We invite you to vote on your top Iowa restaurant to “get a good steak.” Help decide who makes the cut.

By Jim Duncan

Food is the new politics. Both subjects inspire intense loyalties that are usually only shared by a minority. Just as Occupy Wall Street fanatics can’t understand how anyone could support supply-side economics, deep dish pizza fans can’t understand how others could prefer tavern-style pizza. If anything, food arguments are more splintered than political ones. That’s probably because every human has a unique combination of 2,000 to 8,000 different “taste buds,” each of which can be more or less sensitive from one person’s tongue to another’s. Those different combinations are as distinctive as fingerprints. Yet most people want others to like eating the same things they like to eat.

Troy Trostel’s tenderloin steak at Greenbriar.

At Cityview the First Amendment is our favorite. We love a good argument. We leave the complexity of political polling to giants like Gallup, Rasmussen and Selzer. However, to determine a consensus about more intricate local tastes, we instigated the Ultimate Sandwich Challenge two years ago and followed that up with an Ultimate Pizza Challenge last year. More than 4,000 people voted for the their favorite local sandwich in 2010, and that number more than doubled in deciding 2011’s pizza argument.

Both competitions spread over several weeks of voting as we whittled our fields down to a single popular favorite. In the sandwich challenge, Uncle Wendell’s pulled pork, Taste of Italy’s meat ball, B and B Grocery Meat and Deli’s pork tenderloin and Tasty Taco’s original taco made it to the final four. B and B’s tenderloin won the title in a final over Taste of Italy’s meatball. In the pizza challenge, the final four — Gusto, Bambino’s, Pagliai’s and Angelo’s — survived the challenge of 38 other nominated pizzerias before Gusto edged Pagliai’s in a tight final. This year we’re expanding the challenge beyond the metro, asking you to determine Iowa’s ultimate place for steak.

Prime Instincts

Sean Wilson (Proof) makes once tough shoulder into tender steak.

The aroma of freshly-cut meat searing quickly over an open flame is a primal scent — one that encouraged our human progenitors to straighten their spines, walk on two legs, fashion spears and invent fire. During the second half of the 19th century, beef steak became an international obsession and status food. It transformed the American range into the world’s largest feed lot. Between the Civil War and 1880, Midwest cattle populations increased 30 times over. Because Iowa’s fertile soil grew the most grain, the state’s fatted cows produced the gold standard of this new food economy at a time when food drove all economies.

For a century, the status of Iowa beef extended to New York City steakhouses and beyond. In 1959, Des Moines’ Harry Bookey, then 11, told Russian Premiere Nikita Khrushchev that the U.S.S.R. might have an edge in satellite technology, but our beef was superior. Khrushchev, a staunch Russian chauvinist, conceded the point to the young debater. Coincidentally, Bookey would become both a lawyer and a restaurateur.

Steak and the Iowa Dream

When Khrushchev visited Des Moines, Iowa beef represented the culmination of one of the great romances in the histories of both agriculture and human migration. When Europeans got word about the fertility of Iowa’s black soil, immigrants flocked across oceans, mountains and hostile forests to realize the American dream of owning land from which they could make a good life. By the end of the 19th century, those immigrants made Iowa a rich state built on fields of grain and pastures of plenty. That wealth was sustainable and a source of pride. Fields produced corn in such abundance that farmers fed it to cattle that grazed their youth away in clover. Those corn-finished cows moved short distances to packers and lockers. Our steaks were Iowan from birth to aging rooms and famous for their superior marbling.

By 1970, about 70 percent of Iowa farmers were raising cattle. Iowa led the nation in beef production between World War II and the 1980s, peaking in 1969 at seven million head of cattle. But big changes came by the 1980s. Because fossil fuels were cheap and Iowa farm land was not, it became more economical for packers to ship grain out west and finish cattle there. Former cattle ranches in Iowa could then be plowed over and planted with government-subsidized corn and beans. By the end of the 20th century, most industrial beef came from multiple plants, multiple states and even multiple continents.

Today less than a third of Iowa farmers raise cattle. In 2010 our feedlot population reached a post-World War II low at 1.8 million. Iowa slipped to the No. 7 cattle state, trailing states with large tracts of cheaper land.

Steakhouse aura

Flank steak is now a hot item.

As the center of the beef universe moved west from Iowa, the aura of our steakhouse traditions grew like nostalgia at a class reunion. These old culinary symbols of Iowa represented the proud final link of the great 19th- and 20th-century food chain that stretched from Iowa cornfields and cattle barns to the dining rooms of the best-fed people in world history. Steakhouses became touchstones to a great source of Iowa pride and to a collective longing for halcyon days when corn was used for the sustenance of superior livestock, not to fuel cars, sweeten soft drinks or add cheap filler to practically every processed item one can find in a supermarket.

Steakhouses are also touchstones to the farms and small towns from which many of Des Moines-area families moved. Three-fourths of Iowa counties peaked in population more than 100 years ago while Des Moines grew continuously. Steakhouses used to cover the state. In smaller towns, they often became surrogate country clubs and were the nicest places in entire counties for people to celebrate special occasions of life. Archie’s Waeside in LeMars became a bona fide foodie legend with its dry aging room, James Beard Award winning wine cellar, garden and nearby landing strip for private planes.

In Iowa’s larger towns, steakhouses developed a wood-and-leather aura that declared, “Real men eat here and cut big deals.” Steaks became an American icon for substance. After all, no Madison Avenue advertising agency, nor any presidential candidate, ever asked “Where’s the bran?”

