables and onion rings. Portions were ample, and my steak, ordered rare (of course), was cooked perfectly. It was one of the best steaks I’d ever had. (I couldn’t finish it and will have the leftovers tonight.)  Just for scale, the steak is resting on a huge plate:

P1070827

Afterwards we politely asked the waiter if it were possible to tour the ageing room, and, after asking permission, he said yes. The room is kept cool but not cold, and the humidity is maintained at 57%. Here are the racks of ribeyes resting, each with a label showing when it was laid down. At the end of the room is the highly touted “wall of pink Himalayan salt,” which circulates salt throughout the room, keeping the beef free from mold and bacteria, and eliminating the need for putting any salt on it.

We were told that the room contained about $250,000 worth of meat.

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Here are the youngest ribeyes:

P1070830

And here are the oldest, patiently approaching 75 days. The dry-ageing makes them tough and desiccated on the outside, but imparts a delicious gamy flavor to the meat, a prized quality. These older ones must have half of their weight trimmed away before cooking, which explains why they’re so pricey:

P1070828

Finally, just for show, the restaurant keeps a few ribeyes from 2007 on hand, just to show what happens when the process continues. They become like beef jerky, but the guide said that these would still be edible:

P1070832

Thanks to Richard, the generous reader who bought me a stupendous steak.

137 thoughts on “Yesterday’s lunch”

  2. I don’t understand how salt is circulated throughout the room to keep the meat from spoiling? Like salt vapor? Is that possible? Sounds kind of gimmicky.

    1. Seemed strange to me, too. How would the salt aerosolize?

      It seems to be a common practice though — here and here. (and yet another I found that won’t link to so this post will go through without bugging Jerry).

      It seems the drying rooms get a heck of a lot of airflow (described on one site as “hurricane force”), and a site I didn’t link to has the meats hanging right next to the wall. Apparently, it helps keep humidity around 80% as well, and is expensive as hell to replace every 8 months or so.

      What I find kind of funny, is that the site I did not link to (www.theinternetchef.biz/4425/the-business-of-dry-aging-meat) claims their wall is the only one found anywhere in the world. Methinks they did not do their Googlework.

      1. I can see the presence of that much salt doing a little for humidity control, but not much – I doubt salt in such big slabs has that much water exchange capacity. When I was a chemistry student, way back when, we would use desiccators containing very hygroscopic materials such as anhydrous calcium chloride or anhydrous magnesium sulfate (I think I remember that right), which would mop up water to the point that they dissolved. Depending on the desiccant, you achieved a different percentage humidity in the desiccator. But good old NaCl was not one of them.
        As for circulating salt – nah.
        But it sure looks pretty.

        1. Well, I understand that if one has a humidity problem in one’s basement, a bag of rock salt left down there would help. It would be good to find out if the restaurant’s claim is true, about the salt getting into the air and into the meat. I could see the salt wall helping to control humidity.

        2. I was wondering about the specification of “pink Himalayan salt” too. I suspect gimmickery too, but with some grounds for a basis in real chemistry.
          The salt that has been traded across the Himalayas from Tibet into India for generations (on the back of Sherpas) is obtained by evaporation of snow melt in the severe aridity of the mountain’s rain shadow. That’s going to be pretty dirty salt, chemically. You can see colour bedding in the salt blocks which are regions of (probably) high-versus-low iron chloride content. Magnesium and potassium chlorides are going to be in there, and variable too. Sulphates and possibly nitrates in the mix too. At least the magnesium and iron chlorides are moderately hygroscopic. That leaves me reasonably convinced that there would be enough chemistry going on there to exert considerable control over the humidity.
          Plus, of course, all that slowly drying cow is a considerable reserve of humidity too. Or is it the bullocks that get the chop?

