steakFEED

Well that didn’t take until tomorrow at all. Except it’s far from done. I kind of like it, but it’s a little bit to lightweight for a web page about STEAK, right?

So comments are broken, not that anyone commented on anything. And the colors and layout of items on the sidebar can be expected to change.

I’m going to be breaking this website over the next couple days, because I’m sick of the site layout, and I have a new one i like and so I’m going to put it in place, but it won’t be pretty.

So I thought I’d share a pretty Halloween picture for you all.

It’s called FoodCandy Friendster for Foodies - Lance Paul Martin’s Grilled Flat-Iron Steak with Coffee and Black Pepper Marinade (and Ethical Dilemma) in Boston Dreams and Michelin Stars, and that’s got to be almost the longest steak-recipe blog-post title ever.

Sounds delicious. I’m printing it out for home.

We always have coffee and pretty much all these other ingredients on hand. And I love love love the flat-iron, duh. Nice Work Lance Paul Martin!

This comes from a relatively new “foodie” web thing called FoodCandy which I joined sometime after starting SteakFeed. I’ts neat but I rarely have time to look at it. I only found this today because they sent me a reminder that they hadn’t seen me log in in a really long time and so I went to search them for ’steak’.

Note: As it turns out, this post was meant to go up on the future anniversary of our wedding. So, instead of referring to her as “my companion” I will from here on out refer to her as “my fiancee”.

On to the post:

Every year, my fiancee and I spend at least four days vacationing on Oregon’s North Coast. In particular, in a heavenly little town called Manzanita.

As long as we’ve been going there, there hasn’t been a decent place for a steak in town, so we make more than one trip to Cannon Beach for dining. Since this isn’t a web site about seafood dining, I’ll just not even mention the place we dine most, which is called something like “The Manzanita Seafood Market and Chowder House.” (It’s fantastic.)

We certainly haven’t dined everywhere in Cannon Beach, because I hear it’s becoming somewhat of a hotspot for fancy cuisine. But, I can recommend, without reserve, that you try JP’s at Cannon Beach…. Where do I begin?
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Making funny pictures out of other things is the specialty of those crazy web computer guys and gals who spend all their time trying to impress each other at Worth1000

Sometimes they really nail their visual jokes. I wouldn’t recommend looking too hard at any of the submissions to the current contest “Make Food Look Like Other Food”, except for this one, called Meat Pie, which actually looks like it might be a little bit delicious.

So, this one time, my fiancee and I were supposed to meet with a representative of a Very Historical and Famous International Jewelry Icon to pick out a really expensive diamond engagement ring, right?

But on the way to the big city to meet with him, my phone rang. It turned out that there was a freak mishap with the secret underground vault where the Jewelry Icon keeps its more expensive items overnight: they couldn’t open it in the morning. So the Representative, a very very nice man named Jim, was calling to let us know his grave disappointment with the circumstances, and would we accept his apologies for the inconvenience.

So, since we were already halfway there for the meeting, and we wanted to talk with the Representative anyway, we just agreed to meet with him at the Jewelry Icon store and talk. He apologized more, and suggested maybe we’d like to have some nice lunch on his tab to make up for it. We blushed a little bit, and accepted a free lunch at Il Fornaio. Of course, I had to have steak.
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M and S Grill is McCormick and Schmick’s new “casual” dining option. As best I could tell, that means that you can see over the backs of the booths and you can see out the windows. At least that’s the translation between the Minneapolis offerings.

We were there through amazing luck of me having a PO box in M and S Grill’s neighborhood. I got a “Dear Resident” coupon for them announcing they’d just moved into my neighborhood—apparently, their neighborhood is all of downtown Minneapolis. But, I shouldn’t nitpick–the coupon was worth $20 off a meal.

The decor is steakhouse woody, with big velvet drapes. The bar was only about half full, the dining room less so. They’re on steak house row but off the beaten path of the younger afterwork happy hour crowd.

We went with a bottle of wine–it was cheaper that way, we decided ($28). Wine isn’t cheap but it never is in that sort of place.

For appetizers, we had the tempura asparagus. It was good for about 3 spears worth–the breading was too heavy to eat much more than that. The asparagus was amazingly tender, considering that it’s not even remotely asparagus season in MN.

Dinner was, of course, a filet mignon and mashed ($29). I got the big filet, though I would have been full after the little one.

The steak had a nice char–something I probably appreciate more than most. The steak was cooked perfectly medium, a nice change for a thick filet.

The mashed were pretty normal. I made them amazing by stealing bacon bits Kim’s baked potato condiment tray. What doesn’t taste better with bacon on it?

The service was amazing. I’m guessing the wait staff was just trying to stay busy but it was true “plates whisked away as soon as they’re empty” service. I normally hate overly attentive wait staff but these guys were so low key–they just seemed to appear exactly at the right moment and vanish with the blink of an eye.

Kim gave M and S a 7.5. Not sure if she’s eaten less bad steak than me or if being from Iowa gives her a different standard but I’d give them at least an 8.5, maybe a 9 since it was nice without being stuff. We didn’t have beer so I can’t give it perfect marks.
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