Steak - Mark Schatzker [15]
So it doesn’t matter that I never tasted a Palo Duro Feeders steak, because a Palo Duro Feeders steak is fungible. By tasting a USDA-graded corn-fed steak, I already had. Bill O’Brien’s steak is the same as the steak being produced by feedlots all over Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and the rest of the country. They’re fed the same, killed the same, and shipped via the same trucks. Beef is beef is beef. It comes in different grades: Select, Choice, and, the very best, Prime.
My problem, as any number of Texas seventh graders could have told me, is that I wasn’t eating Prime. The steak on my plate wasn’t marbled enough. I now planned on remedying the situation, and turned my rental car onto Interstate 40, heading east for the oldest steak house in America.
When you get to Oklahoma City, look for the bronze statue of a cowboy lassoing a steer, and when you find the emporium selling an impressive variety of cowboy boots, walk across the street. You’ll find yourself standing at the front door of the Cattlemen’s Steakhouse, which has been open for business continuously since the year 1910, when it went by the less cowboy-sounding name of the Cattlemen’s Café. The current owner is a man named Dick Stubbs. He bought the establishment from Gene Wade, who won it in a craps game from Hank Fry in a smoke-filled hotel room in 1945. In a display case at the front of the restaurant sits a collection of old menus that are kept, like precious relics, behind glass. One lists a small filet mignon with a baked potato and small salad for a dollar. Another features a painting of a cowboy sitting on a dusty prairie, eating steak and gazing thoughtfully at a covered wagon, behind which a herd of cattle are grazing. Black-and-white photos hanging on the wall attest to a more authentic time, when people walked into the Cattlemen’s and sat down on stools at a counter, under a tin ceiling, watched over by mounted deer’s heads as they ate their steaks. The interior was updated to tragic effect in the 1970s, by the looks of things, and now it features booth seating, ceiling tiles, and fluorescent lights.
When the waitress asked, “What can I get you?” I answered with two words: Prime steak. Like the Big Texan, the Cattlemen’s Steakhouse dusts its steaks in seasoning before they hit the grill and pours on some “au jus.” But I was there to sample the marbled glory of Prime, not seasoning or concentrated broth, so I asked for the steak dry. Minutes later I was presented with another charred rib eye. I put the first bite in my mouth, and the lubrication theory became more than just a theory. There was a burst of thick, tongue-coating liquid. The grease made for a moist chew, but as chews go, I wouldn’t call it more or less satisfying than the steaks I had eaten at the Big Texan or the El Vaquero. From a flavor point of view, it was almost identical to the steak in Texas. There was a suggestion of beefiness, but it was dwarfed by an arc of bitterness coming off the charred exterior. In a sensory evaluation, I’m not sure I’d have been able to tell the steaks I had consumed on this trip apart. The taste of all the steaks was fungible.
I got in the car, pulled back onto the highway, and drove. Nothing was making sense, marbling least of all. Fat, everyone insists, is flavor. But there was a problem with that idea. I had eaten several slices of fat at the Cattlemen’s, just as I’d done at the Big Texan and the El Vaquero. It was soft, succulent, and buttery, but it wasn’t what you would call flavorful. If anything, the fat tasted milder than the supposedly flavor-challenged muscle next to it. Does marbling really equal flavor?
Despite the assertions of everyone at Texas Tech, however, the science on that subject—like a lot of science—is inconclusive. While a group of studies has indeed found that more marbling equals more deliciousness, a slightly smaller group of studies concludes otherwise. As far back as 1963, some meat scientists found no relationship