Ever wonder what other products are made from beef?
Interactive Beef Infographic from Gourmet Society
Beef Charts
The Great Noodle Chase
Lately I’ve been on a Japanese ramen binge, but I should also mention my decade-long hankering for Vietnamese pho as well. My wife is Vietnamese, so real-deal, authentic pho is more common in my belly than good ramen. But after having it a few times lately, I felt the need to whip up a post about the two dishes, with pics of course.
First, pho (pronounced like you are saying the word FUN but without the N, and with a tone as if you are asking a question):
For those who may not know, I’ve give a quick rundown of what this awesome shit is. Pho is a very aromatic and highly flavorful beef soup (pho bo) made with LOTS of different parts of the animal: oxtail, marrow, tripe, brisket, eye-round, processed beef balls, etc. The meats are stewed to tender perfection and then served in an almost clear consomme broth that simmered for hours with all the meats and spices like star anise, cinnamon, clove, ginger, and other warm, comforting flavors. The rice noodles used are long and flat, almost like a linguini. It’s topped with cilantro, chilies (optional, of course), bean sprouts, scallions, thinly sliced onion, and a wedge of lime. It’s usually accompanied with plum sauce (hoisin) and chili paste (sri racha) on the side for you to add to taste. The result is something so delicious that you will crave it every day of your life. It’s light, yet hearty. You’ll never find a broth so clear and thin with so much flavor packed in it. Most Vietnamese joints will offer it with chicken too (pho ga), but come on… really? If you are getting it, get a big bowl of the mixed beef. Although, I must say, sometimes I like to order with just the thin-sliced eye-round meat, or that and beef meatballs.
By far the most delicious bowl we ever had was in Vietnam, up in the mountains of Sapa at a resort. It should be noted that pho in Vietnam is different than here in the states. First: there’s a more robust flavor. Second: the sri racha is non-existent as it is not needed. They just utilize their abundance of fresh chili peppers. They DO have a chili paste in Vietnam, but it’s creamier and sweeter than sri racha, and probably better for dipping with fried items than mixing into soup.
Clearly not everyone can just up and leave to the mountains of Vietnam for a bowl of soup. So if you can’t, try this bowl, from Thai Son restaurant on Baxter Street in NYC. Yes: it’s a Vietnamese food restaurant, not Thai. Definitely not as good as the one above, but at around $6 a bowl you really can’t go wrong:
Okay now for Japanese ramen:
First, check out this little film to get a sense of what real ramen is. I’m not talking about the little fucking soup packets for $0.33 each in the supermarket, which contain so much fucking sodium that they can be used to salt the highways of a major city in a snowstorm.
The few places I’ve been to in NYC have a variety of flavors and broth bases, ranging from the more traditional pork, to chicken, to miso, to veggie. They vary based on noodle type too – wavy or straight, etc., and also toppings. Some places will serve a basic bowl with a few things in it, and charge a nominal amount for extra toppings like extra pork belly or lean pork, a boiled egg, spicy paste, extra noodles, etc. I tend to lean more toward the pork broth (tonkotsu), although I’ve had some really good chicken based and even curry based broths.
Note: there are lots of people who make it their mission to hunt down the great ramen places all over town, especially in Japan. I can’t compete with those guys… yet… My experience is very limited, but I WILL share a few of my favorite bowls so far, along with location:
Mega Ramen at Totto II in Hell’s Kitchen (51st & 10th) – no need for ordering extras on this. It’s a chicken based broth (REALLY good, by the way – not your average bullshit chicken stock). So hearty and fatty, and topped with tons of different kinds of pork meat. I refer to this one as the pork pool party. $15.
Tondaku Green Curry Ramen at Bassanova in Chinatown (Mott Street). Different, but really good. More greenery than you would normally expect but it really works. $15. Egg was extra.
Tondaku Ramen, also at Bassanova. Traditional tonkotsu pork ramen made with Berkshire pork. $13.
That’s all I’ve got for you assholes right now, other than the fact that the guy from the video is the guy who opened Bassanova.
