Medium Rare

Ate at Ted's Montanna Grill this evening with my Bro and Dad and their respective fraus.

I don't eat in a lot of restaurants, so I'm probably easily impressed. But more than the food, it was a very pleasant atmosphere. The music was subdued and the place seems built to minimize the noise that mars most restaurant meals.



When you can actually talk to the people you're with, not shout at them, it's a lot easier to relax and have a good meal. Part of it was it's Monday night, but if Joe's Crab Shack has an opposite, this is it.

I had a bison steak. Almost went for the cheaper bison burger, but I can't quite get my mind around a $12 hamburger. I know, if my predictions about the inflationary effects of the fairy dust based bailouts of everything come to pass, I'll have to get my mind around a $12 hamburger—at the drive through (the 'dollar menu' might have to be the 'sawbuck menu' sooner than you'd believe). So if a $23 steak seems pricy, at least it's a steak.

Eating steak, for me, is as rare as I want the thing cooked when I do. I order medium rare, though when it's on the rare side of that spectrum, I'm a happy camper. I don't go for a cool center, but other than that I'm a bloody-as-hell kind of steak fiend.

And I'm a bison enthusiast. Though I learned from my Wal-Mart ground buffalo experience that it's not always what you'd think. I sent an email to TenderBison, in fact, basically asking How dare you send buffalo to a feed lot and then market it as lean bison? Got a reply, in fact, from the CEO saying basically, You're a purist, good for you. We sell this in America, and it's leaner than 80/20 ground chuck and doesn't taste like game meat.

So I inquired of my server, is the bison range matured? the 8 oz tenderloin fillet was $32, so it's not impossible. Assured that it was, I ordered the cheaper, larger ribeye cut.



I'm not complaining: the steak was on the rare side of medium rare, exactly like I want it. It was tender, it was flavorful, it was delicious. It was indistinguishable from a beef ribeye, though. Well marbled and with a vein of pure fat I cut out. I'd say I'm skeptical about the 'range matured' angle, but I think I'm well past skeptical. The server may be misinformed or may be winging it, but I'm pretty sure that buffalo ate corn, at least in his last days.

Not that the dinner would have been sinless anyway: add a baked potato with butter & sour cream and thoroughly buttered asparagus and even if I didn't eat the meat I'd have choked down more saturated fat than is good for a body.

Good eats, all in all. I guess if I wanted to eat healthy, I'd have ordered the salmon with mercury like my Bro did.