Steak is one of those wonderful foods where it is not only possible to do it better at home than in a restaurant, but it extremely *likely* to be better at home than in even a very high-dollar restaurant. That's why it has never made sense to me for steak to be so expensive in high-end restaurants. I think it is *much* harder to get fish perfect, or to make complex dishes from ethnic cuisines at home like Asian, Italian, French, Spanish, etc. But steak? Easy-peasy: a good piece of meat, a good dry rub and a really hot grill are all you need!
Also, for anyone who might not understand why billybob_jcv says this, look at it this way - those cooking competitions on Food Network and Bravo? They very, very, very rarely have steak. One episode of Top Chef where one guy served steak? They thought it lacked creativity. Even that other competition with just grill/pitmasters? Yeah, rarely steak there too. Still it's difficult to get right because you need the right equipment and experience (I always say practice on cheap rib eye before getting Wagyu or Chianina), and then there's that debate on the flavor of the beef vs the dry rub, meaning there are a lot of people who will see a recipe with anything other than black pepper and salt who would go ballistic even if it's just a tiny bit of some other flavor.
I wasn't saying that you can't get excellent steak at a restaurant, I'm saying that it's not that hard to also get really great steak at home. Places like Morton's, The Palm, Ruth's Chris, Capital Grille, etc make excellent steaks - and you can get even better steak at places like Prime, Cut, etc.
Better yet, steakhouses in rural areas along the freeway. Harris Ranch in CA and that place Bush Sr. goes to for his "Presidential Porterhouse." There's one in our highlands south of Manila near cattle and chocolate country (no really one province does both over here), plus that fantastic farm in northern Italy that has Cianina cattle and roasts the Florentine steak in their pizza oven or similar places around Kobe. Basically one that has its own cattle (or a farm that has its own steakhouse, depending on how you look at the chronological development) usually has the best beef. When we ate in Harris Ranch, my mom loved the beef because it has that "fresh" beef flavor, which isn't the kind of flavor you would get on meat that traveled too far from the farm (even in wet aging bags), kind of like the flavor of shank we use for broth,
but it's a good kind of cattle so steak cuts are still tender even if not aged.
Heck I found a grocery here in Manila that has a striploin roast from Harris Ranch, and they cut one steak from it for me. Not really bad but it tasted nothing like the striploin I brought back to Anaheim that never spent any time in a freezer (bought fresh, ice chest in the trunk, then fridge at home until an hour before dinner).
I claim that when you have the right grill (very, very high BTU), a great piece of meat (not average grocery store) and a really excellent dry rub (salt, pepper, garlic, paprika, cayenne, etc), you can ALSO create an absolutely killer Filet Mignon, New York, Ribeye or Porterhouse in your own backyard. Some of the pics in this thread certainly seem to back-up my claim!!
Good substitutes for a high BTU gas grill of course are:
1. Cast-iron pan and a hot stove - they are not created equal as some have fewer holes, or poorly maintained, or some electric stoves don't heat up hot enough. I use a Lodge pan when I'm too lazy to fan charcoal, but the trade-off is this thing is a total PITA to clean in a country where I don't get steaming hot water from the tap. I have to soap it and reaseason the damn thing every time, since the best hot water I got is off a kettle and then pouring it (not like it'll have both heat and pressure to knock the meat bits off of it). Oh and bone-in cuts are also a PITA on this if you don't have a big enough grill press.
2. A deep charcoal grill. A lot of grilles tend to be shallow, especially if labelled as "tabletop." Those are enough for most but not steaks that need a really high temp, which while grilling I describe to people asking as "hotter than Vulcan's d*ck." When I start the fire (I'm talking real charcoal here, not those quick-light things) I really pile them up going over the top of the grill, and once I have them at the right temp, I've already burned off about 1/4 of that (also they're irregular sizes), plus the newspaper under the lower grate. Some of my friends have an electric outlet on the yard just to be able to hook up an electric fan. I use this for bone-in cuts, but of course it's the cheap Charbroil one so no cast-iron grate to create those grill marks like on the gas grills we use for larger parties. Also, the nice thing about gas grills is you can cook each thick steak one at a time, eat all of it while still warm, then fire up the grill and just wait for it to hit the right temp, for which I usually don't even get halfway through a cigarette.
When we're doing something really special, we buy a whole beef tenderloin, then cut our own Filets. Everyone gets an awesome thick chunk of mouth-watering meat!!
One time I did that with local tenderloin, which was around $10/kg, so I paid around $22 for the whole thing (and got some leftover tips for salpicao); everyone who didn't know the meat cuts thought I was serving Angus because it's tender, plus I was cooking onions on the same griddle and served the steak over them. Recently though I just go over to one of the chain groceries, or a local butcher, and just have them bring out the large roast cuts and they get me center-cut steaks, primarily because my friends prefer rib eye, while I prefer porterhouse for parties. Why? Well, porterhouse costs less per kg than tenderloin, but I still get tenderloin...and usually the guys eat the striploin and the girls I lead to the tenderloin so they won't have to deal with a slightly chewier (or very rare) meat.
My friends are so into grilling that they wanted to grill again last weekened, but I was a stag party and they had to resched. Supposedly they're bringing over some Wagyu, so I'm gonna try to get local fresh (not aged) Angus rib eyes at the farmer's market this Sunday so people can see the difference. However if they cut them all up into 0.75in steaks before I get there, I'm just gonna get a tenderloin into 2.5in steaks, and wrap them in thick-cut smoked bacon