Do yourselves a favor and go for a swim in a pork pool party – your gullet will thank you. In the meantime, if anyone knows of a beef or rib eye ramen, I’d love to try it. Does it exist? If not, maybe it’s time…
UPDATE 3/15/14 – Real deal beef ramen DOES exist. I heard about some late night ramen joint in the west village called Takashi that serves up an all-beef broth ramen on Friday and Saturday nights only, from 12:00am to 2:00am. It was tough, but I ended up getting a seat for my wife and I to slurp up some of this delicious shit. We started with some beer and took in the surroundings:
As I mentioned, it’s a beef broth, but it contains crispy beef intestines, FUCKING BRAISED KOBE BEEF BELLY!!!, a soft boiled egg, and alkaline ramen noodles. The little blob of red you see in the middle is the spicy paste that my wife got with her bowl. I prefer no spicy paste, as it masks the beef flavor too much for my liking (though I DO love very spicy foods):
If you’re in town overnight on a weekend and are up for something bold and adventurous, give this bowl a try. The only problem is that you will need to try for a reservation on the Monday prior at 5pm. That’s when they start taking reservations. I emailed on Tuesday afternoon for my rez and they were already booked solid. They asked if I wanted to be on a waiting list in case someone cancels: I said yes. I found out on Friday at about 4:00pm that they had an opening for me and my wife at midnight. SWEET!
Whole Roast Suckling Pig
Occasionally I whip up a quick blurb about something awesome that I ate aside from steaks. Last night I had an amazing meal at Pig & Khao, which is run by Leah Cohen of Top Chef fame. Seven of us feasted upon a whole roasted suckling pig. It was done perfectly. The meat was tender, juicy, and it packed a lot of flavor. The skin, though, is always the best part of a dead pig. DELICIOUS. Check out the pics below, and when you get a group together you should definitely try this place.
PIG & KHAO
68 Clinton St.
New York, NY 10002
The Whisky Advent Calendar
I guess this can serve as the Johnny Prime Christmas post. Some of you may have seen some links of this thing floating around this year (or maybe last year, if you’re cool like me). My wife gave me this as an early Christmas gift in 2012. I didn’t drink them at the time, thinking that I might save them for a special time. But when this year rolled around, I figured what the fuck – may as well drink them now. A whisky a day keeps the steak cravings at bay, and I decided to use the empties as Christmas Tree decorations. There were some really fucking great scotches in this collection. Seriously. Take a look at some of the vintages. Bottles for some cost upwards of $200. Only bad thing: the advent calendar only has 24 days rather than 25. Not sure if that is traditionally the way the calendars worked. My only real experience with them is digging the molded chocolates out each day as a kid, or looking at the pictures behind the windows without really reading the scripture. So anyway… Merry Christmas. Here are all the whiskies, in all of Jesus’ birthday glory, each day with some taste notes I jotted down along the way. The pictures get a little more creative and interesting as you get toward the end.
a mix of medicinal with a slight fruity nose
smooth and creamy up front with a slight peat and smoke sting at the back end
robust and peaty without overpowering
smooth, creamy and round, hints of caramel or vanilla
peaty, medicinal, but not blowing out the taste buds
smooth yet peaty
strong medicinal iodine, peat, smoke, leather, latakia tobacco
nutty, hints of chocolate
creamy, vanilla, butterscotch
cognac sherry, floral, fruity, hint of peat
citrus, fresh greens, oak spice
grassy, iodine, medicinal
creamy caramel with a peaty bite at the finish
fruity, sweet, vanilla, almond
smooth, creamy, oak
immaculate – very smooth
strong, woody
smoke, peat, leather, latakia tobacco, iodine, medicinal, but still smooth and round
*one of my personal favorites*
creamy smoke, with a sweet dark rum finish (as the label suggests)
*beside it are some bottles of snake whisky that I picked up in Vietnam*
smooth but potent (66.7% alcohol/133 proof), sweet, spicy roasted cocoa
smooth and easy
spicy vanilla cream
fruity (black cherry) and creamy, with a toasty finish
*the grinch who stole whisky*
toasted oak, cinnamon, nutmeg, coffee
*drinkin’ with JC*
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM JOHNNY PRIME!
Tabelog Event at Jukai
Last night Tabelog hosted another incredible event for their elite team of prized food bloggers. They’ve set out to choose some of the more secret spots around NYC to host these things, as evidenced by their selection of Jukai, a very small, discrete Japanese joint on 53rd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. My wife and I were blown away by how great the food was. To top it off, the event was sponsored by Asahi beer, so we got to sample some of their very popular super dry (goes nice with seafood) and dark (pairs well with beef) varietals. If the tasting/sampling is any indication of what an actual sit-down meal is like here, then I highly recommend that you reserve a table ASAP. You won’t be disappointed.
