Already tired of your New Year’s diet? Try a luscious, prime steak

Dining on a USDA prime steak, it’s been said, is like having your dessert first.

Rich, buttery, nutty taste and velvety texture, the result of fat that bastes the steak from the inside out, plus aging that breaks down the fibers and makes the meat more tender and flavorful.

USDA prime is the “Holy Grail of steakhouses,” says journalist Katy McLaughlin, “the thing that gets customers in the door and justifies the prices.” Just 4 percent of beef raised in the U.S. is graded prime.

In Columbus, the Holy Grail of USDA prime steak resides at Buckhead Steak & Wine, formerly Buckhead Grill. Its strip, ribeye and filet, co-owner Kyle Djukich says, are graded USDA prime, and prices reflect that: the 11-oz strip, for example, is $39.

But Djukich says all steaks are available for splitting – a prime-on-a-budget date night.

Ben’s Chophouse also offers USDA prime – a 22-oz ribeye, $46.

But beef need not be USDA prime to make a great steak. Six of the top 25 restaurants in Columbus, according to TripAdvisor, promote themselves as steakhouses. They offer steaks that vary according to breed, cut and aging – as well as the USDA grade.

The highly rated Epic, for example, serves only USDA choice.

I checked out steak in Columbus for the “Where to Eat” page on the travel site 36hoursinColumbus.com. I was looking for those places, like Buckhead Steak & Wine, that food writer Jeremy Berger describes as where “friends and colleagues gather around a generously-sized table to eat charred flesh and drink wine the color of blood.”

Prime and choice are the best-known terms in the beef industry. You see them on packages in the supermarket and on restaurant menus. They define the volume, density and color of the fat in beef.

A USDA grader, explains gastronomist Miki Kawasaki, slices into the ribeye portion of a carcass and makes the call: prime, choice, select and lower. There are sub-levels of grading, too, like “low prime” or “high choice.”

This matters, because restaurants in Columbus, as elsewhere, market steaks based on these gradings. Buckhead Steak & Wine, for example, says its USDA prime steaks are in the “top 2 percent.” But breed – think “Angus” here – may be as important to restaurant marketing as grade.

The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service oversees 95 beef marketing programs. Some 63 of them include the term “Angus,” a reference to the black-hide cattle that are the most common source of beef in the U.S.

“Certified Angus Beef” is the best-known of these programs. In Columbus, 11th and Bay is a member of this program. All of its steaks are Certified Angus Beef, according to owner Heather Harrell, aged at least 21 days by the purveyor.

Aging matters. It increases tenderness and intensifies flavor. Most restaurant steaks in Columbus are wet-aged, owners say. The beef is sealed in a vacuum package and refrigerated. A few chefs, including Epic’s Jamie Keating, sometimes offer dry-aged beef, where the unpackaged meat is stored in a controlled, open environment. Dry-aging produces a rich, nutty flavor, but one third to one half of the meat is lost to rot.

Three of the Mark Jones-owned restaurants position themselves as steak places: Hunter’s Pub, Mark’s City Grill and The Black Cow. Like most group-owned restaurants, the beef comes from the same purveyor, according to publicist Stephanie Woodham.

The 8-oz filet mignon at Hunter’s Pub, for example, is the same piece of meat as the 8-oz filet at Mark’s City Grill and The Black Cow. Only the price differs. At Hunter’s Pub, the 8-oz filet is $25, at the Black Cow, it’s $21.

But more goes into the price of a steak than the cost of the meat: Occupancy costs, the way the table is set, staffing, side dishes. You’re buying the experience, whether it’s the Texas variety, the rural pub, the in-city grill or the Japanese steakhouse.

“It’s not just about the beef,” says food historian Betty Fussell. “It’s about the ritual.”

If your budget won’t permit the cost of eating out on USDA prime steaks, buy one and cook it at home. Fresh Market, 1591 Bradley Park Drive, stocks USDA prime filets – and sometimes strips and ribeyes – at half the restaurant price.

If your cardiologist objects to all this luscious fat, try the lean, grass-only fed cuts, from Strauss at all Publix stores and White Oak Pastures at Market Days downtown and in the frozen case at Maltitude, 1031 Broadway.

This story was originally published January 9, 2017 at 8:41 AM with the headline "Already tired of your New Year’s diet? Try a luscious, prime steak."