- 1 week ago
Chef Michael Vignola of The Eighty Six in NYC shares what it takes to make their $38 cheesesteak. Using slow-roasted Australian Wagyu, house-made Alpine cheese sauce, caramelized onions, and freshly baked bread, Vignola spends three days transforming a classic Philly cheesesteak into his luxurious homage.
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00:06Hi, I'm Michael Vignola, chef partner here at The 86, an intimate New York City West Village
00:12Steakhouse. Today we are talking about the perfect Philly cheesesteak. This cheesesteak is the homage
00:22to the original, doing our rift on it, you know, taking that classic, making it approachable yet
00:27advanced Australian Wagyu ribeye, three alpine cheeses, then you have a B&G pepper relish,
00:34a creamy caramelized onion spread, can't forget our house-baked sesame bread with a little bit
00:38of malt and salt. It's going to hit all those classic notes and just be elevated so much further.
00:44The beef is a three-day process. Let me show you how it starts. So we're going down to the
00:49126-year-old
00:51walk-in box. So what we have here is a seven-bone 12x12 standing rib roast. This is a Westholm
01:00Australian Wagyu ribeye. Start with great products and just honor them.
01:07First thing we do, we're going to score it lightly. When I say score, I'm just dragging the blade of
01:11the
01:11knife, creating small channels for the fat to render and continually baste the meat as we slow roast it.
01:19Kosher salt, one of my favorite ingredients. Salt is the magnifying glass of flavor.
01:25Everybody tends to under-season. They also go too close to it. You just season this. When you're
01:30seasoning up high like a shotgun so it spreads out, you want it to go and cascade down slowly. Next
01:38up,
01:39coarsely ground Madagascar black pepper. When I say coarsely ground, we grind it in a grain mill so
01:45that we can control the crunch and the diameter of the peppercorn. We're going to rub all of this in
01:51there. You can feel the fat starting to render on this beautiful Australian Wagyu as it comes up to
01:57temp a little bit under the heat of my hands, sucking up that salt, grabbing onto that pepper.
02:04Mustard is going to be our aggregate. It's going to help encase this whole thing.
02:07It's got a little bit of tannic properties that are going to cut through the fibers of the meat.
02:11It's going to give it a little bit more dexterity, tensillary strength, and a little bit help with
02:15the chew of the final product. The Philly cheesesteak is really near and dear to my heart. In the summer
02:20of 97, my father, Ronald, was called for a lung transplant down at Temple University Hospital.
02:26In front of Temple University Hospital, there was this one place called Fat Albert's where this guy would
02:30park out front that I would watch him meticulously make his Philly cheesesteaks. I needed his cheesesteak
02:36and I needed his hospitality more than I knew. And for that, this cheesesteak is born from it.
02:42And it's really important to me to honor that memory. One of my father and two of that man.
02:48After this is on there, we have some beautiful flowering thyme just lightly picked and chopped.
02:55Again, like a shotgun. Spreads out. Make it rain. Rosemary. Little Christmassy vibes,
03:03classic rose flavors. Pairs well with beautiful pieces of beef. It's not going to burn because
03:07it's protected by the mustard and it's all just going to add to the crust and the ultimate finished
03:13product of our debris. We're going to do the same thing on the underside just without the herbs.
03:18Why Wagyu, right? I like Australian Wagyu as opposed to Japanese Wagyu for this product.
03:23Japanese Wagyu is like eating butter, foie gras. Australian Wagyu marries the best of like American
03:29prime genetics. Steer, chew, that great unctuousness with Japanese genetics of fat, beautiful, rich
03:35marbleization. Salting and marinating this meat also does a few things. Pulling out some of that extra
03:40water weight, intensifying the marbleization. So it's leaving behind the fat, right? That fat,
03:47as it cooks and slowly renders, is going to give you that really delicious, umami-rich,
03:53unctuous bite in this cheesesteak. Don't forget to rub it in. You know, it's like when the Yanks beat
03:59the Mets. You got to rub it in. That's for you. Now that we have this marinated seasoned, our herbs,
04:04our salt, our pepper, our mustard, we're going to let it dry and marinate for a day. Put it in
04:08the oven,
04:09roast it till it's perfect. Let it rest in the walk-in cold so it gets all that juice back
04:15into it.
04:15And then we're going to slice it nice and chilled. Let's go. Here she is three days later. You can
04:20see
04:20that crust. This is it after it's been rested, roasted, marinated, and cooked. We're almost there.