          1. The big blocks they are talking about are actually mined from 200-million year-old deposits high up in the Pakistan Himalaya. Some gunpowder residue could be on some of it, but they hack the blocks down into neat squares that haven’t kissed air since the Triassic. (I linked to a relevant clip somewhere around here…)

          2. Oh, I’d got it that the traditional trade was in salt from lakes in internal drainage basins.
            Of course, it’s possible that we’re both right. The traditional trade being in Recent lake salt, and the bulk modern trade being in industrially mined rock salt. Which does look like the blocks in the photos – but so can the lake deposits.
            The term “Tibetan salt” could just as well apply to both without anyone telling a word of a lie. Any competent advertising agent could spin the two together. I wonder when the last Cuban cigar was rolled on the thigh of a Dusky Maiden &tm; instead of a 30-cigar per minute machine?

          3. LOL! Skeptics, all.

            Still, you have to see this stuff… there are also inclusions that I’d have a tough time thinking were the result of evaporation.

            You’d know better than I would. And my butt still hurts from the spanking Torbjorn gave me for daring to opine on string theory.

          4. I’ve also seen ads for big blocks of this salt that you are supposed to stand on and all the toxins just flow right out….Yeah right…It does taste good in small doses, though.

          7. For extremely loose definitions of “favorite”, I suppose. Their strongholds tend to be in more difficult regions to the west and north, though a “Googlemap directions” search assures me I could be in their major stronghold in a mere 4 hours and 19 minutes. A little birdie tells me such an efficient road trip is not the way things work over there. The Beeb helps provide some context. On that map, the mines are to the right of the letter “U” in “Bannu”, due south of Islamabad.

            BTW, I love the directions Google maps gives: “Pass by Petrol Pump (on the right, 400m).

        3. Biochem major here (undergrad peon, ’86) — student of reaction kinetics. I have the same problem, esp. with the claims of circulating the salt. Makes no reaction-chemistry sense to me, though I am shooting from the hip.

          Damn, there’s another gun metaphor.

          1. I know nothing about chemistry. My guess is the salt absorbs the stuff that might otherwise get into the meat and the smell of the salt would be absorbed by the meat.

            Like in a fridge where you have those balls that absorb stuff to slow your fruit and veges going bad and smells get into the taste of other stuff if you don’t cover them properly.

          2. I can see the first part making sense (the salt getting coated with organics & also providing humidity control).

            It’s the “smell of the salt” stuff that I have a problem with. (would require salt to aerosolize, and I’m not sure how that would work, unlike how ocean salt spray gets kicked up into the atmosphere – that salt is in liquid form already).

            Perhaps the H2O in the meat-locker-air driven by the fans is enough to do it, but I’m dubious. And getting hungry.

            What really cracks me up was one bit of prose on one website that claimed the salt wall would have to be replaced every 8 months or so, adding to the expense. I smell another excuse to make the customer cough up some extra dough.

            After all, what is to prevent the Himalayan-salt-wall owner from simply going in there and shaving off a teeny bit of wall surface to restore the wall’s desiccant properties? (and if I’m wrong about the smelling salts bit, its seasoning properties?)

            Something smells fishy to me.

    3. I was thinking that, if the air is circulated past the salt wall, it might aid with keeping the air more or less sterile by killing bacteria.

  4. Excellent. I have a hunk of salt like that in my kitchen. It comes in very handy.

    I suspect there’s a considerable amount of alt-medicine woo associated with the stuff, but it’s sure yummy stuff. (don’t bother replying about supposed hazards of the red stuff in it)

          3. If it’s good enough for the Starship Enterprise, it’s good enough for the beef! Now if only we could somehow keep those bulls from grazing near the power lines, we could eliminate all the traces of EMF that accumulate within the muscle tissue over the bull’s lifetime.

      2. Yes, you beat me to that point.
        If you’ve ever lived near the beach and you have an old car, you will quickly learn how fast a small nick or scratch in the paint can be come a big corrosion problem.

        2. The problem I have with it making chem-reaction sense (in a meat-aging room), is that a wind-whipped ocean atmosphere containing salt-water spray (or a similar environment on a salted-highway) seems to be an altogether different situation, physically, than a meat room. There may be wind, but what is the physical cause of aerosolizing the salt? Just the fact the air is 80% humid?

