Ever had one of those kind of days where things just ‘work’? I have…for five days in a row.
About midway through this freakish week, I found myself once again at the Italian Kitchen at 1037 Alberni Street in downtown Vancouver. Here’s the lay up: I had just come off a high from winning a huge piece of business for my firm which was about eighteen months in the making and involved Motley Crue, Winnipeg, hard work, and jube jubes. So, what better way to celebrate that finally getting into that dry aged steak (he thought)?
I went on an on about the Italian Kitchen in Vancouver earlier this year so feel free to pour over whatever I had to say (I can’t even remember anymore). What I do know, however, is that once I walked in, sat down (as my guest was running tardy-ish), met my server-to-be and chatted for a bit, I soon remembered why this place has gone off like the ladies used to do at Wham! concerts back in ‘87. Who’s Wham! and what does that mean? Who cares. Service? Italian Kitchen? Dialed!
Short story, short, the point of this entire blurb was not that we spent 2.5 hours there, or that the dessert came with some sort of caramelized sugar deal that looked strangely similar to something I made in ’shop’ class back in grade 8 when we were playing with plastics. Remember ’shop’ class? So cool. Anyway…getting to the point…going above and beyond to make the customer happy is what makes customers happy customers (thanks Bishop’s, Flying Tiger, Incendio, hapa izakaya, and countless others I’ve talked about on timinganddelivery). So, taking a page from these fine people, you might have already guessed that this is exactly what happened at the Italian Kitchen in Vancouver. Check.
The only reason I say this with such vigour is that our server, once faced with the task of figuring out if they in fact had the dry aged steak that I requested (which is not on the lunch menu) and on her second day on the job…pulled it all together without missing a beat. It was actually a lot of fun to watch her work and interact with those around us. Honestly, she had some sort of Yoda like thing going on. Not once did we wonder where things were, or want more/less attention.
The dry aged steak (which differs from ‘wet aged’ steak) is essentially aged for 40 days before being cooked (I believe it arrives at 21 days). I had it medium rare and, being a card carrying carnivore seeing a few steaks in my day, I am here to tell you that…it’s awesome! The texture is much more chewy (if I can say that), with a slightly different flavour and marbling (i.e., less fat).
What a great experience…and the food was good too!
ju jube,
darren
Good Layout and design. I like your blog. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. .
Jason Rakowski
she sounds hot.
go dry aging!