America’s Best Steakhouse Specialties
The best new steakhouse slabs worth devouring right now.
Kale may be ubiquitous, but don’t let the vegans fool you: We’re living in a golden age of meat. Chefs across the country are searing and slicing marbled masterpieces. Here are the best of bloody bunch.
“Steak Frites” at Petit Trois
Los Angeles
At this 21-seat Los Angeles bistro collaboration between the meat-crazed Animal boys—Jon Shook and VinnyDotolo—and chef LudoLefebvre, the world’s best bar steak ($33) is served with a decadent au poivre sauce and pommesfrites lovingly fried in Wagyu beef fat. The primal allure of this buttery beauty may be the only thing that can break health-obsessed Angelenos from their revolting cold-pressed-juice habit.
“Porterhouse” at Costata
Manhattan
At chef Michael White’s year-old steakhouse, the phenomenal 40-ounce porterhouse ($122) is aged, just like Jesus in the wilderness, for 40 days. As with most great steaks, the quality is primarily in the cow (here, from Creekstone Farms in Kansas), not the preparation. The choice Costata cut is seasoned simply with salt and rosemary, seared to epic char, broiled, and served sliced with a veal-stock reduction and rendered, dry-aged fat.
Zabuton at Burch Steak
Minneapolis
Yeah, it’s weird: a steakhouse in Minneapolis selling Japanese-style beef from Idaho. Stranger still, the Zabuton ($42) at Burch Steak pulls it off. The cut is a select hunk of short rib, so it’s got plenty of texture. And since it’s made from domestic Wagyu, the Burch is as richly marbled as Donald Trump’s master bathroom. The eight-ounce Burch is grilled on a mixture of oak, for temperature, and cherry, for flavor. It’s then served with salt, pepper, and hushed reverence.
“Niman Ranch Rib Eye” at Knife
Dallas
At chef John Tesar’s Knife, one eats while staring at a chrome-and-mahogany meat locker full of future steaks. The one crusted over with a blanket of white mold in the corner? That’s the 240-day dry-aged Niman Ranch rib eye, a.k.a. the Dom Pérignon of meat. Once that funky crust is carved off, the steak is seared and served by the inch ($80 per!). It possesses a wonderfully intense beef flavor, with notes of truffle and Stilton.
“New York City Cut” at American Cut
Manhattan
It takes a madman or a genius to rub a perfectly good steak senseless with spices. Taking his cue from nearby Katz’s Delicatessen, whose pastrami-on-ryes are a thing of unparalleled beauty, chef Marc Forgione cures his 20-ounce, 28-day dry-aged, bone-in rib eye ($44) in a pastrami spice rub, cold-smokes it for 45 minutes over applewood, grills it, then serves the blessed thing with a delectable brown-butter caraway sauce. It’s nutty, it’s genius, and it’s damn delicious.
“Eye of the Rib” at Bazaar Meat
Las Vegas
This sprawling, Philippe Starck–designed steakhouse serves beef platters appropriate for the highest of high rollers. But in a town where bigger often means better, the best cut is a tiny, four-ounce jewel called the Eye of the Rib ($100). The meat, 100 percent Kobe from the Hyogo Prefecture in Japan, is slow-cooked and arrives with a certificate of authenticity bearing a nose print of the cow it came from.
Photos by Getty Images
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