Twenty-eight carnivores gathered at Tra Vigne’s Cantinetta, in St. Helena, last night to explore numerous ways to over-eat, consume gross quantities of red meat, raw and cooked, and to share a possibly not-healthy-to-humans, and most certainly a not-healthy-to-cows, experience.
Tra Vigne Executive Chef Nash Cognetti, who created the superb dinner.
The group assembled at 4 pm for the first-ever gathering of the Red Meat Club, an anti-establishment, red-meat-devouring, assembly of like-minded individuals.
We didn’t get up from our chairs until 9 pm; for five continuous hours, we were served different parts of the same 26-month-old steer, which, trust me, would have been happier to be “present in the moment” than be honored as the dinner centerpiece.
The event was hosted by Tra Vigne executive chef Nash Cognetti, and Michael Panza, from Biagio Artisan Meats.
Cost of attending the event was $100 per person, tax, and tip included. Guests could eat their weight in perfectly prepared viandes, all of them emanating from the same steer.
House-made grissini, one of the few things served at dinner that did not come from the evening’s host cow.
Dinner was a delicious, six-course, sit-down affair. The single cow, which provided the dinner for 28 guests, was a pasture-raised steer from Lucky Dog Ranch, in Dixon, CA, about 40 miles east of Napa Valley. Terri Gililland, owner of the ranch, was present for the dinner.
Chef Nash received the entire left side of a steer for our dinner.
“According to scientists at the University of Nebraska, a cow’s left side is the tastier side,” said Andrew Tescher, whose job title is ‘steak wrangler’ at Lucky Dog Ranch. (He’s in charge of sales, as well as butchering.)
“Cows tend to rotate in circles, almost always turning right, which stretches their left flank,” added Tescher, explaining why meat cut from the left side of a cow’s carcass may produce tastier, juicier meat. It gets worked more.
Courses served to the hungry diners, each of whom were asked to bring at least one bottle of wine to complement the boeuf, included:
Head cheese.
As tasty as this course was, a joke naturally surfaced; a guest held out the large platter of sliced meat, offering it to me, asking, “Would you like some head….?”
The next course: Steak tartare, brilliantly prepared with tasty capers.
One guest commented that as delicious as the steak tartare was, “if you put it into a 450 F degree oven for an hour, it would make a killer meat loaf!”
The next course: A rich, flavorful Marrow Bone, cut lengthwise, for easier scooping.
Sorry no photos of the next course: Beef Soup, another one of the evening’s tastier courses, deliciously chunked with threads of brisket.
Next up: A mixed grill of heart, live and kidney
The culinary climax: Bistecca alla Fiorentina, the culmination of our five-hour meal; thick, perfectly grilled, juicy pink slices of porterhouse and bone-in, rib-eye steak.
Our fearless leader, Nash, standing atop the bar, addresses the single community table, explaining the menu.
One guest, to my left, daunted by the many unusual cuts of beef served (liver, kidney, brain…) suggested that the event be renamed for the squeamish, from “Red Meat Club” to something more appropriate:
“I think it should be called ‘The ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Dinner!”