04:27You can see that bark that I developed, right? That crust. It's all over the back here. Spin this bad
04:34boy around. You can see it's ready to roll. You can see it shrunk down inside. You can see the
04:41bones now.
04:41So as that fat rendered and basted this meat, it just shrank down slowly. Remember, we're going to
04:48use everything here, including this beautiful crust. But I don't want to lose any of this beautiful fat
04:55crust, intramuscular beef that we talked about. Just slowly going against these bones, freeing them up
05:03one at a time, making sure to preserve that beautiful rested meat and every piece of it.
05:11So now the bones, the ribs are off. Then you have this tranche of ribeye. Next up, we're going to
05:18take
05:18it. We're going to square it up and get it ready for our slicer. You ask, why Wagyu? You can
05:23tell,
05:24just look at my board, this beautiful fat that has been rendered. That fat is really going to melt
05:31in your mouth. It's not going to be left on the griddle like at, you know, those other places,
05:35you know, south of here. We're going to cut it into half to make it more manageable on our slicer.
05:38But just look at this beautiful cook on this. Perfectly rosé, beautiful intramuscular fat. You can see
05:46the veining of that for the Australian Wagyu. Oh, it's time to slice it paper thin. I'm rotating
05:53through so that everybody gets a piece of the same area in each bite, ultimately eating the entire
06:00ribeye. So you get a piece of that cap, a little bit of the eye, and some of that beautiful
06:04unctuous fat.
06:05We will continue this until we build our piles. Our Philly cheesesteaks are six ounces of thinly sliced
06:13Australian Wagyu and about an ounce, ounce and a half of our debris. We're going to take these and
06:19let them chill while we work on our debris next.
06:25What is debris and why do we do it? I call it debris because it's all this leftover bitter ends
06:30and all the unctuous bits and parts, the nasty bits that aren't quite beautiful and pristine.
06:35The traditional Philly cheesesteak is done on a flat top. It's kind of griddled and almost chopped
06:39cheese-ish like. So you got a little bit of Maillard. Maillard is the caramelization of the
06:45natural sugars in the meat. That gives you that great steak flavor, that little bit of that griddly
06:51taste, that sear is what you crave to make our version of that. We are going to take all this
06:58Maillard,
06:59all this beautiful fat and make our version of debris. First thing we're going to start with,
07:05this beautiful rib cap. My favorite. Easiest way to do this, straight down, cut that bone off. Once
07:13you have them all broken down, here's where the work begins. What we're going to do is start to clean
07:18all of this beautiful meat off. No waste. Every little bit is going somewhere. Even these bones
07:26will go to my beverage director Lucas's dog, Xena. Yes, the warrior princess. All of these bones even get
07:33used. We're going to save them, roast them, and add them to our mushroom au jus. All these beautiful
07:38bits and pieces cooked down and chopped up and whipped with their own fats. Think of it as a spreadable
07:45beef pate. Crust, fat, Wagyu, mustard, all the herbs, the salt, the pepper, goes into the RoboCoup or a food
07:52processor. Pulse this. You can see this beautiful fatty chopped beef. After you have this beautiful
08:03Wagyu Riette, I put it in a pot and then I, you know, yada, yada, yada, do a bunch of
08:07stuff or witchcraft
08:08as my daughter Mia says, and it turns into this amazing debris. I'd love to show you more, but a
08:14girl needs her secrets. What it really adds is the secret sauce of it all. That hidden surprise that you
08:21just can't quite put your finger on. It gives you that mouth-watering, lip-smacking, secret sauce
08:28deliciousness. This is one of the aspects that I think sets us apart from their traditional
08:33Philly cheesesteak while still honoring the flavor profile that is achieved down south. Now, how do we
08:39reheat this slowly, cook it, but not overcook it? All right, first thing we're going to do, take about an
08:45ounce of debris. Six ounces of thinly sliced meat. We then take a Ziploc bag, open up one per order,
08:52take our
08:53thinly sliced meat in our debris, and we are going to recirculate or sous-vide cook this gently. So what
09:00sous-vide does for us is allow us to control the cooking temperature and time. It's gently heating
09:08proteins in a water bath or a controlled environment, right? So think of it as a jacuzzi, if you will,
09:14set
09:14at a perfect temperature where proteins cook at certain specific temperatures. It's a little bit of
09:20science and takes away the guesswork because again, the key to greatness is consistency. So our meat's
09:25slowly hanging out in the jacuzzi. Let's talk whiz, cheese spread, whatever you want to call it.
