Ask Mr. Gold: Steak on a Budget at Salt's Cure

By Jonathan Gold Wed., Jun. 8 2011 at 11:00 AM

Anne Fishbein

the invisible restaurant critic

Dear Mr. Gold:
I've had the steak at Jar, done the Campanile Kansas City thing, spent a paycheck at Cut and spent way too much time with Ruth and Morton, so tell me something I don't know: Where can I find a delicious $25 steak in L.A. with a low corkage fee and some killer fries? I won't sneer at a great Caesar or strawberry shortcake to round out this $50 per person (plus corkage) discovery.
--Michael Carey, via Facebook

Dear Mr. Carey:
It's the great conundrum: Steak costs. And if you have ever gone out looking for steakhouse-quality meat to cook at home, you know why. When you find high-prime, well-marbled, naturally raised, dry-aged steaks of the quality you'd find at a decent restaurant, at Huntington Meats, McCall's, Lindy & Grundy or Alexander's Prime Meats, the price nudges $30 a pound. You can tiptoe around the issue with flank steak, skirt steak or flatiron steak -- a decent-tasting cut of meat cut from what would be called the rotator cuff if the subject at hand were a major-league pitcher instead of a cow -- but if you're going to Morton's or Wolfgang's, there are no bargains.

My happiest steak dinners out tend to be at either Cut, where the best wagyu, priced at $20 per ounce, has so much flavor that a two-ounce portion of a split eight-ounce steak hardly feels like a deprivation, or at Jocko's, 200 miles north in Nipomo, where the meat may not be prime but the oak-grilled Spencer steaks are practically a religion.

I was about to mention Taylor's, where not everything is prime, but the culotte steak is: tender, meaty, with that funky-tart tang that only dry-aging can produce. It's a great steak, but at $29.95, perhaps no longer a bargain. The nine-ounce pepper-rubbed natural ribeye at Spice Table falls into your range, and is a total umami bomb. The Venice Room -- you get to grill your own! But if I were hungry for steak at the moment, I'd probably call Salt's Cure and find out what might be on tonight's menu. Almost nobody sources meat better than they do, the preparations are straightforward but superb, and if you buy a bottle of wine from their list, they tend to be pretty cool about corkage.

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Salt's Cure

7494 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA

Category: Restaurant

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We Recommend

S. Britchky

We have very different tastes if you like Taylor's (chewy steaks, great chewy atmosphere) and CUT (greasy wagyu, boresome crowd). But here are two outstanding breakfast steaks that you can get any time of day: (1) The large and supremely tasty marinated skirt steak at Junior's Deli on Westwood. It costs less than $20 with eggs, expertly prepared hash browns, coffee, and outstanding thick-cut cinnamon toast. (The steak always seems to be available, even when it's not on the menu.) Beer and wine, apparently, although in 25 years I've never had anything but coffee and juice. (2) The breakfast filet and eggs (with excellent lyonnaise potatoes and toast) at either Pacific Dining Car location. PDC has a full bar, the 6 oz. filet is top quality, and the steak and eggs is cheap compared to their dinner steaks (cheaper still from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.). Both Junior's and PDC have experienced, professional service.

The next time you wander towards Nipomo, stop short at Hitching Post II in Buellton, where the fine oakwood-grilled steaks (the prime-meat specials are really excellent) include a Midwestern-roadhouse table of sides -- raw-vegetable tray, garlic toast, soup, salad, bay-shrimp cocktail, etc. The 8-oz. filet goes for $36.95, but all those accompaniments defund the pain. Also a full bar, and be sure to have the grilled artichoke appetizer. (I always save the artichoke bottom to have with my steak.)