Skirt Steak

I’ve always enjoyed simple menus of steak frites. We visited L’entrecote, and it was a pretty good restaurant for a similar value as this one. When I arrived at 5:20 PM and because this restaurant doesn’t take reservations for small parties, there was already a line out of the door. Fortunately the total wait time for us was about 15 minutes in line because we volunteered for bar seats if they were available. We were hoping this restaurant would be another spot of equivalent, if not better, caliber steak frites. So how did it fare?

Ambiance

There was a lot of light maple wood colors all over the place. It felt like you were in a modern cabin. The bar area took up a significant amount of room in the restaurant. The stools weren’t particularly comfortable.

The service was a little of a miss. Because we sat at the bar, it’s real fast to get our drinks. The salad came right away once we ordered, but the steak took about 25 minutes. I’m guessing the kitchen was backed up, or the chefs couldn’t figure out the temperatures down. Once you get your steak and fries, they do an extra pass to ask if you want extra fries which we declined.

The menus are pretty straight forward. You order steak, and they give you a salad and unlimited fries. You can optionally order other daily sides such as fingerling potatoes or spinach. On the menu this night, they had wagyu for double the price ($56), so we decided to order a regular skirt steak ($28) and the wagyu ($56) for the two of us.

Food

The coke came a little flat off the tap.

The Blackberry Spritz ($14) tasted pretty good. It was a nice blend of spritz and berry flavors.

The salad came with endives and lettuce with a light vinaigrette on top. This was not memorable since it’s the usual salad you can make at home with very little effort.

The skirt steak ($28) came rare (arguably more blue than rare) and was served with béarnaise sauce. The sauce tasted pretty good, though it didn’t taste as good as L’entrecote. The skirt steak itself was decent, but quality wise it wasn’t as good as I was hoping. What is very disappointing about both our steaks is that they don’t allow you to order medium rare, only rare or medium. The flavor of the meat tasted mostly of the grill, and we probably should’ve ordered medium because the rare was chewy. Compared to store bought skirt steak from Food Bazaar, the quality from the latter tasted better unfortunately.

The wagyu skirt steak ($56) also came rare and was served with the same sauce. For double the price of the regular skirt steak, I had high hopes for this. It had a ton of marbling at first glance, so that was a good sign. Fortunately, it was much better than the regular skirt steak, but it was not worth doubled value wise. You’re better off going to a regular steak restaurant and spending a little more for a better quality non wagyu cut than this very small portion of wagyu. Texture wise, if this was cooked just slightly more, it might have been better.

The fries came pretty crispy and overly salty. It’s one of those times where you really wish they gave you ketchup to help mask the excessive salt.

Final Verdict

For $28, this is a bargain, and it’s likely why people are willing to wait. Unfortunately, I think L’entrecote was a much better value, although it’s unfortunately closed. You really get what you pay for here, and compared to previous specialized steak frite places I’ve been to, I don’t think the value is truly worth the wait.

Yelp Jabs

The salad was deceptively good. When you see it, it is only a pile of green lettuces (no tomatoes, no obvious onions, etc) but it all works together especially with the dressing.

This Elitist must’ve been high on weed when they ate the salad. It’s just a normal salad.

Everyone said to me… Skirt steak is hard to cook…its usually very tough….

I’m guessing this Yelper has never cooked skirt steak, and it’s really not that tough. Unlike thick steaks, skirt steaks are very thin, so it’s actually quite easy to get a very good sear on them and to get it cooked how you want it. It’s only hard for some people because they haven’t cooked enough steak by feeling it without a thermometer.