Beef à la Mode
Since colonial times, a beefsteak's origins, quality, and flavor could make or break a tavern's reputation. As tastes and fashions change, the same holds true across today's chef-stampeded steakhouse scene.
Katy Keiffer reports.
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| More 'Food Arts Turns 20' articles in this issue |
| Pilot Light 1988—2008: The Food Arts Generation |
| Over the Foaming Wave No one would dispute that this culinary era could easily be called the Age of Adrià. Spanish gastronomic sage Gerry Dawes revisits and reconsiders Ferran Adrià at El Bulli nearly 11 years after first illuminating his revolutionary cuisine for Food Arts. |
| Talk About Breakthroughs! Yes, time marches on, but who could have envisioned how much technology and equipment advances over the last 20 years rearranged everything from food preparation to reservations. Dave Arnold, Food Arts contributing editor for equipment and the director of culinary technology at The French Culinary Institute, and Nils Norén, vice president of culinary arts at The French Culinary Institute and A Food Arts Contributing Authority, look at innovations that have shaped restaurants since 1988. |
A perennial favorite, the steakhouse, is enjoying even more popularity these days. Currently, the model divides neatly into the old-time style of steakhouse with the grumpy waiters and the minimalist menu, and the newer version, updated by today's culinary stars. In the past half-decade, luminaries such as David Burke, Laurent Tourondel, Wolfgang Puck, Tom Colicchio, Michael Lomonaco, and others have taken up the gauntlet, looking to add something new to the steakhouse tradition.
The distinguishing characteristic of the majority of the new era steakhouses is the specific aging programs for their beef. All steakhouses age their meat—some wet age, some dry age—and the norm falls between 14 and 28 days. Wet aging is synonymous with Cryovac packaging, a technology that emerged in the 1970s. But only the newer outposts actively use dry aging as a significant marketing tool to attract more sophisticated customers. As Lomonaco of Porter House New York in Manhattan, says, "Diners are becoming more discerning, and that is driving the new steakhouse." With menus boasting steaks aged up to 75 days in some cases, this is not necessarily meat to everyones taste. Nor does it fit every pocketbook. Highly aged beef is a very personal and individual choice. In the words of Craftsteak's Colicchio, dry aged beef of over 45 days, can become, "funky, musty, very gamey." Todd Hatoff, president of Allen Brothers, a major national supplier in Chicago, described it as having "a heavy pungent flavor."
Nevertheless, dry aged beef has acquired an even more illustrious veneer as the new luxury product, and there seems to be no shortage of consumers willing to fork out $50 and over for a steak. Aside from the concentrated flavor and surpassing tenderness, there is a reason why dry aged beef is truly a luxury. The loss of volume through dry aging can be breathtaking. Marc Sarrazin of DeBragga and Spitler, a New York City supplier, says dry aged beef can lose as much as 15 percent of its weight, and up to 50 percent of its yield thanks to combined weight loss and the heavy trimming necessary to remove the most dessicated parts of the aged meat. According to Jim Rogers, vice president of marketing for Creekstone Farms, a supplier and processor in Kansas, the aging phenomenon really caught on in a major way in the last year or so. The fact that this trend is now playing out in the retail consumer markets, as well as with his restaurant customers, demonstrates how fine restaurants make an impact on the mainstream. Creekstone has begun selling dry aged steaks to D'Agostino, a New York–based supermarket chain.
Of course, aged steaks have always been popular, whether wet aged or dry aged. But the new emphasis on those specific qualities in flavor and texture found only in dry aged meat have become the focus of the new steakhouses, and this is exploited in a variety of ways. At Craftsteak in New York City, Colicchio offers steaks aged up to 75 days and encourages tables of four or more to buy a variety of ages and share, so as to experience the different options. As one of the leaders in this trend, he was hooked when food columnist Jeffrey Steingarten involved him in an article for Vogue several years ago. They aged and ate a series of steaks, and the differences were "amazing." Colicchio began his aging program at New York City's Craftsteak, where he installed a state-of-the-art aging facility. Shortly after that experience, he was asked to open a new steakhouse in Las Vegas, and then the Craftsteak sibling was born, concentrating more on Wagyu and on prime meats.
Given the dodgy economics of dry aged beef, when asked why he felt that new steakhouses were going in so heavily for dry aging programs, Colicchio responded: "We do it because we are chefs, and that's what we do. We want to push the envelope. It's a real pain in the neck, very difficult to do what we do. And it's really expensive!" He also points out that cooking aged meats requires extra skills. Steaks aged for 56 or 75 days are going to cook up differently. Staff has to be trained to do the job correctly.
