An interesting night at the steak house
Stacy and I went out for a steak dinner last night to celebrate a few things. I actually surprised her and we went to Alexander’s in Cupertino. She was so busy telling a story on the ride there, that she didn’t realize it until we were pulling into the parking lot. For those who are not familiar with it, this place is incredible, and blows away the usual suspects of Boston steak houses. Everything I’ve ever gotten there has been amazing, so last night I pushed the idea of the tasting menu on my wife and we went for it.
Statement 1: I am spoiled by what Jamie does when I go to his restaurants, and that is not the usual tasting menu experience.
Statement 2: Steak houses are great at making steaks. The more they deviate from steaks, the more it goes downhill.
So we tell the waiter we are interested in the tasting menu, and he says ok let me see what the chef wants to do, and we’ll run it by you and go from there. The menu says they start at $150 per person, and I tell him I’m down for in the neighborhood of $200 and he says ok.
He comes back with a 3 course plan that involves a “Maine” lobster dumbling, a 2nd course of some reserve caviar served with blinis, and then for the main course, a 28 day aged bone in filet mignon served with lobster “2 ways” a butter poached, and a tempura.
I can see in her eyes that this was not what Stacy really had in mind. First off we are really skeptical on lobster out here, since anything we’ve had in either California or in Hawaii(where they claimed to be raising Maine lobster in the deep,cold waters of Kona) have been really disappointing to us since we are used to the legit stuff. She has never had caviar, and I only had it once at the Russian place in Brookline, but it was okay, so she went along with it.
The first course came out and it was pretty underwhelming. It tasted like a standard fried dumpling/potsticker/wonton whatever, but it had “ginger foam” on top of it. The lobster was totally over powered. At this point we decide to call an audible. We’re convinced anything they do with lobster for the main course, will be disappointing to us, so we ask the waiter if he can change it. He heads off to the kitchen to find out.
He comes back and says instead of the lobster stuff, they will do the double bone in filet, that will be 1 domestic and 1 japanese and do some sort of “unique presentation.” It sounds kinda “meh” to me, and Stacy seemed to agree, but we’re like ok I guess. Then he says if we want that option its going to be an extra hundred bucks. So then we’re just like nah. Stacy’s favorite steak is prime rib, which I think is a weak choice for a place like this, but I am just in a good mood and want to make her happy, so I ask the guy if we can just change things up and go with the prime rib. I THOUGHT the message was pretty clear, so away we go.
The caviar comes out and it was a impressive spread, served in some shells on ice, and with a special mother of pearl spoon because metal will ruin it I guess. The blinis and condiments that they came with all went well, and it was a nice treat for something I would never really think to order or go out for.
Then the prime rib’s arrive, and they are what you expect. High quality of the mediocre cut that prime rib is. When I finish it, I’m left feeling less full than I’ve ever finished a meal at this place, so I am gonna get the little bing cherry creme brulee that I saw on the menu for dessert and call it a night.
As they are clearing our plates they also bring out fresh steak knives and holders. We both look at each other and wonder why they did that. About 60 seconds later, they bring out the bone in filets. One of the other waiters sees our faces and us looking for our waiter and asks us if something is wrong. So I explain the deal and how we just ate our main course. Our waiter shows up with this:
Note: The photo missed one of the best parts of this, just above the photo reads “Congratulations on your purchase”
An autographed description of the steak, why its so great; why most restaurants won’t do it because its cost prohibitive; and yeah, an autograph
He explains that we were still getting this because it was the tasting menu, and that the prime rib was basically just a substitute for the lobster portion of the meal, and then the gem “thats why I thought it was weird that you would have a steak before a steak” Funny, he never mentioned it was weird when we were discussing it.
So we basically had a prime rib appetizer for a filet mignon. Pretty ignorant I’d say.
Stacy tasted hers and took the rest to go. I ate mine anyway since I had room for dessert. Then ordered the creme brulee anyway, which was perfect because it was actually a “mini-dessert.”
It was an interesting meal. Disappointing would be a harsh word to use. But interesting.