"Meat is my profession," says Markus Greiner, a trained butcher and chef, at the BEEF! CUT workshop at the BEEF! restaurant, which opened in the Europaviertel in summer 2018 and has since enjoyed great popularity among Frankfurt residents and trade fair guests alike. Greiner now presented the concept of the restaurant - a cooperation between the company Marché International and BEEF! magazine - to a small group of journalists, foodies and bloggers in an interesting and tasty workshop. In the process, everyone involved was able to learn a great deal more about the subject of meat, although Greiner was only able to scratch the surface that afternoon: "Meat is a world of its own," he explains, and you can sense the passion with which he burns for this subject.
"We are a pure grill restaurant," says Greiner. "That means everything goes on the grill at our place." Not only the meat, but the vegetables are cooked over the flame. The idea, Greiner said, was to put the grill in the center and build the kitchen around it. "Everything served here should have seen the grill at some point." Three other aspects also played a central role in creating the concept: speed, quality and price. The aim is to offer guests on a tight time budget good food quickly at a reasonable price. This requires not only perfectly coordinated processes in the kitchen, but above all the perfect piece of meat. To find that and its proper preparation, Greiner and his team experimented for about a year. "I don't think I've ever looked at meat so intensively in my life," he reveals to workshop participants.
The choice ultimately fell on Tafelspitz, which, to avoid confusion with the dish of the same name, is called BEEF! Cut here. This is cooked in a low temperature oven for around four hours. The advantage of this method is that, unlike sous-vide, the meat doesn't need to be vacuumed and the meat ends up nice and tender and pink. The downside is that there are no different cooking levels, only medium. However, this is easily made up for by the taste. Not only Markus Greiner was convinced of this concept, but also Jan Spielhagen, editor-in-chief of the magazine BEEF! was so taken with it that he suggested a cooperation to the gastronomy company Marché. And this has now been successfully at home in Frankfurt for a year and a half.
Why this is so, of course, we could see for ourselves at the workshop. The meat from Angus beef, supplied by a farmer from Canada after three weeks of maturation, was grilled to perfection over an open flame after being cooked by Greiner before the eyes of those present. This was accompanied by truffle fries - incredibly delicious - grilled vegetables and Caesar salad, as well as various sauces. Of course, photos had to be taken first (after all, the eye eats with you), before it went to the tasting. The meat was incredibly tender and very delicious - especially in combination with the sauces. As the bloggers and journalists in attendance savoured the meal they had just witnessed being prepared, there was a not-uncomfortable silence in the restaurant, broken only by the occasional "Mmmmmh" and whispered "Is that yummy".
No question, we learned a whole lot about meat as well as about restaurant kitchen workflows that afternoon, and in the process we also got to know a restaurant that we can absolutely recommend to any fan of steak and the like. If you love good meat, you should definitely try the BEEF! CUT for yourself.
BEEF! Grill & Bar
Europa-Allee 14, 60327 Frankfurt am Main
