- The Meat Show's coming to you from New York City,
we are in front of Delmonico's,
America's oldest restaurant.
Also America's oldest steak house.
The chef here, Billy Oliva, called me up,
he said he's got something special planned,
because they're coming up on their 180th anniversary,
so let's go inside and find out what's going on.
(upbeat rock music)
- So, we're doin' 180 day dry aged ribeye
for the anniversary.
- [Nick] Interesting.
Delmonico cut I'd assume. - Delmonico, yeah,
absolutely. - Which of course
is the namesake - Absolutely.
- Of this restaurant.
We're a few months away, so they must be on the shelf
already, right?
- They're on the shelf.
They're right at about 90 days.
- [Nick] So we're halfway there?
- Halfway.
So we don't dry age here, 'cause we just don't
have the space.
So we actually do it out in Jersey.
- [Nick] Hit the road?
- [Billy] Let's go.
- [Nick] Alright, mate.
(upbeat rock music)
These guys are aging the meat for you?
- They are.
They've been doin' it for a while now.
Short loins,
bone-in ribeyes,
Tomahawk steaks.
We just ran out of space in Delmonico's.
- But you've gotten beef from these guys forever,
I mean, when I first met you you had
Green Tree, right? - Yeah, we've been
using them for a long, long time.
- So long relationship.
- Yeah.
- And they give you the cuts - They do a great job.
(upbeat rock music)
We do a 28 day T-bone,
we do a 45 day dry-aged, bone-in ribeye.
- [Nick] The Delmonico is actually wet-aged, right?
- The classic Delmonico is a wet-aged steak, yeah.
We do a combination of both.
- So, for your 180th anniversary,
you're doing something a little different, right?
- We are.
We're experimenting.
We don't know what the outcome is gonna be.
It's the same cut,
but we're gonna go 180.
Check out the dates on that.
- [Nick] So that went up in February?
- [Billy] Yeah.
- [Nick] You can see already the dessication on this.
- [Billy] Yeah, it's really hard.
- [Nick] I mean, it's.
- [Billy] It's a rock.
- But you can say that this is a very,
what we call a clean dry-age room.
- Yeah, it's holding up well.
- You know,
some places, you'll see there'll be this sort of,
this layer of fluff, right?
- Yeah, which is. - But that's not really--
- What we want, yeah.
- So maybe we could cook the Delmonico,
and - And one of these guys.
- One of these, and maybe one of your standard
steaks too, just because you know,
you can never have enough beef on The Meat Show, right?
(upbeat funk music)
From your 23.9 pounds. - Nine pounds.
- Prime 107 that you put up three months ago.
The two end steaks will we really determined
you can't use because
of the spoilage on the end. - Yeah.
So you're really left with five 24 ounce steaks.
- That's it.
- I'm not very good at math, but,
that's a lot.
- That's a lot of loss.
- Generally, you guys trim these at the restaurant.
- Yeah.
- So all of this stuff--
- This gets melted down.
- Into fat.
- This goes into a broth.
- I'm sure one of the crafty chefs.
- Somebody's eatin' that.
- Tasty end cut'd actually make one of the funkiest
steaks available.
I mean this already is like an exceptional steak.
- Yeah, that's.
- 90 day dry-aged.
- So I really like the eye on this one,
and I like this pinellas.
That's always my
favorite part. - That's a killer one.
(upbeat funk music)
- Thank you.
- You don't normally make the deliveries yourself, huh?
- No, usually they come to me, on the other end.
(upbeat funk music)
- This is a Delmonico cut?
- Classic Delmonico.
- That's your standard--
- Dry-age, yeah.
- Dry-age rib steak,
and how many days is that again?
- [Billy] This one is about 30 I believe.
- Okay, which is, that's sort of the industry
standard, right?
- And then we have the monster--
- [Both] 90 day.
- Which is halfway to our 180 day goal.
