It Must've Been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingarten

Damn you Jeffrey Steingarten!

It’s because of Jeffrey Steingarten’s book, It Must’ve Been Something I Ate, that I found myself sitting in an antique train car on Sunday, eating the most expensive steak I’ve ever seen.

(It’s also his fault that I have to make apple pie from scratch, because no store- or bakery-bought apple pie holds a candle to his recipe from The Man Who Ate Everything. And then on top of that, it’s his fault that I don’t get any leftovers when I serve it to guests.)

It Must’ve Been Something I Ate is Steingarten’s second compilation of food articles written for Vogue magazine. I find his relationship with food at turns exhilarating, hilarious, and downright scary. My favorite pieces are those in which he sets something on fire (“Perfection Pizza”), but many of the articles are on topics that are intensely interesting to me, like testing home espresso machines, experimenting with MSG, or finding the perfect French hot chocolate.

Of particular interest was the article on steak entitled, “High Steaks.” Up to his usual hijinks, Steingarten turns his refrigerator into a makeshift dry-aging chamber for beef while explaining the whys and wherefores of the best steaks, and why dry-aged beef really is more tender and flavorful than wet-aged beef. I had never tasted a dry-aged steak, but Steingarten described one porterhouse steak: “very crusty on the outside, just between rare and medium-rare on the inside, juicy, rich, and full of the powerful and satisfying flavor of real dry-aged beef… For the first time since the start of my five-prong steakhouse project, I knew for certain that I was not operating under the sway of paranoid delusions or psychotic fantasies.”

So it is Jeffrey Steingarten’s fault that on Sunday, my birthday, my husband suggested we try the high-end steakhouse a few miles from our house, Vic Stewart’s. We first checked their website, and sure enough, they offered one dry-aged steak on the menu. We also discovered that the restaurant was housed in an old train depot, and in addition to the main dining rooms, you could dine in a real antique Pullman car attached to the building. Birthday luck held, and there was one private compartment available. What fun!

We ordered one dry-aged bone-in rib-eye and a regular porterhouse for taste comparison. And by golly, that dry-aged steak really was more tender, more flavorful, and, well, more expensive, than any other steak I’ve ever had. Now what am I going to do? How can I ever go back to chewy, flavorless steaks? How will my wallet be able to stand it? Damn you, Jeffrey Steingarten!

It Must've Been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingarten

tags: books book reviews food writing Jeffrey Steingarten