C’MON MAN

For someone who loves such things, when we hear/read “Steak Tartare” on a menu, we picture, and then anticipate, finely chopped, high end beef that will spread on a toast and melt in your mouth–minimal chewing necessary.  Such a rich and unique culinary and sensory experience.

And…when someone “in the know” hears/reads “Wagyu” beef on a menu, what do we picture?

Even more extremely high end beef with “melt in your mouth” marbling and the promise of feeling less badly about how much it costs.

So, when I read on a local menu not so long ago, “Wagyu Beef Tartare” my mouth started to water, my feet nearly swinging on my bar stool like a 6 year old looking at an ice cream sundae.

I ordered, and I tried to sit still with my anticipation building.

And there it was…with the proper raw quail egg glistening atop all that rich red pile of iron-protein-come-to-papa art.  Presented perfectly for enhancing that which needs no spotlight.

And then the impossible happened.  Bite, after bite, after bite (still on the 1st small piece of covered toast), and then again, and then again, as I realized “someone” created (attempted to create) a steak tartare by using the cartilage and trim from what must have been the Wagyu steak, also on the menu.  I write “someone” because, I can’t imagine the head chef, in this new, shiny, highly publicized hot-spot would be so unsophisticated to take the promise of this near-buttery smooth French delicacy and turn it into a knife-necessary version of raw beef jerky.  Unbelievably horrible.  Just wrong.  I was left to assume that someone else, as happens in our business,  who was WAY out of their comfort zone, “prepped” the dish, without the chef’s supervision or asking how, and somehow thought that (poorly) chopped and scraped beef by-product was the intent.  I mean, even the cartilage was not cut all the way through, so large hunks of unpalatable meat gave my jaw a workout. Yikes.

How often do I torch a fellow restaurant?  I generally don’t.  That’s how sad I was.  That’s why I often prefer to just eat at my restaurant.  At least if one of MY untrained sneaks a dish by, I can pound the table and shake my fist.  (Never happens) And keep my $20.00 spot in my pocket. Just sayin’

Epic fail.