Steakhouse sub genres

The traditional steakhouse carried a rich and masculine image, often with stained glass lamps, linen-covered tables, leather chairs and booths, plus bold art or dead animals on its walls. Trostel’s Greenbriar, 801 Steak and Chop House, Sambetti’s, Big Steer, Maxie’s and Jesse’s Embers have represented that in Des Moines for decades. Urban steakhouses developed new auras. Family-friendly ones, usually Greek-owned, broke through in the early 1960s with inexpensive steaks and a no-frills, cafeteria-style ambiance. Mr. Filet is a longstanding original from this tradition, but chains like Golden Corral, Bonanza and Ryan’s also fit the bill. They found a niche in Iowa at a time when both the restaurant and cattle industries were changing, from independent businesses that competed on quality to corporations driven by economic efficiencies. About that same time the U.S. Department of Agriculture downgraded its own rating system for beef, bestowing an aegis of quality on grades previously deemed unworthy.

Beginning in the 1980s, large restaurant companies took the steakhouse into theme park land. Australian chains like Outback; cowboy chains like Montana Mike’s, Lone Star and Longhorn; nostalgic chains like Texas Roadhouse and Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse; do-it-yourself steakhouses like Rube’s and Iowa Beef; and Japanese teppanyaki like Ohana and Taki burst upon the central Iowa scene. As the head of the trendy snake swallowed its tail, linen tablecloth, prime beef steakhouses, like Fleming’s and AJ’s at Prairie Meadows, made a comeback. At Sbrocco, chef Andrew Meek began featuring grass-finished beef raised on certified organic pasture, as it was 150 years ago in Iowa.

Today steakhouse status is as high as ever. They are even granted special compensation on expense account budgets, because they are a mythological symbol of deal-making. Pharmaceutical salespeople note that even cardiovascular physicians like to be taken to the best steakhouses. New York Times publisher, Arthur Salzburger Jr., once joked during a caucus season that 801 was better known in Manhattan than in Des Moines.

Des Moines’ steak

Steak has become such an Iowa icon that all types of restaurants now serve it here. French cafés like Django, Baru66, Tartine and Bistro Montage have all featured steak frites. Carne asada is served in most Mexican restaurants of Des Moines. Even “Mongolian” barbecues specialize in steak. Italian and Greek restaurants here are much more likely to feature steaks than are restaurants in Italy or Greece. Des Moines’ main stake to steak fame evolved from those. Just about every city restaurant that serves steak serves a version of steak de Burgo. Yet, this dish is virtually unknown outside Iowa, though its distinctive sauce is quite similar to chimichurri sauce of South America, zip sauce of Detroit, and allioli of Catalonia and Valencia.

Adamant arguments ensue about: 1) Who invented steak de Burgo (Johnny Compiano or Vic Talerico); 2) Should steak be made with butter, olive oil or both; and 3) Should it be thickened into a cream sauce or not? One plausible explanation for steak de Burgo’s name is that it evolved cynically out of the Spanish Civil War. During that conflict, Catalonia and Valencia were Republican strongholds, while Burgos was the Nationalists’ base. After the latter prevailed, references to all things from Catalonia and Valencia became taboo in Generalissimo Franco’s dictatorship. Enterprising chefs changed names instead of recipes. The first Des Moines recipes for de Burgo resembled the “allioli” of Catalonia and Valencia. So it would have made sense for a Spanish chef to rename such a preparation “de Burgos” after Franco’s stronghold. And a number of Spaniards immigrated to the same Francis Avenue neighborhood of Des Moines where both Compiano and Talerico lived as young men.

Irony stalks steak de Burgo. The oldest Greek steakhouse in Iowa, Mason City’s Northwestern, has always served a specialty called “Greek-style steak” that resembles the earliest olive oil-and-garlic versions of Des Moines’ steak de Burgo. Yet a Greek steakhouse in West Des Moines, Johnny’s Vets Club, invented the creamy version of steak de Burgo that half of Des Moines loves and another half resents.

Ethanol’s contribution to steakhouse culture

Steak irony in Iowa doesn’t end with de Burgo. One of the latest developments in high-end steak has been fueled by the ethanol craze that has diverted Iowa corn from livestock to gas tanks. Atlantic’s Alan Zellmer is using the leftovers from distiller grain to feed Iowa wagyu — that’s the Japanese breed used to create legendary Kobe beef, famous for its marbling and healthy profile of good cholesterols. Zellmer originally raised all his cattle for the Japanese market, but now it’s all sold domestically. Local chefs like Troy Trostel of Greebriar and Matt Steigerwald from Lincoln Café have been using wagyu from Majinola Meats of Panama, Iowa.

Another new development has long-term potential. Tenderizing technologies now soften tougher cuts of beef, making them suitable for steaks. That’s why you see many new steaks — Denver, Cordelico, Cabrosa — at the supermarket. Many of those cuts used to be only suitable for burger.

In Your Hands

Thus, finding your favorite place for steak is more complicated than ever. There are more kinds of steak — from more parts of the cow — than there used to be. There are also multiple ethnic styles of preparing it, and probably more than a dozen versions of some styles, such as de Burgo. Price matters these days, and some places are exponentially more expensive than others.

So raise a glass of Zinfandel (the all-American wine and steak’s perfect mate) and let the rest of Des Moines know what you think is our Ultimate Place for Steak. We’ll be taking nominations for another week. The earlier you nominate, the more likely your favorite is going to make the top 64. On Sept. 6, we’ll publish the names of the 64 places with the most nominations. Then, you, the reader, will halve that list each week until you choose the final winner. We’ll publish its name in the Oct. 25 issue in an expanded Food Dude section.

Bon appetit. CV