- 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.
