Stefan’s steakhouse

Watching Top Chef season five on tv Stefan Richter was my favourite competitor. I thought he was by far the best (and a bit of an ass, sure) and should’ve easily won the whole thing. Well, he didn’t, but things have obviously been good for him after that. He has opened a catering business and three restaurants after the show, and one of these restaurants he opened in our home town Tampere just a couple of weeks ago.

So, last night my boss took us out for a dinner at Stefan’s Steakhouse. I’ve been wanting to go there since it opened. I was a bit suprised thinking the place would be packed, but it turned out it was a really quiet saturday evening. Probably half of the tables were empty, and it seemed like they tried compensating with waitresses, because there were so many it was ridiculous. There were probably 8 waitresses all in all. We had four or five waitresses working our table, which was a bit annoying. But they were all very nice and casual, as was the whole place.

The interior was quite butch in a way. A lot of dark wood, brick walls and big comfortable chairs. It was warm and inviting and we ended up sitting there for three hours. The menu was nice and a bit different than most restaurants here have. Although we skipped the starters I got a look of some of the dishes and they did look delicious. We did have drinks to begin the dinner with, and the waitress brought  a good amount of raisin and apricot bread and butter to our table. For main course we all decided to go with a steak. I took 150g of beef tenderloin with oven baked vegetables and thyme and bordelaise sauce. You get to choose your side orders and sauce for the steak and we all took something different.

The side orders turned out to be a bit boring, as well as the sauces. Everything came in a different small bowl and I could see it was as frustrating for the waitresses as it was for us (The tables weren’t very big).  The side orders were also quite pricey.  I mean, they were allright, but nothing too special or new. It didn’t matter much because the steak was amazing. The best steak I’ve ever tasted. Absolutely perfectly cooked, tasty, and so soft it just melted in your mouth. Cutting a piece of that steak was almost like cutting soft butter. They have different steaks to choose from, different sizes and meats. You can also get kobe beef for 49,00€ a piece.. If you ever go there, have the steak. It’ll make up for all the bad overcooked stringy pieces of meat you’ve had before.

We had two bottles of wine with the steaks, Soleus by Montgras Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 Cental Valley and Punto Final Malbec Clasico 2007, Mendoza. They were both pretty good choices for the steaks. Good wines, not much more to say about them since at this point I was already quite drunk..

I don’t usually eat desserts at restaurants but this time was pressured to do so. I had Grand Marnier espresso cake with chocolate mousse. It had good flavours and the mousse was soft and creamy, but it was a bit too sweet for my taste. A nice thing to have with a coffee though. One of us had the cheesecake (was a fairly small piece) and one had two scoops of sorbet, and they were obviously very tasty.

All in all it was a nice experience and I do recommend this restaurant. The food and the service was good, and the steak was the best I’ve ever had! (And the next time I’ll visit, I’ll take some pictures too)

-Riikka

A family dinner

After getting home from work yesterday I was truly exhausted and only wanted to sleep until monday. But I did take the train and came to visit my family.  I arrived here at midnight and almost immediately went to bed. It was probably a good idea, since today I have been in such a great mood!

Usually when I visit my parents I always like to cook a proper meal for us with my mom. The kitchen is big, so for me it’s a real luxury.  A friend of my mom’s had given her a piece of moose tenderloin, so we decided to prepare it for dinner. I marinated it in a mixture of olive oil, red wine vinegar, herbs, black pepper and salt for about 5 hours. Before cooking it I let it rest in room temperature for about an hour, then quickly tossed it around in a hot pan and then put in the oven. The tenderloin was quite small, so it only took about 15 minutes in the oven until the inside temperature was the desired 56 C degrees. And the meat was just perfect! We also made some oven baked vegetables and a creamy pepper and rosmary sauce to go with it.

With this dinner we had a bottle of red wine; Castillo de Molina Reserva, a nice warm Cabernet Sauvignon wine from Chile. It wasn’t a very aggresive wine, but had just enough of tannin to go well with the meat. This was a really good match actually!

And for dessert I made a mud cake with one of the easiest and best recipes I know. It’s one part dark chocolate, one part butter and one part eggs. (I used 200g of each ingredient for this cake.) You melt the chocolate and butter together, quickly whisk the eggs and then mix them all together. You don’t need anything to sweeten this cake with in my opinion, because the chocolate is enough.  Just pour the mixture into a mold and cook in oven for about 10-15 minutes in 200C. And that’s it! You can eat it right away but I think it’s best when it has rested in the fridge for a day.

And because a chocolate cake wasn’t enough.. I made a mascarpone cream with mango to go with it, which I seasoned with lemon acid powder and orange peel. Yummy!

I think that’s enough food for tonight! Maybe another glass of wine, sauna and a good movie to top this day..

-Riikka