Union Trust, a steakhouse under the helm of Ed Doherty and chef Terry White, opens this month in Philadelphia. As a new twist on the aging trend, White will offer a "tasting flight" of dry aged steaks for one table a night. Hes using a 107 rib, with a long bone, which helps him control portion size, since the cut shows very little weight variation from animal to animal. The flight will offer 35 to 56 days of aging, with each diner getting the equivalent of one steak that has been sliced and reassembled from each of four separate aged steaks to provide a real tasting experience. His sommelier will select wines to complement each increment.
The philosophy behind this flight is to offer something no other steakhouse yet has done. On a psychological level it also speaks to the desire for an experience of much exclusivity that only one table an evening can order, in advance of course. As White remarks, "there's always a sense of competition, who has the biggest expense account, or the biggest credit card." Steakhouses are traditionally bastions of masculinity, and the competitive aspect is probably more overt here than in any other restaurant category.
While many chefs prefer to let their suppliers age and cut their steaks, some chefs, Burke among them, have invested heavily in aging rooms. At Primehouse in Chicago, he has installed the Himalayan salt-walled aging room to help spurn undesirable bacteria and control humidity. The salt, he finds, flavors the meat in a very subtle way, adding to the flavor profile and contributing a specific effect that he feels gives him an edge. Other chefs also use salt in their aging rooms, but suppliers don't seem as convinced.
In general, using restaurant real estate for an aging room is a luxury most cannot afford. Indeed, even with an aging room, this is a job that requires some expertise regardless of modern technology. Jeff Lohser, director of foodservice for Creekstone Farms, describes a dodgy experience he had in a Florida restaurant that was capitalizing on the dry aged trend. In this case, the restaurant's version of dry aging was to cut the ends off the Cryovac bag, and put the meat, still shrouded in the remains of the bag with only the ends exposed to the air, on a sheet pan in the cooler to "age." Not surprisingly, this did not yield a very wholesome steak.
A holdout from the aging game, Lomonaco saw the dry aging trend as difficult to balance in terms of expense and believes that offering "high grade" prime beef guarantees diners the best possible experience. Most people are only familiar with the wet aged flavor or with beef that, if dry aged, has not yet achieved the pungency associated with the longer aging process. He remarks that "wet aged meats have been dominant for 30 years at this point, and that is the flavor profile people expect." He offers four 28-day dry aged steaks on his menu, the aging time frame he considers optimal, and one rib eye aged a minimum of 45 days. Instead of trading on the age of his steaks, he relies on top quality beef and a broader range of protein options than the typical steakhouse, to differentiate Porter House from his competition.
It should be noted, however, that the taste for dry aged beef, at least as of now, is primarily an East Coast and Chicago based phenomenon. Rogers of Creekstone Farms echoed Hatoff of Allen Brothers in confirming that, though we hear a lot about dry aged meat in these regions, the rest of the country has not yet really caught on to the trend in quite the same way. Indeed, Allen Brothers, whose aging technologies are patented, has a number of different programs that cater to the tastes of the majority of Americans. According to Hatoff, who provided a short but pithy course on the meat business during our conversation, "Ninety percent, and I mean 90 percent of the rest of the country is still with the tried and true, wet aged, prime quality steak."
Dry aging was phased out in the 1970s when the technology for wet aging or Cryovacking, appeared. Because wet aging tenderizes meat without loss of volume, it became the technology of choice for obvious economic reasons. Not only that, it extends shelf life. Hatoff describes the previous incarnation of dry aging as a business in which the meat would grow "hair" and customers would request meat with either "a half-inch or an inch of hair depending on what flavor they wanted." Now dry aging is done with a great deal more awareness of bacterial growth, both wholesome and not, so the "hair" is no longer growing. Rogers suggests that one of the factors driving the dry aging trend is the superior technology available to control humidity and temperature, thus ensuring a properly aged steak. He describes dry aging in the past as "requiring an expert with 'tribal knowledge' of aging beef." At DeBragga and Spitler in New York City, partners Sarrazin and George Faisan have, at least in part, retooled their business to cater to their restaurant customers and the demand for dry aged beef. Over the last year and a half, Sarrazin and Faisan have brought this family business of several generations into the 21st century through a deep understanding of restaurant trends and an ability to anticipate the needs and desires of the chefs they work with. They have revitalized their product mix and repurposed their staff to adapt to the new requests by different aging for specific customers.
