My top three consist of one local independent place, one (gasp) chain, and one at a theme park hotel restaurant.
The chain: the bone in cowboy ribeye at Eddie Merlot’s is probably the single best steak I’ve ever eaten. Wonderful marbling, as is typical of the ribeye (my favorite cut o’ meat), and always cooked to a perfect rare/medium rare.
The indie: The wagyu New York strip from Malone’s in Lexington, Kentucky was as good as the hype. Succulent, melt-in-your-mouth beef. Apparently, though, they’ve taken the wagyu off the menu since I last visited. Bummer.
The theme park hotel restaurant: the oak-grilled filet mignon with macaroni and cheese and red wine sauce from Jiko - The Cooking Place, located in the beautiful Animal Kingdom Lodge at Walt Disney World, was surprisingly excellent. When I had it, back in 2005, they served it without any type of steak knife, and I shit you not, I could easily cut into it using the place setting’s butter knife. Plus, the mac & cheese is pretty great, too.
Funny you ask now, cuz I was just over at the Peter Luger Steak House (about a mile from my house in Brooklyn, but is universally known) for my 30th on Thursday. It’s not just their incredibly tasty porterhouses, but the entire meal, from the german fried potatos to the creamed spinach to their steak sauce to the BREAD makes every dining experience there one of the best I’ve ever had, and definitely the best steak dinner. There’s a good reason you need to make reservations at least a month in advance.
In a tiny, hidden away restaurant near the Rialto in Venice (this sounds like I’m just name-dropping, but it genuinely was the best). It was a beautiful thick fillet steak, perfectly cooked and so tender you could have eaten it with a spoon. I still dream of that steak.
A salt-aged ribeye, in a tiny hole-in-the-wall in Redding, California called Jack’s. They opened at 5:30 and there was always a line. They only seated twice a night, so you wanted to be in that line. No reservations and good luck dropping in at any other time than the seating time.
Sometimes it’s the circumstances as much as the meal itself. The best steak I ever had was a filet mignon at The El Tovar after an all-day hike in the Grand Canyon.
This is going to sound pathetic, but the best one I ever had was a ribeye at Austin Grill. I’ve had filet mignons and NY strips and every other cut cooked a myriad different ways, but the one I remember best is that spicy ribeye at Austin Grill. Granted, it was only great that one time, I’ve had it again and it wasn’t as good, but that one time was amazing.
Thursday night was the first time I’ve tried that appetizer. I was imagining a tasty strip of bacon, which would you see on the side of a plate if you ordered pancakes, so I was surprised when the waiter asked “one per person, or will you share?” … these are BIG BIG slices (about 8 inches long, times about a centimeter TALL and an inch wide - must be eaten with a knife and fork!) - I mean, two of them would be a whole meal itself. Best bacon I’ve ever had, by far, but definitely share one slice between two people.
I’ve been to Peter Luger’s three times (the one in Great Neck), and each time it was the best steak I’d ever had. Just enough crispy char on the outside with a texture like butter on the inside, and the slightly spicy juices gathered at the bottom of the dish (they keep the dish tilted by leaning it over a small bowl)… yum! And as fusoya mentioned, the accompaniments are old fashioned and simple but divine: fried potatoes with a hint of onion, creamed spinach, and the classic beefsteak tomato & onion salad with their tangy steak sauce (the only use for that sauce… the steak certainly doesn’t need it!). Crazy expensive – and they don’t accept credit cards other than their own – but soooo worth it.
As far as “steak” the best ones are ribeyes cooked on my grill just the way I like them. I have just never found a place that serves steak better than I can, let alone one that is worth 3 times the money. Of course with that said I very rarely eat steak at a restaurant. I always go for something that I can’t make as good. Even at great steak places like the Fort and Buckhorn Exchange in Denver there is always something not steak that is irresistible.
I do eat Prime rib fairly often though . It’s just too expensive meatwise to cook it at home for one, In order to get the perfect medium-rare center section too much of the ends are roasted to nasty brown as a waste of money. So I do get that at restaurants and the two best ever beef prime rib I had was at a place called Poor Richards In Cheyenne, and a place in Estes Park that I will never remember the name off.
That is not a pathetic opinion. Shit there’s no way this isn’t going to be patronising as all hell, but did you have a nice meal? That’s all that counts.
I did spend a semester in Argentina, but the very best steaks I had there were cooked at my host families homes. The restaurants I ate in there were geared towards student budgets. The steaks in those were all pretty good, too. I don’t want to embarass myself by saying “Try La Estancia in calle Florida” because for all I know that was the BsAs. equivalent of Outback. But it was good.
My best steak dinner in the US was at Cohen’s Chicken on a Tray in Junction City, KS. The bonus was that in addition to being a really good dinner it was unbelievably inexpensive. I was so happy.
I remember it pretty clearly- I was at a wedding in Scotland in June 1998, and the rehearsal dinner was at the Marcliffe at Pitfodels hotel just outside Aberdeen.
The steak was a filet mignon, and despite being about 3" thick, was tender enough to cut with a fork and absolutely divine in all other respects.
I mostly remember it, because if I’d had my choice, I’d have ordered fish, and the steak just blew me out of my shoes and made me glad I hadn’t.
The odd thing is that since then, I’ve eaten at the best steakhouses in Dallas and Houston, and in some pricey joints near Irvine CA, and none of the steaks before or since have been nearly so memorable.