Okay so here’s the Food Pr0n in picture form:
First, the assorted starter. Pickled mushroom and onion, egg omelette with spinach, squid with sea urchin, smoked duck, and Jamon Iberico on top of persimmon. As you might have guessed the Iberico was my favorite portion of this plate, followed closely by the duck.
Then came my absolute favorite of the night – beef carpaccio. But not your ordinary beef. It was smokey, aged, and incredibly unique in flavor. And look at that fucking marbling…
Next, the mains. Salmon marinated in sake and then broiled, served with a grilled Shishito pepper. Very tasty. I usually dislike cooked salmon, but the experts at Jukai managed to keep the meat orange/pink inside for a beautiful rare temperature inside with a nice crisp on the outside…
Followed by Spanish mackerel with ground radish…
Then my wife’s favorite – a gigantic pacific oyster with all sorts of good toppings (I took this down in one bite)…
And a steaming bowl of garlicky shabu shabu with beef and cabbage.
For dessert we had a sampling of four delicious items: black tea panna cotta (my wife’s favorite), white sesame blancmange (almost like a pudding), creme brulee (my favorite), and chocolate truffles.
JUKAI
237 E. 53rd St.
New York, NY 10022
Lobel’s vs Eataly
A buddy of mine, Doug, and his chef friend, Dave, recently undertook a fantastic endeavor to pit two great meateries against one another in a home cooked steak-off challenge:
They took to searing up two two-pound steaks, one from each powerhouse NYC butcher. They spent about $80 at Lobel’s and $50 at Eataly, scoring two delicious looking, highly marbled, two-pound porterhouses.
Inspired by watching the PIORA cooking method of bathing the steaks in clarified butter, they eagerly followed suit.
But they elaborated and improved upon that brilliance by first searing in bacon fat. YES!
Then they finished the steaks in the oven for even cooking, and slathered with bernaise sauce.
On the side they whipped up some duck fat potatoes and creamed spinach. Solid choices. Lots of fat. Doug took to naming the dish “Porterhouse ala Cardiac Arrest.”
My buddy Doug, like me, is a meat aficionado. But he was wise to enlist the help of his chef friend Dave… You might recognize him as a winning contestant on one of Guy Fieri’s many cooking game shows… Namely, Ultimate Recipe Showdown. On the show, Dave blew away the judges with an awesome party dish he called the “Shrimp and Scallop Margherita,” which looked (and tasted) absolutely amazing. As it turns out, Doug helped conceptualize the dish. Doug and Dave actually have some loose plans for creating a cooking show involving lots of booze. Check out Dave’s impromptu, self-video’d intro to the steak-off below:
So who fucking won the steak-off? Doug and Dave both agreed that Lobel’s eked out the win (of course…) BUT at a cost of an extra $30 for what was only a small margin of victory. Lobel’s was better, they said, but Eataly had a meatier taste. You decide which is the better buy between the two…
Piora
First, you have to watch this video:
Okay… So that is the whole reason we went here. I needed to do an honorable mention here just for that alone, despite the joint not being a true steakhouse. Well, I needed to try that steak AND sample their ridiculously delicious sounding menu, which you can see HERE. I think we tried most of the items on the menu. Seriously.
We started with a few of their awesome drinks from the cocktail menu, which were painstakingly crafted by this dude, who shaved chunks of ice by hand to fill the glasses.
Check out his arsenal of wizard potions too:
Okay so after that we ordered up some monkey bread for $6. A dollar per lump, each about the size of a mini-muffin or small cupcake. My biggest negative of the dining experience – this item should’ve been free. It was small, and I’ve had better bread for free at places like BLT Prime, Quality Meats, Quality Italian, Tellers, etc. This was essentially the same bread as the stuff at Quality Italian, but it cost $6 instead of nothing. Oh – it came with a seaweed butter (big deal) and some nice lard (that was yummy).
Next we shared some starters: BBQ octopus and duck confit. Unfortunately I forgot to snap pics of those items, but they were both really delicious.
An amuse was brought out to us next: apple with chartreuse and beet:
For pre-entrées we shared four items between the four of us: black garlic bucatini with Dungeness crab and chilis; (Riders of) Rohan duck (that’s a LoTR reference, by the way), suckling pig, and sea trout. All were small portions, so it was easy to sock away with four hungry diners. I won’t get into the serious specifics here, since this is a fucking steak blog, not a duck and pig blog, but the pasta was really nice with the crab meat on top. The aged duck was frigging awesome – may as well have been a steak; that’s how flavorful and legit this fucker was. The pork was soft inside with a nice crispy outside. See pics below. And as for the trout – some of the best crispy fish skin I’ve had to date.
