Breaking down a whole beef short loin into giant porterhouse steaks

Bistecca alla fiorentina you do me so right

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My ex-wife worked at a boutique financial services company and she had a generous long term incentive. She hated her job and we daydreamed a lot about someday spending that money. Maybe we’d buy some land and build a cabin in the Adirondacks? Maybe we’d travel the world for a year? Starting a hobby farm was my least favorite fantasy, but I cheerfully entertained the chicken and goat talk but pushed back a little on donkeys. 

By far the most common fantasy was the one where we’d open a restaurant. Neither of us had much experience in foodservice, but we both loved posting pictures of food on Instagram. Our restaurant would be an unpretentious yet beautiful and authentic bakery cum luncheonette cum tavern with a midcentury modern yet cozy vibe. 

We’d serve elevated new new American comfort food like beef bourguignon with a seasonal roasted vegetable (probably parsnips). Smoked beef short ribs with apple mac and cheese. Pork osso buco with cacio e pepe risotto. Tandoori chicken sandwiches on house-made ciabatta with arugula, shredded purple cabbage, and a fresh yogurt-based cilantro and mint chutney. We would not be too elevated for french fries. The wine selection would be perfectly curated and exquisitely small. We’d sell rustic sourdough in the morning with housemade wild-foraged raspberry preserves and fried local eggs and cortados with beautiful but never obnoxious latte art.

Of course all the ingredients would be sourced locally. In fact, some would be grown in the restaurant’s kitchen garden. Dandelion and chicory flowers, greens, and roots would be foraged from the abandoned lot next door. That stuff grows like weeds over there. We’d love to start a mill and make bread exclusively with our own house-milled flour, but that will have to wait for year two! 

This fantasy was a major topic of conversation in our marriage. When the market for boutique financial services companies cooled down, however, we started bickering more in the kitchen. When one of us was cutting cucumbers with the mandolin, for example, the other would scrutinize the thickness of the slices and behind a violent wince exclaim, “a little thin for the chili cumin lamb meatballs, don’t you think?”

This was the beginning of the end. We took a trip to Florence that year and I became obsessed with Bistecca alla Fiorentina. The extravagance of this four pound hunk of Tuscan beef enchanted me. In our week-long trip I had it four times, twice by myself. 

Already on thin ice after casting a beefy pall over our Italian vacation, I made things worse by criticizing our restaurant concept. I had a new, better idea: “What goes really well with steak my love? Potatoes? No. Wrong. Cake, of course! Welcome to Steak and Cake: Decidedly Decadent Dining Experience!”

She frowned. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Wait, wait - there will be steak and cake pairings on the menu, sure, but you can go a la carte, too, if you want, but you have to order at least one steak and one cake. No exceptions. Strip streak and lemon raspberry. Tomahawk ribeye and Black Forest (my favorite). Petite filet and creme brulee. Pork chop and flan!”

The divorce was finalized three months later. I was mostly disappointed that she never pushed back on how creme brulee and flan aren’t technically cakes, which I admit is potentially a big problem for the menu.

I haven’t given up on my dream of opening a restaurant. My newest idea is “Gringo Bonampak - Treasures of the Yucatan.” Several years ago we traveled the Yucatan exploring Mayan ruins and cochinita pibil. The murals of Bonampak made a big impression on me, even more so than Bistecca alla Fiorentina, which is why my new restaurant will be an exact replica of rooms one, two, and three from the Bonampak Archaeological site, with the murals painstakingly replicated using historical pigments in consultation with experts from Mexico. 

The dimensions and layout of the rooms will undoubtedly make dinner service complicated, but Eater will probably note in their review that, “the stone walls and complete lack of windows and bathrooms give the place a decidedly ancient and musty vibe, but at least the name acknowledges the cultural appropriation.” Eat your heart out Rick Bayless! Of course we’ll serve only authentic dishes like panuchos de pavo made exclusively with ocellated turkey, native only to the Yucatan.

After you finish your meal you’re required to smoke a crude, hand-rolled cigar made from pre-contact heirloom Mayan tobacco. That or you can opt to play the servers and kitchen staff in the Mayan ballgame, which can last two weeks and the losers are sacrificed to bring rainfall during a drought. Occasionally the winners are sacrificed, too.