99 Station Street

Does such a thing exist?

I spend a fair amount of my year working away and researching local hospitality and each occasion,  is a lesson in it’s own right.

The Worst Steak:
One chain served me a frozen young steak, microwaved and then touched both sides on something hot to give it colour. This lukewarm, soppy heap of string was a disgrace to the site and an insult to the poor cow who gave it’s life for some factory to incompetently represent it.

The Best Steak:
Strip Steak, Mandalay Bay Hotel, Las Vegas. Michael Mina is a very high end chef in the US and Strip Steak does him proud. This was an Angus fillet which you could have dropped a spoon through.

The difference?

1 Pedigree. Get to know your farmers and shop with the best you can find. Beef can mean anything from Kobe or Wagu through to mass farmed abused beast of burden. Well treated, long lived, chilled out, open space cows have benefited from top end welfare which is reflected in flavour.

2 Age. It’s OK to freeze fish and peas as soon as you have harvested them, but not beef. The aging process breaks down the meat through the action of enzymes, and not in a bad way. Gone is the cloth like soggy texture of tough cell walls broken by the expansion of frozen fluid.

3 Warmth. The steak should not be cold before the main cooking. Mina gently poaches his fillet in a mix of olive oil and butter to introduce succulence and warmth throughout. You could just allow your steak to rest to room temperature, but whichever method you use, consider the clash of temperature.

4 Seasoning. This accentuates the flavour of the steak in so many ways. This is another reason why temperature is important as taste changes completely within a few degrees.

5 Cooking. Literally a hot topic. Grill (broiled to our US cousins), frying pan, griddle, chargrill, hot plate or barbecue all produce a different flavour and each is important. Whichever you use, always check if they cook consistently and produce the steak your guest expects.

6 Resting. The steak has left the heat and now needs to settle to plate temperature. Rule of thumb is about ten minutes, but always remember to serve on a warmed plate otherwise your good efforts are cut short by a lukewarm experience at table.