(upbeat funk music)
- [Billy] (mumbles) mix of melted butter
and a little bit of beef fat.
And then we finish with Maldon sea salt
and a little pierre poivre.
- [Nick] Pierre poivre is a spice blend.
- [Billy] It's a pepper mix, yeah.
- [Nick] The number seven you use?
- Number seven, yeah.
It's so many firsts invented right here.
- Well, the first celebrity chef,
I mean, Charles Ranhofer-- - Was, yeah.
- America's first. - America's first cookbook.
- Yeah.
- You know, so there's so much history.
Eggs Benedict, Baked Alaska.
- The Delmonico steak now is almost,
here, it's a rib steak, or ribeye,
boneless rib steak.
Most of the country, but sometimes you'll see
the New York strip, but what you told me was
actually the Delmonico was the best cut
on a particular night, right?
- Back in the 1800's, they were slaughtering
the animals out on the street.
- Right.
- So it was the best cut that they had
at the time. - So it could've
been a filet,
could've been a sirloin cut,
or New York strip.
(upbeat funk music)
I love that you still have the pageantry,
it's still a fine dining restaurant
at it's heart, right, even though it's really
known as a steak house.
I think that we should probably start,
I mean, should be we just start with
the Delmonico? - Yeah, the Delmonico, right?
- This is your classic, biggest selling steak.
Wet-aged.
- [Billy] Wet-aged.
- [Nick] 28 days?
- [Billy] Yep.
- You know my feelings on wet-age beef.
- Yeah. - Not a big fan.
But, that said, that is absolutely gloriously
cooked piece of meat.
You have that beautiful char on the outside,
look at the color of that pink.
Just a rinse.
Smells great.
What that's totally lacking in my expectation
of the piece of meat is that dry-aged--
- Depth of flavor.
- That depth of flavor, but,
that said, this is still one of the greatest
things on Earth that you can eat, right?
We're talking about a margin of difference
of like, five percent better with dry-age.
I mean, that's just still, look at it.
That's still carnivore heaven right there.
28 day-er.
There's a fascination I have with the process
of dry aging that, the further from life
you take something, and wine is a good example,
cheese, there is something that there's a profundity
of flavor. - Yeah.
- And it tastes less and less like life,
and more and more like something else.
Wow.
- Big difference.
- Huge.
I mean, to me it's just a night and day difference
between those two things.
Like they're both clearly beef,
they're both clearly protein, but.
- [Billy] Totally different process.
- This just has those notes,
it's like there's a gentle tang,
it's got depth of flavor,
it stays with you much longer.
That's very clean, it finishes very cleanly,
this has residual flavor.
- [Billy] That's the 90 day.
- The reason we are here.
And this is a 90 day dry-age, bone-in, USDA
prime grade beef rib steak.
It's more brittle. - Yeah.
- It comes apart a lot more easily.
It's definitely more sour tasting.
Mmm.
Wow.
- This pinellas has a great texture.
- It's almost got a creaminess to it,
it's really interesting.
It's interesting, it don't think that I actually
like it more than the
28 day-er.
- You like that one better?
- When you age things, there's peaks and crescendos,
and valleys, right?
- It hits its plateau.
- It changes flavor over time.
- Yeah.
- And I think that this is just one of the cycles
where like the sour notes are kinda becoming
prominent.
I'm interested to see what
will happen with the.
- [Billy] 180.
- I think it's gonna be completely different.
This is the 90 day.
We're gonna come back in three months,
in September, which is Delmonico's 180th anniversary,
and we're gonna try the 180 day dry-age steak.
Also, we have a 90 in there, right?
- Yeah, we were gonna put those up today,
so it's almost exactly the--
- The same.
- The same amount of time.
- Right? - yeah.
- So that will be very interesting,
and we'll really be able to compare this with that.
Well, here's to the next 180 years.
- We'll be part of that history.
- Thank you very much for watching.
See you on the next episode.