"Eating the lamb chops at Lazy Bear is a kind of meaty, crispy, fatty divinity. For those who enjoy sinking teeth into lamb — itself a prized protein in the fine dining realm — there might be no better way to enjoy succulent chops than at the two-Michelin-starred Mission District outfit. And you can thank your dad’s bold and brassy grilling for the inspiration. When he put the dish on the menu about a decade ago, chef David Barzelay drew inspiration from his dad’s grilling. In doing so, he offered a counterpoint to the preciousness with which other fine dining restaurants handled meat, pushing the amount of sear and char as far as he could. That first spring in the 19th Street space, Lazy Bear’s team debuted the dish. It was an instant hit: two chops, expertly seared to fine chew and tear. “I have the opinion that most fine dining doesn’t do a la minute cooking,” Barzelay says. “I would say diners weren’t excited about it until they ate it. Now we hear every night that it’s the best lamb they’ve ever had.” The meat comes from a co-op of Northern California farms, with Preferred Meats supplying larger racks of lamb than what’s typical to order, before what Barzelay calls the “mutton stage,” when a lamb’s gamey flavor is more pronounced. Cooking such big hunks of meat allows the dish’s signature flavor to develop on the exterior and char to that quintessential backyard barbecue flavor, without risking overcooking the interior. The goal is a perfect medium-cooked chop with a nice finishing sear from the range. When the racks first arrive at the restaurant, the team pulls off the exterior layer of fat but leaves the smaller fat cap, that layer of meat just outside the eye of the rib. In the restaurant’s current non-communal, staggered seating format (as opposed to the restaurant’s initial dinner party, group format) the lamb racks are then seared in saute pans. This allows the team to press the racks down, quickly searing them until the fat oozes and the lamb browns and crisps without charring. Ten minutes later the fat and exterior are charred, while the inside remains raw. The team cools the meat down, then vacuum-seals it in a marinade of fish sauce, sugar, garlic, and a little mustard, inspired by Pok Pok’s chicken wing marinade. “It adds umami, and sugars caramelize it,” Barzelay says. All this precision allows for a more delicate flavor in the fat and marbling in the meat, he says. After marinating for at least four hours, the chops are sous vide until just under final temperature. The meat comes out of its sous vide bath to rest a few courses, before returning to the grill for that final firing and lacquering with barbecue sauce. But some lucky diners get a Lazy Bear bonus: enter the “dad chop,” a darker, smaller chop that arrives as a little gift part-way through the lamb course. This is no “dainty fine dining sear,” that you would get at other restaurants, as Barzelay puts it. The gifted chop is typically the first and last chop of the rack, which get cooked a bit more since they are on the ends. Those “burnt ends” go back on the grill to char and receive a lacquer on both sides; the inside becomes medium well while the exterior fat gets crispy. He says some 40 percent of guests receive the surprise. Solo diners, enthusiastic guests, those who’ve eaten at the restaurant more than five times — these are just a few of the factors that might prompt Lazy Bear’s kitchen to bestow the hallowed bonus meat. The custom started during the communal dining pre-pandemic days as a way to utilize the exterior chops (interior chops went to guests), which were a bit well-done from all the time spent on the grill. Originally staff ate those chops, but the team soon realized that the meat was rad enough to send out as surprises here and there. “That was our favorite kitchen snack,” Barzelay says. “We threw them back on the grill and let ‘em rip, forget about a perfect medium.” Getting the dish on the menu in the first place, too, came from a brazen attitude in the restaurant. Barzelay was in search of what he calls a “deep char,” barbecue-style. During the pandemic, the kitchen switched to mesquite charcoal from Central California red oak to impart even more of that sensibility to the meat’s finish. Binchotan, for instance, he contends burns too cleanly — nothing like his dad used to make on a Weber. “[Our chops taste like] your dad grilling over way too big a flame in the backyard,” Barzelay says. “Because that’s nostalgic for us. I want to taste the charcoal just a little bit.” There’s nothing he wants to change with the lamb chop, nothing he can’t iterate upon by shaking up the stone fruits each season. The dish has changed over the years — sometimes the barbecue sauce is made with black date and garlic, sometimes smoked cherry and locally foraged conifer pine needles — but the processing of the lamb remains. “We put a ton of technique into our food,” he says, “but I’d say we actively try to be delicious and fun and unpretentious and not precious.” Lazy Bear (3416 19th Street) is temporarily closed for renovations as of August 2024 and returns in September. Reservations are available via Tock." - Paolo Bicchieri
