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
For 11,90€ it’s good value for money on the go.
