The Butchers Club's Secret Kitchen is proud to introduce dry-aged Galician Blond Beef from Spain to their private dining menu. What exactly is this special beef we're bringing in exclusively and for a limited time? To put it simply: It's meat from a fat old cow and it's said to be the best beef in the world.
The hottest topic in top-notch steak circles right now is beef from old Spanish cows. More specifically a breed of bulls and cows called "Galician Blond" (or Rubia Gallega) that are over eight years old and from Galicia in northwestern Spain. Food writers, celebrities and beef-lovers are all falling off of the leather-clad seats of the finest restaurants in London and New York, as they devour what is being crowned the best tasting steak in the world.
So what is it that makes an old cow from the lush hills of Northwestern Spain so delicious?
These particular breeds are left to graze for up to 15 years longer than your normal beasts, which are being raised specifically for steakhouses and butchers alike. During this time the marbling matures, ultimately giving the beef a distinctly deep flavour.
“The cows get old and fat just as we get old and fat,” explains Nemanja Borjanovic, a London restauranteur and owner of Txogitxu, the company he imports the beef from (and The Butchers Club's very own old Spanish cow meat supplier) to The Guardian in November last year.
The Butchers Club’s chefs and butchers are enhancing the flavour even further by dry-ageing whole bone-in loins in a temperature- and humidity- controlled room. The process the Hong Kong-based company has become famous for, dehydrates the meat and gives the fat an essence of blue cheese, nuts and mushrooms as it renders into the steak.
The chefs have also altered their cooking methods for this particular cut. For their traditional steaks, the steak experts have been cooking at a very high temperature for a short time, over an open flame. The Spanishv way for this beef is to cook the it a lot slower on a flat-top grill, so it gets almost a crispiness around the outside while remaining rare in the middle. The steak is then removed from the bone and sliced onto a hot serving plate.
Galician beef is not cheap and is comparable with some of the most expensive rare breeds. We are retailing it on the bone as part of a private dinner menu for a minimum HK$ 10,000, for 8 or more guests. This includes our custom dry-ageing for up to 60 days but excludes the rest of the meal.
“Hong Kong people are accustomed to paying silly money for Wagyu and in my humble opinion that’s just an explosion of fat," states Jonathan Glover, Managing Director of The Butchers Club. "As far as I’m concerned this offers a much more unique experience. Texture-wise it’s not the most tender steak, but the flavour is truly amazing.” It’s had a huge surge in popularity in recent months, partly because of a French movie called "A Steak (R)evolution": A film about a guy’s world-wide quest for the perfect steak -- no prizes for guessing which won his heart!
The Butchers Club's Secret Kitchen dining room is set in the group’s original location: an open kitchen and dry-ageing facility in a warehouse building in Aberdeen. The space can accommodate a minimum of 8 and maximum of 16 guests. For those looking for a private dinner of up to 50 guests, the dinner will be held at our newly refurbished event space in Wong Chuk Hang, also on the south side of Hong Kong Island.
A whole slab of Galician beef (ribeye or strip loin) weighs in at approximately 10kg at a cost of HK$10,000 and can be custom dry aged from 21 – 90 days. The beef is paid for in advance and is used as a deposit to secure the venue for a private dinner. The menu includes a fresh seafood trough, a hot seafood course, your steak and sides, an artisanal cheeseboard plus a dessert for an addition HK$1,000 per person.
Those looking to purchase this special meat from our Online Store to cook at home can enjoy a special offer of HK$1,500 per kg. Contact Mark at mark@thebutchers.club if you need more information before buying.
Contact events@butchersclub.com.hk for more information and for reservations.
For even more information, check out the articles from The Guardian and The Telegraph.
A neat selection of classic-style vegetarian and vegan burgers, all featuring Impossible™ Foods’ patties, are also available.
Launching on 1 April 2021, The Veggie Club is a new and exciting initiative by renowned meat experts The Butchers Club. The famed beef specialists are turning their traditional model on its head in honour of Earth Month, with a compelling animal-free range of delivery-only plant-based burgers.