LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
The ordinary becomes extraordinary at Corbett's
Who's up for a steak dinner? A juicy, sizzling chunk of cow flesh, pink and rare, with all the trimmings?
The "steak" part of this equation is fairly easy to fill. Start talking about "all the trimmings," though, and things get complicated. Head for an executive-style steak house, and you can get a slab of cow on your plate with no muss or fuss. Choose your own sides.
Want the chef to choose your sides? At many of the city's finest eateries, your entree comes nestled on a bed of something delicious, garnished with more goodies and sauced with still more intriguing delights.
Sure, it takes some skill to grill a steak to perfection, but this is essentially a procedure that any good short-order cook can master. But placing a steak in a memorable environment that reflects the restaurant's style and nature? That's where the chef's skills start to show.
Here, let me show you what I mean.
Order the dry-aged Harvest steak at Harvest in NuLu ($29 or $44, depending on size) and you'll get your beef, with Argentine parsley-and-garlic sauce and a classy purple sweet-sour sauce with a name, "gastrique," that I for one find just faintly disturbing.
Or how about the $28 Teres Major steak at MilkWood, where your slab of meat gets an aromatic Asian twist on the South American chimichurri, finished with ... what-the-hell-is tonkatsu, anyway? Okay, it's Japanese barbecue sauce.
Or, if for some silly reason, you ever decide to get a steak at Seviche, local temple to sustainable seafood and fish, Chef Anthony Lamas will dress your $35 prime beef Filete with smoked poblano peppers, Point Reyes blue cheese, demiglace and new red potato mash.
And then there's this: "Creekstone Filet with roasted bone marrow, blue cheese pommes Dauphine, asparagus, brown butter-bacon jus." That's the $48 steak option at Corbett's: An American Place. Sounds good. Is good. Goes great with red wine!
But wait just a minute! Where is the chimichurri? Corbett's got no ethnic fusion. What we have here is a very fine piece of beef, grown at a regional farm (although it's shipped to Kansas for grain-finishing, if that's an issue for you). It's presented in fancy style on fine china and damask tablecloths. But hey! It's a steak, potatoes and a veggie.
And this, my friends, is the hidden secret of Corbett's. Chef Dean Corbett, much-admired patriarch of the local dining scene, has won a devoted following at Equus & Jack's and Corbett's, never chasing trends but sticking to the fundamentals, presented with high style. Often traditional, always classy, never stuffy: This is Corbett's recipe for lasting success. ...
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/the-o ... t-corbetts
And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/ordinary-be ... %E2%80%99s
Corbett's: An American Place
5050 Norton Healthcare Blvd.
327-5058
http://corbettsrestaurant.com
https://facebook.com/CorbettsRestaurant
Robin Garr's rating: 97 points