          I want a double-blind taste-test study, and will gladly volunteer as a subject, no matter what arm I end up in. (as a gourmet, not as a menu item)

          1. I’m wondering if a brisk (brisque?) airflow through the ageing room could cause gentle erosion of the surface of the salt wall, and perhaps this fine particulate salt ‘dust’ then would get circulated through the room.

          2. Yeah – that’s the only thing I could think of — which I thought could be accelerated by more humid air (more polar molecules in the gas, I’d suppose). But drying out the place (57% humidity advertised in that room?) is the #1 purpose – seems to be at cross-purposes.

            With ocean spray & roads, it’s easy to see that salt gets lofted physically, in solution in water mist then deposited. But what do I know? I’m not exactly a materials engineer, who would have a much better grasp of the dynamics. Was just shooting from the hip. If people’s sensory reports can be trusted, then something I don’t understand is going on.

            Taste tests, smell tests, auditory tests tho… they’re all notorious and usually fall to the ground in the face of the almighty double-blind study.

          3. I thought about that after I made my comment, it’s lacking in “how” . . . you know what I mean?
            As in, it doesn’t explain how the salt gets aerosolized, which at the surf, I imagine must have something to do with, wind, waves and evaporation. A confounding mystery indeed. I suppose the scientifically prudent thing to do would be to sample the aged offerings of as many steakhouses as possible. All part of the sacrifices we must make in the name of science!

    3. How i n t e r e s t i n g = this salt mine – video information ! Red, white and pink ! Who knew ? !

      Blue

    4. The red stuff is most likely iron chlorides – possibly adsorbed onto clay, and likely partially hydrolysed to iron hydroxy-oxides of goethite and limonite.
      In English, “muddy rust”.
      I wouldn’t worry about it. Leaving the (soft) cheese out in a warm kitchen overnight is likely to be a bigger problem – and that’s not much of a problem.
      Mmmm, blue Stilton. The wife hates and fears the stuff, but I tucked into the cheese board yesterday (soup “bowl” photo in ProfCC’s inbox) and it was good!

      1. That’s the way I see it too. A teeny bit of biologically-inactive iron (wrong oxidation state, 3+), and traces of all kinds of other minerals. Lots more things to worry about in this life than that.

      2. Never been worried about things growing on my cheese. Just cut it/them off. Have tried through the years to like blue cheese, but it just hasn’t happened. Not remotely scared of it. Am also getting kind of tired of goat cheese (except for the orange Norwegian kind Gjetost?)because everybody everywhere seems to put it on everything.

      1. Very sparingly, because it is too easy to over-salt stuff with it. But a simple thing like cutting a garden tomato and giving it a quick swipe on the block’s surface, or using it in lieu of soy for sushi (I’ve hard it goes great with octopus, though I haven’t tried that yet).

        When finished you just put it on th floor and hit it with a damp mop, and it’s clean again.

        OK, I was fibbing on that last bit, but it rinses easily and dries. Some people try putting it in the oven and cooking something on it, which usually end up in tears (broken block).

      2. Here’s another way I use the block in my kitchen. For looking purdy.

        (that was the day I received it, and I was mesmerized by the way light shone through from different angles. I was trying to demonstrate it for the camera, but had limited success.)

      3. (you can probably see related Youtube vids, where people really are grilling on it. I thrive on very low amounts of added salt in everything I eat, though. So I tend not to use it much.)

        1. Two cannibals munching on a missionary, one starting at the head, the other starting at the feet.

          Cannibal 1: Man, this missionary is EXCELLENT! How’s it going over there?

          Cannibal 2: I’m having a ball!

          Cannibal 1: YOU’RE EATING TOO FAST!

          1. A cannibal was walking through the jungle one day and came upon an open-sided grass hut with a sign that said, “Cannibal Diner”. Below it was a smaller sign that showed the menu:

            JUNGLE EXPLORER PLATE LUNCH- $7.50

            MISSIONARY PLATE LUNCH- $12.50

            POLITICIAN PLATE LUNCH- $75.00

            The cook was leaning out the window of the hut and the cannibal asked him, “How come the politician plate lunch is so expensive?” The cook said, “You ever try to CLEAN one of them things?”