It is widely acknowledged that tying up inventory and capital in an aging program is one of the principal reasons most mainstream steakhouses keep their aging periods relatively brief, well within the norm of 28 days or less. DeBragga and Spitler select their meat based on what they know their customers are looking for, and it is aged according to the specifications of individual clients. Beef needs to be of the highest quality at the outset to yield a great tasting aged steak. They have a number of aging lockers where the meat is inspected daily and the stock is rotated to be sure that it's aging as it should. Their goal, according to Sarrazin, is to "add value by sourcing correctly and aging properly." Allen Brothers, too, works closely with their chef clients, offering similar services in selecting, aging, and portioning to order.
Faisan identifies another major trend in newer steakhouses, pointing out that the demand for "clean product has been double, maybe triple, what it was last year." Clean (or "natural") he defines as no antibiotics, no hormones, and a 100 percent vegetarian diet. This was corroborated by Jim Rogers at Creekstone, where they added a line of "natural" beef to their already very popular premium line. Creekstone shares that "clean" criteria, describing it as the "Never Ever program," meaning no hormones or antibiotics. Interestingly, Hatoff at Allen Brothers had a different opinion, saying that the standards for "natural" and "organic" programs are still so fluid that he buys based solely on size, marbling, color, and genetics.
Though the USDA is being lobbied heavily over the controversial definition of "natural," the term is still very much tailored to fit by the individual producer or packer. It is a buyer-beware scenario. Rogers asserts there are many beef packers who will label a product as natural, when in fact it is being fed the same antibiotics and hormones as conventionally raised beef. How do they get away with it? They phase those elements out 120 days before slaughter, which allows them to label natural. Remember that the USDA defines "natural" as "minimally processed with no added ingredients to the finished product."
The genetic heritage of cattle is becoming more of a key criterion in selecting meat as well. Allen Brothers is very careful in their choices, and if they say beef is Black Angus, then by golly it is at least 75 percent to 100 percent. According to Hatoff, there are purveyors and restaurateurs who will use that label although their cattle possesses a far more modest Black Angus pedigree, say 30 percent or even less. The Certified Angus Beef program requires that cattle must prove to be 51 percent or more Angus or traceable in the AngusSource register.
Seconding Hatoff in the matter of genetics is Burke, who, with his partner Stephen Hanson, now owns a $250,000 stud bull. The bull is named 207…a name that doesn't do justice to the animal's ability to produce offspring that promise great eating. But aside from anticipating superior beef, knowing the genetic background of his meat allows Burke to trace his product. With consumer anxiety over food safety issues at a high, particularly in light of the many recent product recalls, this offers a certain peace of mind to the consumer and the chef. Burke primarily sources from Creekstone Farms, where traceability is a core component of their program. They are also one of the few suppliers who boast their own state-of-the-art processing facility, designed by Dr. Temple Grandin, the renowned animal psychologist and an innovative, hands-on advocate for humane slaughtering practices.
Once they've got their beef-aging preferences down cold, consumers can turn their attention to their preferred genetic strains, seeking out steaks with a particular flavor and texture bred from their favorite bull. Indeed, most chefs select their meat based on genetic elements that yield specific flavors, and if possible, they will ensure that their supply comes from a particular herd or ranch.
Another point worth noting and which was universally expressed by all the sources for this article was the belief in humane practice in the industry. This presents another compelling reason to be very conscious of where meat is coming from, as there may be many factors affecting the flavor of the final product. Rogers told me that their cattle have a four to five hour period of rest where they are fed, given fresh water, and allowed to recover from any transportation stress before heading to slaughter. It is believed by many in the industry that the neurochemicals produced by stress, fear, and anxiety have a significant impact on the flavor of the meat. The husbandry of animals that employs stress management and high-quality feed is another reason why premium and natural beef is so expensive. It costs approximately 20 percent more per head to raise cattle on a "natural program" as defined by Faisan or Rogers.
In the end, a steakhouse will survive on good meat and fail with bad. There is no hiding in this format, no matter how great the sauces and sides. According to Colicchio, the steakhouse trend will continue to thrive. "Why would it stop? Meat has always been, and always will be, a staple of the American diet." He ended the conversation with a tag line that the beef industry should pay him for: "When times are bad, people are going to splurge, and beef feels good."