See Trout Swim.
See Trout Get Eaten.
We sided that shit up with an order of sunchokes with hazelnut, topped with parmesan cheese. Really great shit.
Now for the good shit – the steak. The special, secret, off-menu, bone-in, 40oz rib eye/cote de beouf was … Well … You saw the video. It was fucking great. It ranks #2 in best steaks from a non-steakhouse; behind only the great and powerful Marc Forgione (who just opened a new steakhouse in Tribeca, by the way, called American Cut). This steak was nice – it had a bacon candy-like taste on the edges; great sear, locking in the flavor. The meat was tender, cooked just right. Take a look at the pics, before and after slicing:
It came with two side items: olive oil potato balls, and spigarello (which is best described as broccoli flavored kale, sautéed with garlic and oil). I didn’t care much for the potato balls, but the spigarello was nice. You can sorta see those items here in the plating:
For dessert we had a scoop of salted caramel ice cream (not pictured), and an order of the white peach shaved ice, which sat on a coconut panna cotta with some blueberry sauce. THAT was really flavorful. I wish I had ordered three or four of those for my entrée. The coconut panna cotta was so light and fluffy. Totally gobble-worthy.
And then the bill came:
And then I took a dump in the bathroom. And they all lived happily ever after. The end.
PIORA
430 Hudson St.
New York, NY 10014
Tabelog Event at SakaMai
I’ve been meaning to yap it up about Tabelog for a while now, but the timing is perfect now for this entry. Basically, in a crude and overly simplified description that cheapens what I mean to say, Tabelog is the Japanese version of Yelp – only a shitload better. In Japan, Tabelog is 5x larger than Yelp; they dominate the food review market. The company has recently endeavored to break into the US and global market, with their first state-side stop being NYC, of course. That’s where Johnny Prime comes in. The awesome folks at Tabelog recognized my manliness and contacted me (and other well known and influential food bloggers) to be a part of the process – to give input on the website, to act as the voice of the user, etc. And most fun for us foodies – they also asked us to be judges for their NYC restaurant awards. Of course I fucking jumped at the opportunity to voice my opinion on things; namely, their “best steakhouse” category… Which, sadly, went to Peter Luger… Yeah… BOO… HISS… I was a bit surprised too… Oh well. Clearly some of the people who voted on this category need to get out to some different steakhouses, or they need to thoroughly read my site. I guess this just means that my important work must go on. I have more to do… Thankfully, Tabelog provides another great format and outlet for my manliness to disseminate to the world abroad. So thank you Brock and Ken for taking me into the fold. I’m honored, humbled, and thrilled to be a part of this.
Anyway… After being introduced to the newly launched US website I found that I REALLY liked the format. Not only that, but Tabelog allows food and restaurant reviewers a hell of a lot more control over the content and overall look of their reviews. Tabelog was smart to make the review process personal, so that you can almost get to know the writers just as much as the restaurants. Reviewers on Tabelog have their own little corner of cyberspace to stand on their milk crate and shout out their unique message; it’s kinda like Facebook meets restaurant reviews in a way. Meanwhile, Yelp has a whole shitpile of obnoxious restrictions like no use of hyperlinks, no self promotion, no mention of your website anywhere in your reviews, image restriction this, content restriction that… To some extent I understand the concern, but it has gotten a bit ridiculous lately. Yelp also doesn’t allow for embedded images in the body of the review, and they also hide or block certain reviews based on some fucked up algorithm that they THINK works to weed out what they perceive as “biased” reviews from tainting the process. Good intentions, but the reality is that many times this “feature” actually HARMS small businesses; I’ve seen it happen with people that I know who run small shops. Even despite numerous efforts by these small businesses to contact Yelp to alert them of problems or attempt to rectify situations, Yelp ignores, or pulls out some pre-conceived, pro-forma, bullshit-laden excuse/rationale. Tabelog has none of these ridiculous issues. Whoever is running the Tabelog tech is a fucking wizard, and the layout, user interface, and intuitive organizational nature of the site simply blows away the competition. Granted it is still new here, and things are just starting to heat up for them in NYC, but MAN do they show promise… I’m really looking forward to their explosion into the US market. And it’ll be fun because I’ll be there for the wild ride. Exciting.