          2. Did you hear about the cannibal who was out late and missed dinner?

            His wife gave him the cold shoulder.

          3. The cannibal kid and the missionary kid were tossing a ball around, when the cannibal mom calls out, “Junior, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times – Do Not Play With Your Supper.”

          4. Cannibal kid: “I don’t like missionaries.”
            Cannibal mother: “Then just eat your vegetables.”

    2. The irrepressible Flanders and Swann, as have been mentioned before, on “Another Hat” :
      “Flanders: But people have always eaten people,/
      What else is there to eat?/
      If the Juju had meant us not to eat people,/
      He wouldn’t have made us of meat! ”
      Swann: Don’t eat people.
      Flanders: Oh no, not again.
      Swann: I won’t eat people.
      Flanders: All the day long.
      Both: Don’t eat people.
      Flanders: He keeps on repeating.
      Both: Eating people is wrong.

      1. I have a cookbook of Papua New Guinea cuisine called Kaikai Ani Ani which has a chapter on ‘long pig’, but doesn’t provide any actual recipes.

  6. Wow, looks great, and I’m not even a big steak guy.

    Any idea what stout you were drinking?

      2. My favorite brewery in Colo. Near Left Hand Canyon, north of Boulder, they suffered greatly during the recent fires & floods.

        My favorite bar here carries a vanilla stout “nitro” of theirs.

        1. Yes, the flood was awful. I live in NE Boulder which was mostly spared, except for right along Boulder Creek.

          I think I’ve tried Lefthand’s Vanilla Stout – but not the nitro version (which are usually better in my experience).

      3. Just out of interest, is stout chilled like other American beers or taken at room temperature à l’anglaise?

        1. Typically chilled like everything else. But, if the proprietor is English it may be served the traditional way.

    2. Chicago is the center of bourbon-barrel-aged craft beers.
      http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/travel/in-chicago-a-tasting-tour-of-barrel-aged-beer.html

      Not sure if Primehouse serves them. But much good beer in the area. Not much from Wisconsin – demand is so high that it does not make it out of state. So you have to go to New Glarus.
      http://www.newglarusbrewing.com/

      My favorite is 3Floyds:
      http://www.3floyds.com/

      Grand Rapids, MI is the farthest you need to source beer from:
      Founders
      http://foundersbrewing.com/
      Bells
      http://bellsbeer.com/

  7. TRIGGER WARNING: Meat!

    Ya know, pardner, there are several ways to interpret this one, if you get my drift (and I get my gun.)

  8. I’m afraid the gimmicky part is that the excellent quality is from this particular bull.
    I’m sure the meat is top quality but that would mostly be due to how the actual animal you are eating was handled and feed, and cooked, etc. No one is getting a bite of old prime 207L

  10. A good question. And it was resolved by the author Douglas Adams in his book ‘The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe’, one of the five volumes in his HitchHikers-Guide-To-The-Galaxy trilogy, with a cow that wants to eaten

    1. The Heaven of Animals

      By James L. Dickey 1923–1997

      Here they are. The soft eyes open.
      If they have lived in a wood
      It is a wood.
      If they have lived on plains
      It is grass rolling
      Under their feet forever.

      Having no souls, they have come,
      Anyway, beyond their knowing.
      Their instincts wholly bloom
      And they rise.
      The soft eyes open.

      To match them, the landscape flowers,
      Outdoing, desperately
      Outdoing what is required:
      The richest wood,
      The deepest field.

