Grass fed -- will it take on?

Let me begin by acknowledging that my posts have been less frequent. One every weekday was probably never sustainable and that certainly caught up to me. I do hope to keep this going though and still encourage comments and discussions so this isn't a one-sided conversation. If anyone out there would like to write a guest post, I'm always interested in those too.

As a second prong of disappointment to my self I must admit that I broke my diet recently. I took an out of town guest to Gibson's -- the famous Chicago steakhouse. They certainly only serve corn-fed beef (who knows how it's raised -- they say it's prime, meaning it's a higher grade then about 98% of beef out there, but that doesn't say much for the life it lived). The steak was excellent -- I had the fattiest one on the bone and there was a lot of flavor (and still a lot of fat that hadn't cooked off) when it got to my plate. I wanted to try it -- see how it compared to the grass fed steaks I've been eating. What's interesting, though, is the way the steaks are marketed. They are brought over table side -- you can examine them raw the way you could in a grocery store, see the marbeling and the grain. And while a filet (amongst the leanest possible cuts) is always a popular item at steakhouses, the marbeling is what you're being sold on. And as I've discussed before, marbeling is a product of corn fed cattle. It is actually a concept we've been convinced reflects the quality of a steak to encourage corn feeding cattle.

So how can grass fed beef take on if there's all this emphasis on marbeling? Part of me wonders if it really can. But then again, popularity of lean cuts like the filet are encouraging as they are more comperable to a grass fed steak (though cut to cut grass fed is always going to be leaner). Also encouraging is how it is becoming an option at some high end restaurants. In planning an upcoming trip to Vegas, I discovered some interesting stuff. At Craftsteak (Tom Colicchio's place for your Top Chef fans) you can choose cuts such as the New York Strip in grain (corn) fed or grass fed. Mario Batali's Carnevino offers "source-verified" grass fed beef . Canyon Ranch serves nothing but grass fed beef.

Of course taste is another issue and some think grass fed tastes too much like, well, grass. Interestingly, Gourmet magazine recently discussed on a television show that taste tests show many people prefer grass fed. Batali's Carnevino does not even mention on the menu that the beef is grass fed (though I haven't been there to know whether the server pushes that point). I once blogged about stealth organic and vegan food -- it makes people scared it's weird if you call it vegan, for instance, so that's just left off. This is what happened with organic food at the movement's early stages, according to Samuel Fromartz in Organic, Inc. Chefs wouldn't label things organic because they were concerned people would think it was "health food" and would presume it tasted bad.

I guess we'll see where grass fed goes. It is encouraging to see that it is taking off at the higher end spots. From there we may see trends beginning. The day I see a fast food restaurant advertising about a new grass fed burger will be a very sad and very happy day.