Make Mine Meat

Beef is back! Here are three amazing meat meals in three different cities. Also: how to make a better burger. And a knife you need.

A friend recently celebrated his birthday at a Korean barbecue restaurant called Let’s Meat which offers patrons the opportunity to gobble up all the meat they can eat in a single sitting.

Daniel Boulud has just opened his first steakhouse, La Tete d’Or: the signature dish is prime rib which costs $130.

And last week Kim Severson, an eagle-eyed observer of our eating habits, wrote a piece in the NY Times announcing meat’s return to the center of the plate. She noted that Americans consumed 7% more meat last year than before the pandemic. (She also profiled a couple who survive on an all-meat diet: their wedding cake was made of ground beef covered with whipped tallow.)

Meanwhile sales of plant-based meat substitutes are falling.

The other day, as I was flying to Canada, I was thinking about our nascent meat obsession and wondering where friends were taking me for dinner after my speaking event at the Toronto Public Library. “I hope you don’t mind eating meat,” they said, apologetically ushering me into the hot new Toronto restaurant Linny’s. (You can read about that meal below.)

As we walked into the restaurant a few of the more more memorable meat meals I’ve eaten in the last few years flashed through my mind.

There was, for example, the over the top dinner I had at Asador Bastian in Chicago. Our meal began with this presentation of the various kinds of beef on offer that evening.

(If you want to know more about that truly amazing meal, I wrote about it here.)

Then I remembered the meal I had 11 years ago at the meat-centric establishment known as “L.A.’s secret restaurant.”

Los Angeles, February 2014
This is one of those places people whisper about. “You mean you really got in?” They look at you suspiciously. “How?”

Totoraku is so wary of unknown customers that it disguises itself as an empty storefront. It doesn’t take reservations. If you somehow get the phone number, the woman who answers will tell you they are fully booked. Forever.

But if you know someone, who knows someone....

First off, it doesn’t look like much. The kitchen occupies half the restaurant, the tables are modest, and the odd screens shielding the tables look as if they were rescued from a hospital that went out of business in the fifties. Dusty (empty) bottles of (very fancy) wine (red), sit on top of the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room. This then, is all about the food.

All about the beef, in fact; this is a meat-eater’s paradise, the meal I wanted to have in Osaka, the meal I couldn’t get because I could not make myself understood in that city’s equivalent of this restaurant. Although we were able to procure a reservation for the Osaka restaurant, we got there to discover that nobody spoke English. We ordered by pointing at the food on other people’s tables. All I can say is - we ordered wrong.

At Totoraku, however, you don't order. You bring your own wine, and they bring you food. Last night's meal went like this:

This elegant platter of tiny tastes is the one non-meat offering. It contains (among other little tidbits) a tangle of shrimp topped with caviar, fragrant Japanese uni, crisp abalone, sesame tofu, wild yellowtail, delicate little avocado rolls and a dish of pickled cucumber topped with crisp bits of jellyfish.

Tender slices of raw beef.

Beef tartar in the Korean style: cold squiggles of beef with Asian pear, sesame and a quail egg yolk.

More beef, served with grated horseradish and a garlic paste. The joy here is the raw beef on the right, which comes from the throat; smooth and silky, with the texture of toro, it simply evaporates in your mouth.

Now the hibachi comes out, along with a parade of different cuts. I'm sorry to say I liked the soft, rich slices of tongue so much that I forgot to photograph them. Then there was this platter of filet mignon - the least impressive meat of the night - with lovely vegetables to grill. (There was also, full disclosure, a basket of raw vegetables, some marinated tomatoes, and a miso-based sauce to dip them in.)

Outside ribeye: this is the long muscle on the outside of a ribeye, which many consider the single best piece of meat on the animal.

Inside ribeye: it is fascinating how different the texture of this cut is from the inside ribeye.

Boneless shortrib (my favorite of the lot).

And finally, clear soup with a bit of egg, spinach, and just a tiny scoop of rice. A perfect ending to the meal.

I wrote this just after Cote opened in New York. As you will see, I was thrilled with the aged beef, but it does not seem to be offered on the current menu. Pity. However Cote is still serving the Butcher’s Feast (although it now costs $78 per person), and it is still sending every patron staggering into the street in the throes of an intense meat coma.