      For some of these,
      It could not be the place
      It is, without blood.
      These hunt, as they have done,
      But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

      More deadly than they can believe.
      They stalk more silently,
      And crouch on the limbs of trees,
      And their descent
      Upon the bright backs of their prey

      May take years
      In a sovereign floating of joy.
      And those that are hunted
      Know this as their life,
      Their reward: to walk

      Under such trees in full knowledge
      Of what is in glory above them,
      And to feel no fear,
      But acceptance, compliance.
      Fulfilling themselves without pain

      At the cycle’s center,
      They tremble, they walk
      Under the tree,
      They fall, they are torn,
      They rise, they walk again

  11. Reminds me of Museo de Jamon (Museum of Ham) in Madrid. Restaurant with many, many hams, as in whole legs, hanging everywhere and in overlapping rows along the walls. I think they are dated and there is a system for serving them. I had a corner table surrounded by hams on two sides, very hard not to accidentally brush against them.

    1. Reminds me of Museo de Jamon (Museum of Ham) in Madrid. Restaurant with many, many hams, as in whole legs, hanging everywhere and in overlapping rows along the walls.

      She, Who Must Be Obeyed, despite her barely comprehensible fear of blue cheese gets all worried when the German Delicatessan has racks of hams sitting around in cardboard boxes outside the pre-festive fridges. She gets all microbiologically paranoid. Which I suppose I can understand.
      I’m still trying to find somewhere that’ll sell me a lump of horse as “horse”, not as “beef curry”. The German Deli are being most PR-fuelled unhelpful, so I guess it’ll have to be mail order.

      1. And … it’s definitely easier to find than the last time I tried. Even zebra from one supplier in the UK. Stripy dinner!
        But … when I get back from the next job.

        1. did have not-so-stripey dinner in Africa once. Nothing really to write home about. Wonder if it tastes llike horse?

          1. Not being a gastronome … I dunno.
            I iintended already to ompare stripy and plain eqquids.

  12. D*mnable computers! My Douglas Adams comment was supposed to be a response to The Scrupulous Atheist #5, “If animals aren’t meant to be eaten, why are they made of meat?”

  13. I’ve always been interested in the aging of meat…as in how it doesn’t rot, but was too lazy to look it up. Now that I see how it is done, I’m really surprised. I’ve had aged steaks before, but nothing close to 75 days.

    1. Before I read this post, I didn’t even know that one aged meat. I’m such a neophyte but I don’t really eat much meet as my belly doesn’t like digesting it. I’m a big fan of beans for protein these days.

      1. And the “slow” carbs in legumes are said to be better than “white carbs” for blood sugar balance. True or not, I feel better – less bloaty, fewer weight swings up and down – when my bean-to-bread ratio is favorable.

        I knew about ageing but ironically I thought bacteria was our friend in the process, doing a little predigestion to soften it. Happy to be corrected on that one!

          1. And for those whose constitutions, er, talk back, there are very effective OTC enzymes and simethicone than take the snap out of the beans. It’s been my experience that it’s the added fats or inadequate prep, not the legumes themselves, that make beans the “magical fruit.” However, YMMV.

          2. Yes, I like my beans nicely cooked in a bean soup or stew. That takes the fart out of them!

          4. Pre-soak for an hour in boiling water and then in the pressure cooker for 3 min. According to Julia Child it takes the rooty-toot-toots out of them;-)

          5. Baked Beans good for the heart
            Baked Beans make you fart
            The more you fart the better you feel
            So eat Baked Beans for every meal

            A wee poem from my childhood

          7. The (U.S.) version I remember has
            Beans beans are good for the heart…

            So let’s have beans for every meal.

            No baking involved;-))

          8. “That takes the fart out of them!

            Where’s the fun in that?

            And please. This being a science oriented website can we please use proper terminology?
            Flatus Advanced by Rectal Transport.

          9. According to my preteens, I think the phrase you were seeking is “musical fruit”, as in “Beans. Beans. The musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot….”

            The following stanza begins, “Beans. Beans. They’re good for your heart….”

          10. Yes, thank you. The musical fruit. I am so proud to have launched such an erudite thread! I’m surprised no one has posted a link to the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles, which is really the high point in flatulent culture.

  14. Ahem. Have you heard about the two mothers who both had sons named Ray? The two men started a cattle station in sunny Australia. The station was named “Focus”, because that is where the sons Rays meet/suns rays meet/sons raise meat.

    When I first heard this joke I was told it was the only triple pun in the English language.

