Hard times call for careful choices when a guy’s steak
craving kicks in. That $50 NY strip at Grill 23 may be impossible to sneak onto
your newly throttled expense account, but you needn’t settle for some cheesy
chain serving leathery choice-grade steaks, either. So how do even the most
tight-fisted of Frenchmen eat so damned well? For one, they entrust less-tender
cuts of beef like hanger, flat iron, and flank to gifted chefs. That’s the
angle taken at Ten Tables Cambridge (5 Craigie Circle,
Cambridge, 617.576.5444), the sequel to Jamaica Plain’s tiny but beloved
bistro. Set near Harvard Square, it has twice the original’s seating and all of
its virtues: casually elegant ambiance, caring service, interesting wines, and
artful French-inspired New American cuisine at attractive prices.
One fine example: the all-natural bavette steak ($25) with golden
frites, roasted radicchio, and grape compote. “Bavette” is the
classier-sounding French name for what our butchers call flap steak, the belly
end of the short loin, a humble cut most commonly seen here as steak tips. Like
American tavern cooks, French bistro chefs know that flap responds well to
marinating and high-heat grilling and that it has coarse long fibers that
demand slicing across the grain. Chef David Punch turns flap — sorry, bavette —
into a knockout version of a French workingman’s steak: the marinade piquant
but not overpowering, the beef pleasantly chewy, the compote insinuating a
subtle sweetness.
Also awe-inspiring are the accompanying fries, which exemplify
another effective Ten Tables strategy: buy artisanal, local ingredients (in
this case, organic Skylandia Farm potatoes from Grand Isle, Maine) and let
their flavors speak for themselves. These frites kick the spudly ass of most of
the competition in town. Oven-charred radicchio contributes a faintly bitter,
smoky balance. An entrée this good has a way of puncturing the loud, pricey
charms of the luxury steakhouse. After all, any journeyman who starts with
prime, dry-aged, boutique-ranch sirloin can grill up something impressive. It
takes an alchemist to turn flap into gold.
