Big Mis-Steak?

How important is it to have steak on the menu? Steaks are a tough call. Some of the meat is used in a steak & kidney pie and I could grind anything before it gets too old for the pasta, pies and chili, but in order to do that I'd have to also buy some fattier meat cuts to mix in. One of the most ideal cuts of meat from a restaurant is the eye of round. Unlike the rump and top sirloin which are so common in Germany, the muscle is pretty much a uniform diameter across its entire length making portion control a snap. Boneless, it requires much less space in the fridge. It's a very good-looking piece of meat, easy to prepare and present. So of course there's a catch.

The way one cuts up a cow is different in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy and many other countries. All will quarter the animal the same way after slaughter but there are differences even in the sub-primal cuts. Getting the eye of round isn't as easy as it is in the US but it's available. Germans think of it as only a cut to be roasted or braised. The continuing modernisation of meat production is making it hard to obtain non-standard cuts; butchering is done at the slaughterhouse and meat is sent out display-ready in protective atmosphere packaging. I have nothing against modernisation but I don't like the way they cut up cows here. Still, I can get my hands on Rindersemerrolle (even though the Germans themselves can't agree on how to spell it).

Try and find a flank steak bigger than your hand in Germany. That's London Broil out the window. T-bone? Not a chance unless you're a specialty steakhouse buying 100kg each week of that alone. I can't buy huge quantities because I'm not trying to run a steakhouse and doubt that I'd sell more than a dozen or two steaks a week. But I want the eye of round. If it's even €10/kg I'm looking at a portion cost of at least €3 just for the portion of meat on a dish I want to keep under €10 because really, I don't want anything to hit the €10 mark for at least a few more years. A large steak would run me close to €4.50.

If I had my druthers I'd have a fancy restaurant and be buying the cow parts directly from the farmer who raised it, with pictures of the cow and one of the ear tags as further proof of quality and origin for the guests. But this place isn't going to be anything fancy; it's a sports bar. I have to provide what the guests want and that means offering them good, honest, simple food at a fair price.

Steaks would be served with a pile of fries and a salad OR with some other sort of spud and veg (mash and mushy peas?). Serving them adds another single-use item: steak knives. A dozen of them. It's not the cost but rather the storage space. That and the probability that at some point some idiot will stab himself or someone else accidentally and then sue me for his incompetence in handling basic eating utensils.

On the plus side, I can use the meat for a salad, for quesadillas, and grind up anything reaching its use-by date for other items made with mince. I could also offer steak & eggs on any breakfast special (during the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl, for example) Fajitas? I'd have everything else I need, from peppers and onions to the tortillas... wait a sec. No, I'd need small tortillas for those. And the meat would have to be marinated. And I'd need the fucking sizzle pans and tortilla trays. And how many of these could I sell in a week? Ten? Five? While we could really use good Tex-Mex in this town, this one goes on hold. Maybe run fajitas as a special-of-the-week and see how well they do. If there's room in the kitchen and enough demand then maybe they could go on, but for now: bar food. Sports bar food. Pub grub.

Simple steak with salad and chips/fries? Looks like it.