    1. Replace the broccoli with sauteed spinach or snap beans and make sure the stout is a Spaten Optimator and I’d consider building a temple in honor of the meal itself.

      1. Infidel! Optimator is a Doppelbock, not a stout! (As the Germans are a methodical people, you can instantly tell from the “-ator” ending.)

        1. In terms of commercially-available Doppelbocks, Ayinger Celebrator is, to my mind, quite a bit superior to Spaten’s Optimator. Paulaner’s Salvator is also worth a try.

        2. Good to know. I’ll sound that much more sophisticated when I order a Doppelbock next time. But whatever you call it, it is a terrific compliment for a well prepared cut of beef.

  18. What does one have to do to take Prof Ceiling Cat out for dinner? I know that I and a few other Chicago locals would enjoy that dinner conversation.

  19. Looks fantastic! I had a look at the menu too, and it made me want to be a regular.

    If I ever get to Chicago, this place is will be on the list of restaurants to go to.

  20. Aging of meat reminds me of the aging of the pheasant in “Shogun”.

    Smithfield hams, for example, are aged and develop mold on the outside which is removed before cooking. The hams are boiled before baking to remove the excess salt. Some sausages (and cheeses) are aged also. In the old days, various meats were kept through the winter by putting the meat in a barrel between layers of salt. Brining is also used to preserve meats and vegetables. To make sauerkraut, all you need is finely sliced cabbage and salt in jars or crocks, and time.

    1. The fermentation of sauerkraut involves bacteria that produce vitamin C above that already in the cabbage. Captain Cook participated in an experiment by the British Admiralty that saw him sail in 1772 with nearly 8000 pounds of sauerkraut and return in 1775 without any deaths from scurvy. Had this not been worked out by the time Darwin went aboard HMS Beagle in 1831, things might have turned out much differently for him.

  22. Yum. I like mine rare. After 15+ years as vegetarian (3+ as vegan) I dutifully plant a steak on my plate three or four times a year. Rare, only.

    Best streak ever: Cassie, Cody, WY.

    http://cassies.com

    1. How come you stopped being a vegetarian?

      I’m just curious. I don’t find it ethically defensible to eat meat – especially not mamals.

      Why? We are mammals too, and evolution tells us all life on Earth is related. Isn’t that a good reason to treat life around you with respect? I mean, watching BBC’s Super Smart Animals just shows even more that animals are clever beings that I don’t see any good reason to kill to get food as long as there are other ways to get your nutritions, which there are.

      But I’m sure people are of different opinions when it comes to this. I still don’t see – looking from the perspective of the animals – how one can find it morally defensible.

  23. “Moreover, all comments about how bad it is for your health, or remarks on my diet, will be deleted.”
    I find it quite fascinating how many people actually do this. Do they think people are unaware of the health consequences of their food choices? Or is it simply a way of sneaking in a judgement about someone’s behaviour? It’s quite sad that people are obsessed with what others do with their bodies.

    That steak looks delicious! One day I’ll have to get myself to a proper steakhouse.

  24. “And here’s our meal: two aged ribeyes, together containing a complete Prime207L genome.”

    I think you only got 75%; you’ll have to go back again a number of times to have a reasonable probability of getting the entire genome. All in the interests of science of course.

  25. I love the idea of knowing the specific genome that produced your meat. If only they’d sequence the bull, and use his DNA to decorate everything. Now, THAT’D be nerdy 🙂

    And am drooling now, too, btw. Thanks for the photos.

  26. I must ask, what exactly does aging the meat actually do in terms of quality of the steak once served?

    Also, why must the old steaks have half their weight trimmed away before cooking?

      1. Thanks for the links. Though I still don’t get why that restaurant needs to trim off half of a 75 day old steak before serving it.

  27. Aged ribeye? Oooh, lovely! It’s been almost a year since I last had one of those, and that day was a practically religious experience. If in London Hawksmoor are fantastic. It can get pretty pricey pretty quickly, though.

