CHENNAI: If the Mad Chef had his way, anyone eating steak would only have it medium rare and possibly reverse seared, with a humble addition of buttered veggies and scalloped potatoes. Lucky for you and me, he does have his way at the city’s brand new steakhouse that promises to satiate all your meat dreams — Goldman’s Steakhouse. While several manifestations of pork and beef are yet to make it to the menu (I have my hopes up for a slow-cooked brisket), you get to devour a bare-bones, the-meat-speaks-for-itself tenderloin steak. While it is sure to be a gastronomic nirvana for you, for S Koushik, it is a dream project come true.
Delectable comfort
“I’ve been wanting to do a steakhouse for a long time. I’ve also known that this market wants steaks in this area of Nungambakkam (Anderson Road) for a long time. That’s where our inspiration came from,” reveals Koushik. A couple of months of work and a brief trial run later, the steakhouse is up and happening, allowing the chef to offer the best steak experience at a reasonable price. Ask him what he defines as the ‘best’ experience and he goes, “Just two words: medium-rare.
For any food to be of good quality, it has to start at the source. In this case, we know the farms (in Mysuru) we are getting the beef from. It is of really good quality that I don’t do much to it. There is a little bit of salt-pepper marination and we do the reverse searing method where we cook it in the oven and then sear it. It is a very simple method but if the meat is not good, it won’t come out good,” he explains. It’s a certain confidence in the meat and the goodness of a medium-rare cook that has him telling customers they don’t have to pay for the steak if they don’t like it this way. So far, no one has been able to avail of this offer.
This confidence translates into the rest of the menu too. Be it in the fiery punch of the tex mex beef that’s served with a rum flambé or the familiar comfort of the beer batter prawn fritters. It was quite a surprise to see pork ribs on the ‘Starters’ side of the menu but the slow-cooked meat bathed in pineapple pork just was all kinds of perfection. My meal could have ended right there if the steak and schnitzel to follow weren’t equally tempting. As much as the beef steak would have you coming back here again and again, the pan-roasted tuna isn’t far behind. You might want to set aside a whole meal for the schnitzel (pork, beef, chicken or tuna). I would do that just for the coleslaw that came along with it. And the whole menu of burgers.
Gilded joys
Owners Manikandan and Dinesh, who hail from a family of goldsmiths, form the Goldman part of the deal as a tribute to their family legacy. But they found their calling in the restaurant business for various reasons. For Manikandan, purchasing this place when The Miner Diner was shutting shop was a means to preserve nostalgia; for this was the place where he had fallen in love with his wife.
Dinesh, who had put his dream on hold and was slogging away in the IT industry, too found a chance to put plans to work by partnering with his brother-in-law. And so we have the steakhouse as it is today — with a mining theme and rustic interiors. Naturally, there is gold on the menu — be it the gold-covered cheesy chicken patties or gold dust-filled mocha latte. There are plans to introduce the gold dessert bar — chocolate mousse bars shaped like a gold ingot and covered in 24-carat gold.
Yet all this had not been easy. For one, the steakhouse itself had not been the partners’ original plan. Soon after purchasing the place, they set up Cafe Dig In with a chef they managed to find. With no experience in the industry and no one to guide them through it, they found it the hard way that the cafe was not working. It was then that they stumbled upon Eatitude – Gourmet Technologists and its founder Koushik. It was during the first meeting did they realise it was the Mad Chef himself they were set to work with. And the rest, as they say, was history and our pleasure.
Chef Koushik promises to keep the menu dynamic. While the staples will always be there to welcome your appetite, you can surely hope to find seasonal favourites, and themed additions, he says. Until then, the medium-rare steak will keep you occupied.