At Last: The Steakathon
The Great Montrealfood Steak Challenge came and went last night. I wanted to see how the Kobe steaks I bought in California held up against the presumably "best-of-the-best" local fare.
It was conducted at Barry's house, he being the only one of this little montrealfood band to possess an actual grill. Josh brought along two filets "tres mignon" (meaning "very cute") from Metro Boucher in N.D.G. and I brought the two Kobe NY steaks purchased in California, along with two dry-aged "rib steaks" from Atlantique, a highly-regarded butcher in Côte-des-Neiges.
There was other food going on: Barry baked a fantastic sourdough "boule," a round, crusty country-style loaf that can't be bought at a store.
There were 1/4-inch-thick slices of great grilled salami. Josh brought a sinfully-rich triple-cream brie cheese called Brillat Savarin (after the famed gastronaut) and there was wine from the dot.com era and all sorts of good times to be had in Barry's rambling N.D.G. home.
The big question was, how would these steaks fare in competition? Would the famed Kobes trounce the hallowed dry-aged and mignons? (It must be noted that all participants of this feast are avowed steak lovers, and all prefer their meat medium-rare to blue, leaning towards the blue, so the proving grounds were all at the same level.)Barry's house is cool, even for Montreal, and especially for a food lover. His cookbook sconce alone is worth the price of a visit. Who among you stocks a cookbook of recipes for medieval cookery? I rest my case. So it's hard to explain his choice of a grill. No 12,000 BTU Viking grill for Barry. Nope, it's a bomb-shaped thingamajig from a dust heap, as far as I can tell. But he has this beast well trained. For example, to keep the lid half-off, he runs a broom handle through the lid holder and suspends it on the corner rails of his balcony.
Josh brought two robust reds, a Chateau de Callac Graves 2000 and a "black" wine from Cahors. The Savarin cheese with Barry's crusty loaf were brilliant appetizers, but I really didn't want the preliminaries to interfere with the finals, so I kept the noshing to a minimum.
Barry piled all the contenders on the grill at the same time, with some nice blocks of home-made applewood charcoal. It was amusing that his little stone-knives-and-bearskins contraption cooked up steaks as well as a $4,779 Lynx Professional, but I'll take Barry's any time (it also makes a mean burger.)
So what was the verdict? Josh, Barry and I preferred the Kobe for its unbelievable flavor. "I think it has something to do with all the massages, beer and women," Josh quipped, "Very 1950's experience." The ladies preferred the ribsteak from Atlantique; no reasons given. The filet was great, but it was like all filets: buttery, tender and with absolutely not a proton of flavor.
See the video here. (Warning, 90MB file)
posted by ChefNick at 2:14 PM
6 Comments:
read the post last nite, just saw the video now. god! this is a TORTURE!!!!! you guys are evil!!!!!!!
to be serious, nick, i missed barry's comments about the smell of each steak - would you mind explaining a bit?
also Queue de cheval - heard but never tried so is it really very good????
and barry's grill is indeed cool!!!!!
I think you've made a lot of people very jealous! I have just one question for you about your Wagyu steaks...were they imported from Japan or were they American Wagyu which is my suspicion due to the diference in appearance that you noted. While domestic Wagyu still provides a far superior steak it lacks the daily massages as well as the beer enriched feed. I suggest that your next challenge should be to find a source for genuine Japanese Wagyu to compare it with the American raised to see if there is any appreciable difference. ;) By the way, you can order American Kobe steaks on-line from Snake River Farms but man it ain't cheap!! Does anyone know if the Kobe at Kaizen is worth the price?
Ingrid, Barry's nice, but he's a bizarre guy when it comes to food. I tried smelling as hard as I could but I couldn't smell anything particularly noteworthy from the raw steaks. But the nose knows! And his is definitely bigger than mine. It could be his mustache funnels smells upwards better than my non-mustache nose (although as we speak I'm trying to grow one! Can't be outdone by a mere mustachioed fellow.) To me, they all smelled the same--like, not at all.
Queue de Cheval is a hilariously expensive steakhouse here in Montreal. It's quite possibly the most expensive restaurant in town. But it's highly overrated. The one time I ate there I was surrounded by cell-phone-toting corporate wannabes, the steak was so-so and the price was outrageous. Don't bother. Make it at home!
Barcham,
Kobe beef is literally drenched in mythology. The people who breed the cattle, whether in Japan, the U.S. or Australia, don't want you to know exactly where it came from. They want you to buy the beer-massage-sake rub myths and think the meat comes from Kobe.
I know pretty much for sure the cow I ate from didn't go anywhere near Japan. These days, any cattle bred from the so-called original stock from Japan are called "Wagyu." They can't call it Kobe, so that's what they call it. It just means "Japanese cow."
However, it's my understanding that you CAN buy genuine Kobe in the States, but basically it's shipped from the States to Japan to be "finished" and then shipped back, so you're paying for two trans-Pacific trips.
You can read a lot more about it here, a place that I think has more truth to it than most others on the Internet.
And where am I going to get it next time? Why, Japan, of course! I'm flying out there June 1st. I will do my damndest to get the GENUINE article.
I wasn't aware they had Kobe at Kaizen, but I'd be highly suspicious. No one I know who is Japanese works there.
You're going to Japan? Now I'm really envious!! Hey if we were to cut my legs and arms off I'm pretty sure you could sneek me through in a suitcase. As long as you wouldn't mind handfeeding me some Kobe! I've done a lot of research on Kobe beef and I'm familiar with the web site. There are a couple of American producers that offer mail order but the price is extremely high and I don't think they ship to Canada. Kaizen offers a number of Kobe dishes on the menu, one of which is a sandwich at 29$, probably more now as it seems their website menu hasn't been updated in a while. Enjoy your trip and think of all of us drooling back here while you enjoy the best steaks in the world.
Oh, I won't eat them there. I'll bring 'em back! I hope they've heard of vacuum-packing at the meat counter, though . . . I wouldn't imagine many Japanese would request it.
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