So now, literally, to the meat and potatoes… Last night Tabelog threw an event for their NYC judges at the incredible SakaMai restaurant; a real deal legit Japanese place on the lower east side. The Tabelog folks were cool enough to let me bring my wife as well, who, as you might already know, is The Cake Dealer and also an awesome food blogger herself. The food at SakaMai was off the hook – pretty much perfection. Check out the pics and captions below.
First is the menu. Pics of the dishes go clockwise from bottom left:
Here is the carrot puree with dashi gelee and summer truffle. At first I thought it was some kind of uni puree based on the color and bright, brine flavor. This was one of the most delicious items of the night. I think I sucked down three of these mutherfuckers.
Next is the meat: filet mignon tartare with uni, wasabi mascarpone, and poached egg. I had three of these too. Hands down one of the better tartares I’ve ever had. It was earthy, it had great texture, and the poached egg introduced just the right amount of fat back into the dish.
Now for the trout and caviar sushi. I only had one of these, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. It was delicate, but full of great flavor. Very clean, crisp and refreshing.
Lobster croquettes with lardo iberico and sansho peppers. I went back for seconds here. Just a great, soft yet powerful punch of velvety flavor inside that crispy fried outer shell. And sitting on a little puree of potato.
Now for more meat – this time a chicken + fois gras burger. Fucking delicious. I only had one, but I could have put away a dozen of these fuckers quick and easy – so quick it would rival my old drunken 3am White Castle runs. And I don’t care what you say: White Castle sliders rule. Just don’t save any in the fridge overnight or else the next day the entire appliance will smell like rotting trash.
MORE MEAT! Iberico pork on a bed of farro salad. My first bite was extremely chewy but I think that’s because I got one of the fatty/gristled ends. My next two servings were perfect. When I first saw the color of the slices I thought I was dealing with flank, skirt or strip steak: a nice pinkish center. But when you delve into high quality pork, the “other white meat” can be served a little less cooked. This was some yummy shit:
Dessert: strawberry compote with mascarpone and a truffled balsamic drizzle. Fuck the strawberry though. It was great but I could drink that fucking cream all day. I’d rub that shit all over my face and gobble it down like Jenna Jameson if I had to.
Now onward to the booze! SakaMai offered us up a delicious selection of sakes, served up by some serious sake experts – so serious that they are called samurai. Serious. No joke. But seriousness aside, the one samurai we spoke to was hilarious, reciting jokes about the history of certain drinks.
We tasted a nice array of some very different sakes and booze. Below are two pics: one of our favorite sake, which was very clean, crisp and pure… Then a spicy plum alcohol which was accompanied by a funny story told by the sake samurai.
And last but not least, the talent and brains behind it all. First Tabelog: this is a shot of Brock (left) and Ken (right) telling us about the company’s plans and how we fit into the equation.
Next is SakaMai owner Natalie (left) and Chef Akiyama (right), who told us a lot about their restaurant and fielded a wide array of questions from us food nerds.
SAKAMAI
157 Ludlow St.
New York, NY 10002
Top Chef Premiere Event
My wife was able to score some VIP tickets to the Top Chef Masters Season 5 Premiere Tasting Event.
With heavy hitters like David Burke and Bryan Voltaggio on the roster for this season’s competition, we were both really psyched to try their food. We were a bit disappointed to learn that Voltaggio would not be in attendance (he just had a baby), but we still had the pleasure of eating some of the best bites of food in the biz.
The way it worked: we were tasting the dishes that were presented in the elimination challenge at the end of the first episode.
I’ll start with what was by far our favorite dish of the evening, which has ended up being the feature of this article. It was masterfully created by Jennifer Jasinski, Executive Chef and Owner of Denver’s Rioja, Bistro Vendome and Euclid Hall Bar & Kitchen, and her sous chef Jorel Pierce. Check out the pics below and let your mouth water like a hungry, rabid dog.
best of the night!
They prepared an orange and ginger caramelized skirt steak with roasted mushroom-fregola salad and preserved lemon yogurt.
The citrus really popped when you bit into the meat, giving it a bright contrast to the usual warm and earthy flavors you associate with good skirt steak. The caramelization gave the meat a nice crunchy and savory element, almost like a course sea salt, which contributed great textural dynamics.
