stlbites.com – st. louis food blog of bill burge

Break on Through to the Other Side

Oct 1, 2007 restaurants

Ian posted that ~scape is now open.

…and quickly jumping their way into the $40+ entrée list, they have a menu that includes this little beauty — my new favorite:

20 ounce Prime-28 Day Aged Bone-In Rib Eye Steak – Wood-grilled Illinois corn fed rib eye steak with braised celery 42.95

20 ounce — Who eats a 20oz piece of meat? The protein portion in a meal is supposed to be 3oz. That does seem a little skimpy. Certainly I eat more than that too, but not seven times that much. I realize it’s “bone-in”, but that’s still an enormous slab of meat that has me contemplating things like : What must it look like on a plate, and just how big is that plate?

28 Day Aged — If you know much about how meat is processed, you know that the vacuum-sealed wet-aging is the standard. All beef is aged. If not, it’s tough. Not to be gross, but basically beef requires the rot — more-or-less — to make it tender and palatable.

Now if it said “dry-aged” that would be one thing. That’s an entirely different beast. Beef costs more when it is dry aged because there is an amount of yield lost do to the actual rot that is trimmed away. Claiming only that meat was aged for 28 days and not “dry-aged” for 28 days leads me to believe that it’s just your standard grocery store style meat. I worked in the meat department at Schnuck’s in my younger years, and I can tell you that plenty of the meat we had was wet-aged 28 days or sometimes more. It wasn’t a big deal so I’m not really sure where they’re going with that.

corn-fed. — It must be better, because they printed it on a menu right?

Corn-fed beef is not better. It’s not better for the animal, it’s not better for the flavor, and it’s not better for you. Time and time again grass fed beef is proven to have far greater health benefits. It’s simply a great marketing ploy by the beef industry to convince people that what is cheaper for them is in fact better. The reason for grain feeding cattle is faster turnover. It takes a lot longer to fatten a cow up off grass then it does if you just keeping slinging feed at it in the feedlot. So instead of a few years on the range, they can get cattle from birth to slaughter in 12-16 months.
braised celery — I guess it comes with braised celery and only braised celery so that you get a little roughage in the mix. Maybe it should come with a side of Beurre Metamucil too.

Oh, and if you square off against this baby, please take pictures. I’ve gotta see it. Don’t forget to ask where the beef came from.