We went to Officina for their 1pm seating. For 50 Euro you get a lot of meat and all you can drink nice house wine. Generally speaking the meat was very good - tender, good beefy flavor and a fun overall experience. The meat was delicious but not as fatty or marbled as some of the similar cuts we’d have in the US.
The most interesting thing is that they don’t salt their meat before grilling. It seems like this is a common theme for Italian cooking. Although at another place we went to the Fiortine steak was definitely salted. I think had they salted the steak it would have made the beef more flavorful rather than us dipping our steak into their rosemary salt after the cooking process.
Dario comes into the kitchen around 2/3 of the way through lunch blasting a horn to take pictures with everybody. He was on premises butchering and cutting up steaks while we were there. Seemed like a very nice and happy guy but I heard he doesn’t speak English very well.
Every time one of the steaks was ready to be cut one of the young guys working there picked up two steaks, hoisted them in the air and screamed at the top of their lungs. Didn’t understand much but he was yelling out the type of meat we were about to eat. Dario running around the place blowing on this very loud bike horn type of thing was weird.
Maybe gimmicky isn’t the right word but they certainly put on a show for the tourists. That being said I’m happy we went and would say its a fun experience.
His meat is grass-fed whereas most of the regular beef in the US is grain/corn fed which gives stronger marbling but much less beef flavor. Most US beef is meat for people who don’t like real meat flavor but just look for butter like flavor
There was a marked difference in the meat. And I think you explained very well the difference. The meat at Dario Cecchini tasted like pure beef maybe not as tender or buttery as you’d get in the US.
There was one guy manning the grill and picking up every piece of meat with gloves. Touching every piece of meat - an old school pit master. No utensils except to flip burgers. Great stuff.
