TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Tempo visited three popular steak restaurants and tried their ultimate steaks to find out superiority and lacks of each restaurant. The three restaurants were Tokyo Skipjack in Jl. Bulungan, Steak Hotel Holycow in Radio Dalam, and Moe’s Place in Kemang. All of them are middle-class steak houses which offer steaks at Rp350,000 to Rp400,000. Despite of being non-fine dining restaurants each of the restaurants has their own uniqueness which are not available in high-class steak houses.
1.Tokyo Skipjack
Jl. Bulungan No. 16, South Jakarta
Beef:
Tokyo Skipjack serve a menu called The King of Porterhouse. The Porterhouse (or T-bone) is the steak made of cow’s short loin. The name “porterhouse”, according to Oxford dictionary, was taken from the name of a place in Manhattan, United States, where an entrepreneur named Martin Morrison likes to serve big-sized T-bone steaks. This big-sized T-bones (around 500 grams) is imported directly from the United States and is served at Tokyo Skipjack.
Grilling:
We ordered a medium well steak, but we were served a seemingly well-done steak. The steak was well cooked up to the middle-most part of the beer, without leaving any pink parts. The texture was so dry that it tasted like a fried beef.
Sauce:
There were seven sauce variants with Mushroom Sauce and Japanese Chimicuri as the specialty. The mushroom sauce was very rich of milk and cheese flavors, with very thick texture and probably the most bright-colored mushroom sauce among any other steak houses. Japanese Chimicuri was made of mixture of Japanese seasonings with Latin’s typical Tabasco. The Chimicuri sauce has dark-brown color and tasted spicy hot. The texture was like dry chili.
Side Dishes:
Vegetables salad of Japanese spinach called Horenzo was served together with olive oil and sesame sprinkles. It was sour and savory.
Capacity: 30 tables
Steak Price: Rp75,000 to Rp250,000 per portion
2.Steak Hotel Holycow
Jl Radio Dalam, No. 15 , South Jakarta
Beef:
We tried the Australian Wagyu from Ranger Valley. The beef has a varying marble level, starting from 5-7 to above 9. The beef was very tender, soft, and the marble ruptured inside the mouth when it was munched.
Grilling:
Our sirloin steak tasted too crunchy and cooked too well. Despite of that, the beef was still had delectable marbles between the dry-grilled fibres. The chef in Holycow succeed in keeping the enjoyable form of the marbles. The marbles were transparent, yellowish in color, tender, and broken apart immediately upon munching.
Sauce:
The mushroom sauce in Holycow had darker color with more liquid texture. The milk and cheese flavors were not too strong, there were tastes of Indonesian spices came out prominently.
Side Dish:
Sauted veggies looked like cassava leaves, which were very crunchy and savory.
Capacity: 80 tables
Steak Price: Rp50,000 to Rp275,000 per portion
3.Moe's Place
The Groove Kemang
Jl. Benda No. 1, South Jakarta
Beef:
We ordered the 300-gram sirloin beef originated from John Dee husbandry, Australia. Since the beef was not of Wagyu type, there was not too much marbles on the steak. The beef tasted rather sour.
Grilling:
From its appearance, the steak should have the right level of cooking according to European or American standard. The beef appeared to have pink parts and grayish marbles. The texture, however, was not as good as it appearance since it was difficult to be chewed. Some parts of the beef were even hard to swallow.
Sauce:
Mushroom sauce in Moe’s Place had red-brownish color. At a glance, you would expect execessive salty flavor and no savory taste. Even though the sauce looked red, it was not spicy.
Side Dishes:
Moe’s Place offered conventional side dish, which were lettuce and French fries with black pepper sprinkles. The fries were crunchy and delicious.
Capacity: 80 tables
Steak Price: Rp100,000 to Rp300,000 per portion
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