09:32Provolone, cheddar, American cheese whiz, they all have one thing in common, whether it's our Alpine
09:36blend or not. It's an aggregate, kind of blankets the whole beef and cloaks it, keeps it moist, rich,
09:42unctuous, juicy, delicious. We make our version of whiz, if you will, with three Alpine cheeses. So harder,
09:50funkier, earthy cheeses. We start with Comte. Three-year-old Comte from France, delicious,
09:57funky, semi-soft, kind of creamy Alpine cheese. Next up is Hornbacher. Hornbacher from upstate New York
10:05is a local cheese to us, brought in by Murray's. Again, hard, semi-soft cheese. And the third one,
10:11nah, I'm not going to tell anybody who it is. We take these cheeses, we melt them down.
10:15We slowly incorporate them until we get this beautiful, gloppy, natural cheese whiz, if you
10:22will. One of the other hallmarks of a great Philly cheesesteak is onions. Here at the 86,
10:28we start with Vidalia onions slowly cooked down in a little bit of white wine, some spices,
10:34some bay laurels, some thyme. And we just really keep them slow and low cooking down
10:39here on the flat top until they turn into this beautiful caramelized oniony, not jam, but just
10:48component. It's going to add a little bit of bite, that rich griddle texture to the final product.
10:54One more hallmark we're going to talk about is the bread. Could you forget the bread? We baked this
11:00bread in house. These were baked very early this morning. They're super soft. They are delicious.
11:05We're going to cut it in half. And by half, it's a little bit higher towards the top than it
11:11is the
11:12bottom. I want that bottom to really hold it and build that barrier. That's also why we toast it.
11:18Nobody wants soggy, wet bread, except for the birds. Small amount of salted melted butter. And I just kind
11:26of mop it in there, right? This is going to help an even browning or maillard. Make sure you do
11:31both
11:32sides, right? Nobody wants to go around bottomless. We're not Donald Duck, for Christ sakes. Now we're
11:37going to toast this on our plancha now. It's just a low temp kind of griddle. Provides a nice even,
11:44beautiful toast. You notice that I'm pressing down on it. I want to make sure I get a nice even
11:49brown,
11:50which is important. You don't want it to be all loose and like mushy, because you want that bite.
11:56The moment we've all been waiting for. Now we build the 86 cheese steak. Step one,
12:02we're going to take our beef out of the bath. Next up, we're going to add a little bit of
12:06our au jus,
12:07made from the bones of our wagyu. Some of our caramelized white wine onions. Feel the acidity
12:13from the white wine. Helps cut through the unctuousness of the meat. Just want to separate
12:17the layers a little bit and make sure we're getting all of those flavors mixed in. This is essentially what
12:23you'd be doing on the griddle when you're chopping it up and getting that Maillard. Next, our bread.
12:28It's beautifully toasted. Our caramelized onion and black pepper spread. This is going to add a
12:32little bit of richness to it. It's going to give you a little more depth of flavor. It's going to
12:36keep
12:36that bite nice and wet. After our black pepper onion spread, we put our B&G inspired relish on top.
12:45This is B&G peppers, the hot cherry, Italian cherry peppers, ground down. And then we add a little bit
12:50of
12:51love from the 86 in there. The spiciness kind of cuts through the richness of the Alpine cheese spread.
12:56Gives you that lacto-fermented tang of it all. You have this beautiful bad boy here. Put it right
13:02on there. Then take our beautiful hot whiz. Don't be shy with it. You kind of let it go where
13:07it wants to.
13:09Then our topper. Oh, look at this bad boy. We're going to cut into thirds. Believe it or not,
13:16this is a mid-course here. Nine out of ten times here at the 86. For that reason,
13:21we cut into thirds so you can share with your guests. Put it onto a nice antique silver tray.
13:25And there you have it. The 86 cheesesteak. Hope you've enjoyed it. I have. I always go for the end.
13:31I like the tush of the bread. Look at that bite.
13:41You get the crunch of the bread. You get the unctuousness of the meat. The sweet acidity of the
13:47onions. The spiced pepper pickle of the relish. Then that Alpine cheese that doesn't mask the chew of
13:54the bread. The sesame. The salinity in the meat. You can taste the herbs, the unctuous, the debris.
13:59So you have layers and balance where it pushes and pulls you to places. Sorry, Gino, Pat,
14:04you guys just don't go there. It is my homage to Fat Albert's. It's a little nod to my pops.
14:08It is a little bit of me and my history and my journey through it all in this sandwich.
14:12I wanted to honor the past and elevate it for the future.