Best steak ever, redux.

I am so incredibly excited. Western One's sister and brother-in-law will be visiting the City this weekend. They're up all the way from Arkansas so we simply must go down to visit, and of course dinner is in order. We are going to a restaurant at which a bunch of us celebrated New Year's this past year - the site of one of, if not THE, best meals of my adult life. It's called Quality Meats and it's this great steakhouse up on 58th - cool decor, cleavers hanging in the window, and not too pretentious. I suppose that last point is redundant, I think it might be difficult to be pretentious AND suspend cleavers as decorations. Just picturing the place gets the Deceberists song about the Shankhill butchers stuck in my head. Anyway...

I'm disappointed in myself because I recently cleaned out my old photos and deleted the fuzzy picture of the seafood tower we enjoyed on our last visit to QM. It was impressive. As for the meat, I wisely ordered precisely what the waitress told me was best, the sirloin, while Western One thought he'd be his own man and try something different. The filet, maybe? It doesn't matter, my steak was amnesia-inducing amazing. "Meat-flavored butter" is the term Western One used as he braved my threatening steak knife to steal a taste.

Now that I'm trying to think about meat a bit more, I did some poking around and found the two exclusive butchers the restaurant uses. One, Strassburger Meats makes some vague comments on their website about sustainability and trying to make their plant more green. The other, Milton Ables, details its source requirements, which I found interesting. I was especially surprised by the requirement that the cattle must be corn fed for specific lengths of time - is that meant to be a limiting factor, as in farms should ensure a longer go of grassfeeding, or is there another purpose? Is the exclusion of entirely grass-fed cattle to maintain a price point and consistency? Still much to learn, I suppose, but I do appreciate being given enough information to poke around and I still can't wait for my sirloin.