New York, May 2018

Let me say, right at the top, that I love aged meat. Steak without age- no matter how prime - is just another piece of meat to me. So when Cote offered steak aged to absurdity - 160 days! - I couldn't resist.

That alone would be reason to go. This beef is rich, primal, funky, with a flavor edging into bourbon and truffles. This beef is so delicious that a single bite is completely satisfying (although more is even better). Whoever is aging this beef surely knows their stuff.

It's not cheap, but as they say in France, vaut le voyage.

But the surprise at this elegant too-hip-for-its-own-good restaurant is that the main meal - the "Butcher's Feast" (everyone orders it), is really a bargain. For $48 a person you get so much food that you leap on the digestif they bring at the end hoping it will save you. If you avoid ordering one of the very fancy and very expensive bottles of wine on the list, this is one of the better deals in town.

Cote, which got a Michelin star right out of the box, is being talked about as a mashup of an American steakhouse and a Korean barbecue. And that would not be wrong. But it is also a brilliant business model of a restaurant, reminiscent of a very high-end Benihana. Everyone is eating more or less the same meal, in the same order.

You could certainly start with one of the appetizers, like the Korean steak tartare above, the cool, slightly chubby squiggles of beef tossed with bits of Asian pear and some sesame oil, topped with truffle and a few extravagant frills of fried tendon. It's delicious - but not necessary. Because, with the butcher's feast, you'll be starting with these delicious pickles as a little palate tease.

And then the meat will arrive. Oceans of meat.

The restaurant chooses which four cuts they'll serve each night; it might be hangar steak, flat iron, skirt... But no matter what is on offer, my guess is that the kalbi (the marinated short rib in the top corner), will be the most seductive.

The chunk of fat is to grease the (smokeless) grill. A waitperson will come along and do the cooking, cut by cut.

You take your piece of meat, pick up a piece of lettuce, slather on some spicy ssamjang paste, fold in some of the scallion salad....

and eat with great pleasure. Then you do it again, with the next cut of meat. And again. It's enormous fun.

By now you're feeling rather full, but there's more to come. Kimchi. A couple of really delicious stews

A delicate souffle of eggs

And the clearest, most delicate broth filled with ephemeral noodles.

There is only one dessert on offer:

Which is served with a tiny bottle of the extremely necessary digestif:

Little wonder that Cote is so successful: the tables are roomy, the service is swell, and it's hard to think of a better way to spend a few hours with a group of friends.

Not to mention that amazing ultra-aged beef....

Last year in Toronto I dined, very happily at Mimi Chinese, a wildly inventive take on Chinese cuisine. (And came home with some of chef David Schwartz’s chickenskin salt, which he would be wise to package. It’s amazing stuff.)

Now Schwartz is tackling a new cuisine: his Linny’s (named for his mother, whose hand-written recipes are framed at the entrance), is a mashup of an old-fashioned steakhouse and a deli. You walk into a beautiful room filled with golden light to be surrounded by the scent of aged meat.

The main event here is sustainably-raised beef from local farmers in a wide-range of cuts. But the most fun is everything that surrounds it, from a challah service

that comes with homemade salami,

and homemade cheese and jam.

Then there is the remarkable house-cured pastrami with homemade pickles.

But the two most innovative dishes were my favorites. These little tidbits might look like shrimp, but they turned out to be oyster mushrooms….

and this tripe schnitzel. Did Schwartz invent it? I’ve never experienced anything quite like it, but for a tripe lover like me it was a revelation. Crisp on the outside, meltingly tender within, it was a truly fantastic flavor bomb. And one more reason to be grateful that meat is making a comeback.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: if you want to make a really great burger at home, you need to know about DeBragga’s aged ground beef. You can smell the age as soon as you open the package, and as it cooks that fine, funky aroma fills the air.

Michael would happily eat a hamburger every night of his life, and I’ve tried dozens of different sources of ground beef. I’ve never found anything available to home cooks that comes close to DeBragga’s.

When Nancy Silverton tells me to buy something, I listen. She’s just sent me a note saying that the Tojiro bread knife is the best inexpensive bread knife she’s ever encountered.

Of course I’ve ordered one. I was going to save this post for after it arrives - but right now it’s on sale at Amazon so I decided to seize the moment.

Nancy is never wrong.