Becky M.
Yelp
Buying meat here costs a pretty penny, but its worth it for the special occasions! On my first visit last year, my husband and I were on the hunt for a nice dry aged rib eye. We picked up a 60-80 day bone-in rib eye, and my God, it was so incredibly delicious!!!! We were told to sear it on a hot pan, 3-3-3-3 minutes on each side (total 6 minutes each side).
After trying dry aged beef in several restaurants (and not really understanding why people rave about dry aged, because it all tasted the same), this did it for me. It tasted richer, meatier, and most importantly I could taste the blue cheesy funk. I was in heaven. This did have a hefty price tag though, coming in at about $37/lb for 60-80 days. Over the next few months, we decided we would try dry aged from a few different butchers. Maybe we could find a steak, just as deliciously funky, at a lower price tag.
We checked out 2 grocers: Whole Paycheque & Citarella, as well as Paisano's, and a few other famous bitcher shops. The price point seemed to hover from $23-$28 for 21-28 day aged steak which seemed to be the average age, some a bit longer. These were perfectly nice ribeyes.. but I didn't taste the gaminess. Again, it felt like a nice plain rib eye.. just without the age. Another thing to note, you would think that the longer the age, the strong/better the taste, but not always so! I've had a 45 day, as well as 120 day from EMP. Again, while it tasted nice, with some mild tinges of funk, I didn't find it anywhere as impressive as Dellapietras. Lesson learned for me - I used to think that the longer age automatically means it tastes better, but there are other factors (process? meat quality?) that affect the final product
So while $37/lb is definitely on the higher end, I totally get it. Its pricey (1.5 lbs for bone-in rib eye between 2 people coming in at $60), but totally worth it. Which ever method these guys are using to drying age their meat, they are doing it right. This really set the bar high, and I think it will be hard to find another butcher (or steakhouse) to match this. I still do buy from other places, just to see! But then I'm reminded again about why Dellapietras is so good. On our most recent visit, we went for the dry aged NY strip, which was $42/lb. Yikes... but the butcher didn't steer us wrong. It was a great recommendation, and I'm excited to come back again for the next steak night.