Meritage

I was craving a steak and a glass of good wine last night, but wanted something close by, so that eliminated the usual suspects of steak houses. Hubby and I decided to go to Le Buchon for steak and frites. Parked the car got to the door and realized that they were closed, as was Scylla. So we walked over to Meritage. The good news is that they were open, and it was 25% off bottles of wine day.
The bad news was some of the food.
We started with a bottle of Gruet Brut Rose. Delicious and paired well with the starters.
We started with lobster fritters and crab cake. The crab cake was over seasoned with citrus and served at room temperature, and the lobster fritters were also a bit cold, but I enjoyed the taste, the texture was a bit chewy for me, I just thought they were going to be crispier. Next we had the house salad which was good, but for $8 I'd probably skip it next time.

We then ordered bottle of 2003 Edna Valley Syrah. We choose this as they only have USA wines. It was a nice bottle.

The entree was boston cut strip, with swiss chard, and blue cheese gratinee. The sides were fantastic as was the really rich beef sauce that was served with the steak. The steak was so bad, that I had the waitress come over. We ordered medium, as I wanted mine pink, it came out medium rare, which was fine with me, as that is usually the case. It was definitely purple in the center, but like I said that was ok with me. My piece of meat was so tough, I couldn't cut it with my steak knife. Chewing it was ridiculous, and I sawed through a lot of grissle. It appeared that they seared the steak and then baked it as there were grill marks, but no taste of the grill. The flavor was just awful, no crisp edges where the fat was, and absolutely no seasoning including salt or pepper. The waitress actually had the nerve to say to me that I might have cut my steak wrong!!! Are you kidding me? Whether I cut it on the grain or against the grain, seriously, you just told your customer that they cut a strip steak wrong??? I know this is isn't the case as my husband had the same thing and his was tender, and he ate most of his even though his was undercooked too. Hey, sometimes you just get a bad piece of meat, and they should have just acknowledge it and offered me a new one. But, at that point, I just let it go, and in fairness they did give us a 25% discount on the entire check.

We also had my new favorite dessert in the city.
Caramelized bananas & hazelnuts in puff pastry w/
banana caramel ice cream. This was so good, it was swimming in carmel in the puff pastry bowl, hubby and I fought over it. I didn't taste the hazelnut at all, but I didn't care.

It's a shame that my entree was bad, I'm not going to write this place off just yet, it's a lovely restuarant.

nicinchic wrote: The waitress actually had the nerve to say to me that I might have cut my steak wrong!!! Are you kidding me? Whether I cut it on the grain or against the grain, seriously, you just told your customer that they cut a strip steak wrong???

How do you cut a strip steak wrong? After all, it is a strip. Wouldn't you have to cut it lengthwise to cut it wrong?

What is a "boston cut" strip, anyhow?

I had never had one before, but it was about two inches high and cut in a square. Looked like a square filet mignon, unfortunately didn't taste or cut like one.