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Dave’s Dispatch: Challenging Convention
June 28, 2007

Bar nibbles at BLT Steak in Washington, D.C., include fat olives and salty peanuts. You’d never expect liver pâte with toasted bread to show up at a steakhouse.

Steakhouses are evolving into two camps: old and new. Like any evolution, the pace is slow and not always noticeable. That’s because the old steakhouse with its dark woods, no-nonsense waitstaff and beef-heavy menus is such a part of restaurant culture that it’s difficult to imagine replacing it. And yet some restaurant operators are doing it.

Chef Laurent Tourondel is one. He’s blending steakhouse with bistro. Last November he opened BLT Steak (for Bistro Laurent Tourondel) in Washington, D.C., after opening several restaurants, including the first BLT Steak, in New York City. The original steak concept earned a good review from New York Magazine critic Adam Platt.

I dropped by the branch in the nation’s capital recently and discovered a contemporary-looking restaurant that happens to feature seven steak items—the usual classic cuts except for one: a 10-ounce hanger steak that sells for $24. That’s downright inexpensive for a steakhouse. If you want empty your wallet, there’s Japanese Kobe beef at $26 an ounce (a 5-ounce minimum, please).

There’s also five species of fish on Tourondel’s menu, including rare Dover Sole for $45. Sure, old school steakhouses cook fish, too, though it’s typically swordfish, salmon and halibut. What’s new about that?

Maybe it’s a French thing, but I’ve yet been to a steakhouse in the U.S. that offers liver pâte as a free starter—or as the French call it, an amuse bouche. BLT Steak does. And it arrives in a mason jar with a wooden spoon and two pieces of perfectly toasted bread. That’s not all. A few minutes later, the waiter drops off a Gruyère popover, again unbidden. Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsema warned readers in April: “Eating a whole popover is likely to fill you up—and you have yet to see your first course.”

After sampling the pâte and popover, I dug into Tuna Tartare ($16), a silky pile of raw fish on a bed of diced avocado spiked with soy sauce and lime juice. My steak-loving father, I’m afraid, wouldn’t get it

Posted by David Farkas on June 28, 2007 | Comments (0)