  28. No less an authority than top French butcher Yves-Marie le Bourdonnec has stated that English beef beats French because it is grass-fed while the French feed their animals on concentrates which makes them market-ready sooner. It would be interesting to know how 207L’s progeny are fed, and also whether genetic deterioration has set in as a result of lack of new blood in the herd. This is happening in Jersey where no new genes have been introduced for 50 years or more in the milking herd.

  29. Don’t stop posting the food stuff – it’s ace. It teaches me about foreign cultures and their ways of life but more importantly it is vital information to me as I plan on visiting the various eating establishments featured in your posts and eating myself spherical.

  32. Amazing. Not being a big steak eater my eyes are drawn immediately to the scrumpteous looking onion rings (I’m an onion ring fanatic).

    Typically I find trying to eat a big cut of beef to be monotonous. Even the “really, really good steak” that my friends try to cook for me.

    But my son loves steak, especially cooked rare by his grandfather, so for his 13th birthday a couple weeks ago I took him out to the best steak place (or one of) in Toronto. After the sticker shock “HOW MUCH for a 9 0z steak???!!!” I said “what the hell” and just went for it – a nice wagyu flatiron and a good aged rib-eye.

    NOW I “get” steak! It was the first time the meat was so delicious I wanted to keep eating more of it.

    I guess I just have expensive tastes…unfortunately.

      1. Jacobs and Co.

        I know there is debate between it, Harbour 60, Ruth’s Chris etc, but it seems to me sentiment has swayed to Jacobs and Co as offering the best steak and overall experience in Toronto.

        1. Thanks, Vaal. Must check it/them out. I do like a good steak but tend to eat more “ethnic” fare when in Toronto. Did have some incredibly good French fare recently at the new restaurant right across from the Young Theatre( Soulpepper) in the Distillery District. Excellent onion soup and something called something like “lamb two-ways”.

          1. Ah yes, some friends have been recommending Cluny to me. I have yet to go.

            I love the ethnic foods in Toronto as well!

            Though if you like french influenced food and you don’t mind throwing money into the wind, a dinner at Splendido in Toronto (European/international style) is an incredible experience, usually in the form of an extended “chef’s tasting menu.”

            I had probably the best meal of my life there in the fall, something like 18 courses over all. (You can get a smaller menu too). Now they are offering a 30-course version of the menu, which in my gluttonous manner, I must try!

            But, again, as you know there is plenty of affordable, great ethnic fare in TO.

          2. 30 courses!!! I love to eat, but am not very big. Not sure I could make my way through that without exploding. Did you ever eat at the original Susur? I was taken there for my birthday maybe 15 years ago and had the incredible tasting menu. His less pricey Lee is also excellent. I haven’t tried his sons’ restaurant yet – some funny name which escapes me at the moment. Maybe Bent? Possibly on Queen West?

            The chef I miss is Greg Couillard (ate at 3 or 4 of his sequential restaurants), who apparently is somewhat on the lam in Mexico. Great chef, bad money manager. President’s Choice even did a not-bad canned version of his Jump Up Soup.

            Going to Momofuku tonight before the opera, and will try to get a table on the 2nd floor near the bar out of the chaos… Will have to try Splendido sometime…

          3. merilee,

            Fascinating! Yes I used to eat at Susur (his first restaurant “Lotus” was a seminal experience in opening my eyes to fine dining). It was a sad day when he closed Susur.

            In my previous post I was even going to mention (Susur’s/son’s) Bent and also Momofuku as cool restaurant choices in Toronto, but it’s clear you’ve got things sussed out yourself.

            (Although Bent has some mixed reviews, I had a perfect meal there so I think highly of it).

            Sounds like you know what you are doing, but just in case other fine choices in TO are
            Buca for rustic-turned-fined-dining Italian and Bar Isabel gets “best of T.O.” raves for Spanish-influenced food, and quirky-located Zen Sushi is the local afficianados choice for best sushi experience.

            For one of the best values in town, I’d recommend Skin+Bones, which does excellent cooking, allows a tasting menu, at very reasonable prices.

            Have fun!

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