I was thinking about something earlier tonight. Specifically I had one of those conversations I like to have with people that aren’t there. I was explaining why steakhouses make me so mad. The thing with a steakhouse is you’re paying mostly for an experience. Have you seen the newest video trends on TikTok and Facebook Reels where people pay ungodly amounts of money to have some douchebag come to their table and cut their meat for them and sprinkle it with salt?
Even without all that steakhouses make me mad. Cooking a steak is simple. A bunch of idiots enjoy telling you it isn’t. How you’ve got to get the steak to the right temperature before cooking it and make sure to baste it afterwards and to do this and do that. Reverse sear or sous vide it before grilling it. All sorts of different methods that complicate matters. Get a good cut of meat cut to the right thickness, put some seasoning on it, and grill it for a few minutes a side. Simple. Uncomplicated.
Most of cooking is starting with the right ingredients and not messing them up. At a steakhouse you pay a lot of money to get one of the simplest forms of food. Meat cooked over heat. That is all a steak is. It isn’t any fancy hard to make sauce or special technic. It is meat cooked over heat. Just about anyone can make a good steak. Get a good piece of meat, put it over heat, and take it off the heat when it reaches the desired temperature. The most complicated tool one needs is a meat thermometer.
So that’s that. I was explaining all this to the person I imagined myself to be talking to and then I had another thought. How many meals have I eaten in my life that I truly remember? How many have stood out to the degree that I will never forget them? The truly great meals are the ones that enter your thoughts without being prompted. You’re just sitting there going about your day and boom you find yourself thinking about that slice of pizza you had the one time. A meal so good it will never leave your memory.
The first two that come to my mind is a burrito I got in South San Francisco. I think of this as the burrito that permanently ruined burritos for me. I still eat burritos every now and then but nothing has been as good or come close to being as good as the South San Francisco burrito. Then there are the BBQ ribs from Central BBQ in Memphis. Those ribs lived up to the hype and the legend of Memphis BBQ. They were on another level, and I will admit that BBQ as well as pizza confuse me. Both are so simple with so few ingredients and yet there is a vast range in both style and quality.
BBQ and pizza defy the laws of nature. One person in one place combines all the same ingredients, follows all the same steps, and two completely different results are reached. And that variety in style and quality has accounted for many of my most remembered meals, both positive and negative.
David Huzzard Writes 