I was curious, though, as to how the meat was butchered, because each piece of steak was sliced to a perfect little round circle, which is not normal when you think of skirt steak (usually sliced in strips on the bias). When I had the opportunity to speak to Jennifer and her sous chef Jorel about how the dish was prepared, they explained that several skirt steaks were “meat-glued” into a terrine form and shaped to look like sausages, then the terrines were cooked to a perfect medium rare before slicing into rounds (I think with a sous vide bath). I was blown away. I had seen this terrine technique used before, but never with skirt steak, and never had I seen it executed so perfectly and elegantly.
note they are set up to still be sliced on the bias
Look at those juicy pink medallions!
After watching the first episode, I realized that she sincerely took the judges criticisms to heart, because their critique was that her original dish was too clunky with large unshapely pieces of steak taking away from the dining experience. So by forming the steaks into terrines and slicing the newly-formed meat into perfect bite-sized rounds (and still cut on the bias), she and Jorel erased that problem completely. I guess that’s what happens when an expert chef has the luxury of using a kitchen and a sous chef. In the first episode she had to cook outdoors with a very basic set of tools, all by her lonesome, so making a terrine or using a sous vide machine was out of the realm of realistic possibilities.
Bravo Jennifer and Jorel, for impressing this carnivore connoisseur with a really amazing dish!
Another highlight of the evening: a Vietnamese style pork dish whipped up by chef Sang Yoon. This was the only other dish that I kept eating more and more of. It was sweet and pungent with the familiar, fresh, herby and spicy flavors commonly associated with Vietnamese cuisine (chili, cilantro, fish sauce, etc). Plus it was nice and juicy as well.
And, finally, here’s a little photo dump for all you bastards out there who want to see more:
I grabbed a slice of my favorite pizza in NYC to cap off the evening
Where The Buffalo Roam
I recently became aware that Long Island has a thriving buffalo ranch out in Riverhead called North Quarter Farm. When I started digging around online about it, I came across a few articles written over the last 10 or 15 years that championed the effort. See the NY Times Article and the Long Island Press Article. I learned that the farm owners also have a steakhouse-type restaurant called Tweeds, run by the husband of the bison ranch team, where they proudly feature many items that derive from bison (buffalo mozz, buffalo hanger steak, buffalo rib eye, buffalo reuben sandwich, etc). There’s even a second restaurant, right next door and run by the wife in the farm team, called Dark Horse. This place is more of a casual bar type of place, with a modern decor and music selection, featuring items like buffalo pate and buffalo pastrami sandwiches. I inquired about whether they use the actual buffalo from the farm in the restaurants. The answer was no (with the exception of the “ground steak” used to make the bison burgers at Dark Horse). Unfortunately their bison must go out to PA to be USDA certified before they can be slaughtered and cooked up into delicious food. But I thought it was cool that they put as much buffalo meat onto the menu as possible to pay tribute to their ranch business. They even offer buffalo meat cuts (steaks of all kinds, pate, chopped meat, etc) to buy and take home for your own cooking adventures.
So my wife and I decided to take a drive out there to try the food and to see the farm. We settled on eating at Tweeds, since we liked the interior better and it was a little more quiet. Since we ordered from the lunch menu I couldn’t realistically give the place a full review here, but I thought it was worth mentioning in a commentary with some photos. The place was beautiful inside, rich with local history and an old timey atmosphere. Apparently the giant bison head on the wall beside the bar is the actual last bison that Teddy Roosevelt ever hunted. Pretty cool. The service was excellent; our waitress Janine was really nice, helpful, and sweet. They had a great selection of German beers on tap and in bottles, and the food was fucking delicious. We started with a bison skewer and a couple of beers. The meat was juicy and tender; cooked just right. For my entree I had a bison hanger steak. It too was perfectly cooked, juicy, and delicious. It came with a peppercorn cognac cream sauce that I could drink by the gallon. So good. My wife had the corned bison Reuben sandwich. Just like a regular corned beef Reuben, but with corned bison. It was incredible, and served with some big sliced pickles. Both of our meals came with potato wedges, deep fried with the skin still on for a really delicious, crispy, homemade pile of steak fries. Needless to say we will definitely be going back here for a proper dinner, where I can sink my teeth into a buffalo rib eye (it wasn’t on the lunch menu).
Scroll down for pics of our food, and for pics of the buffalo at the farm. The bison were right along the fence for a bit, so I got a few close up shots before they walked away. We even had the pleasure of seeing some of the bison “wallowing,” or rolling themselves in a shallow dirt spot, covering themselves in dust.
FOOD PICS:
BUFFALO RANCH PICS:
TWEED’S
17 E. Main St.
Riverhead, NY 11901