The Tasting Panel magazine

April 2018

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28  /  the tasting panel  /  april 2018 WHERE WE'RE W e are a nation built on beef, and when traveling, tracking down the iconic steakhouses of America can keep you very well fed indeed. I love the old-school steak- houses of America as much as anyone, but there's also a rising tide of modern steakhouses popping up from coast to coast as beef returns from one of its periodic dietary exiles. What better place to begin this journey than at celebrity chef Curtis Stone's Gwen in Hollywood, California, where you eat your Creekstone Farms 45-ounce ribeye—dry aged for 80 days—in the midst of a butcher shop. Semi-dressed carcasses hang behind glass, welcoming high-rolling custom- ers to take home a tasty Blackmore wagyu 12-ounce New York strip for a paltry $185. The meat is cooked in an open kitchen over a blazing inferno of a grill, and along with the thick, richly- marbled cuts of meat, there are platters of charcuterie cured in-house and lighter dishes like scallop crudo and pork cheeks with smoked honey. The wine list, unsurprisingly, is heavy with expensive reds. In Las Vegas, it can be argued that the Big-Name Chefs of Vegas Cuisine—Joël Robuchon, Guy Savoy, Jean-George Vongerichten, and more—could all be swallowed up by the Nevada desert, but the steakhouses (along with the buffets, of course) would survive. Along with the more classic cuisine at Smith & Wollensky, the Golden Steer, and The Palm, there's fresh beef to be had at Bazaar Meat at the SLS Las Vegas resort, where Chef José Andrés has created a "meat bar." Choose your cut and watch as it hits the flames, then get the foie gras cotton candy treatment . . . just because you can. And of course, because New York is New York, the multitude of legacy steakhouses is balanced with a constant crop of new-wave meat shops. The destination of the moment is Nusr-Et Steakhouse, opened in Midtown by Turkish social media superstar Nusret Gökçe—better known as "Salt Bae"—whose shtick is sending a blizzard of coarse grain salt onto your steak after it's been presented and carved as every smartphone at the table captures the moment. Since Gökçe has restaurants all over the Middle East, including in Istanbul, you should definitely order the barbecued Turkish sausage called a sucuk followed by baklava for dessert. The latter escapes Salt Bae's showering of seasoning: His parlor trick doesn't extend to sweets. Dry-aged meat hangs in the walk-in of the butcher shop at Curtis Stone's Gwen in Hollywood, CA. No Beef with Beef A NEW WAVE OF MODERN STEAKHOUSES SETS UP SHOP FROM COAST TO COAST by Merrill Shindler PHOTO: WONHO FRANK LEE

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