![]() Maybe something from the leg, like an eye of round, that’s just so dry and desiccated and tough that you’ll actually choke if you don’t lubricate it first. If I were going to pour water on a steak, I’d probably pour water on a really lean, very over-cooked steak. Also a T-bone is a rip-off because you’re paying more for the bone than the tiny sliver of filet. Don’t get them both together, they cook at different rates. It looks like Tim is pouring water on a T-bone steak here, and honestly I’m not mad at that. And I wouldn’t necessarily recommend water as a braising liquid - stock or wine is better. In general, I would always recommend a dry brine over a wet brine, though, because a wet brine is just pumping water into your steak, whereas a dry brine helps meat hold its own flavorful juices. The only time you’re adding water to meat is when you’re brining it or braising it. Nicoletti, who as it turns out is a huge Tim Robinson and ITYSL fan because she is a woman of taste, prefaced her analysis by warning that “I want to go on record first as saying there’s no justification for doing this.” Still, she ended up explaining the science behind sloppy steaks and even offered recommendations for which cuts of meat to slop up at home: I then reached out via email to fourth-generation butcher Cara Nicoletti, the sausage whisperer behind Seemore Meats & Veggies in Brooklyn, to ask what on earth the benefits of a sloppy steak could be. Or maybe it was just sloppy steaks, a nonsense food for the sort of men who blow all their money at Dan Flashes. Maybe a sloppy steak was a symbolic rebirthing of the cow before placing her under the knife, both birth and death by your own hand. A kind of baptism, if you will, which also robs your steak of its classic steakhouse flavor.” Perhaps Platt was right and those pieces of shit were on to something whether they knew it or not. Maybe it could serve as “a purist’s quirky, ritualized attempt to enjoy the cow in its original, pre-salted, pre-seasoned, pre-carcinogenically sizzled form. “It sounds to me like a perfectly good way to ruin a not very good steak, let alone an excellent one.” But then he gave it more thought and analysis than the concept deserved and sent a follow-up email. “What kind of misguided madcap blasphemy is this?!” he answered via email. I asked if there was any possible culinary appeal or advantage to this. I emailed New York restaurant critic Adam Platt to tell him that I was going to Keens, the nicest and most traditional Manhattan steakhouse I could think of (for lack of a Truffoni’s), to dump water all over a steak. ![]() But could the reverse be true? Could the siren call of sloppy steaks turn me into a real piece of fucking shit? I decided there was only one way to find out: I’d make a reservation at the nicest steakhouse in Manhattan and slop some steak myself.īut first I had to talk to some experts. The sketch is about how babies know that people can change just because you were a piece of shit doesn’t mean you have to still be one. Sloppy steaks at Truffoni’s is different, though. ![]() Restaurants are public theaters of socialization, where you perform according to a set list of unspoken mores, and Robinson consistently finds the humor in characters who didn’t read the rule book and can’t figure out what they’re doing wrong. There’s the hot-dog car from season one and the hotdog-choking incident from season two, the stinky plastic meatballs, and something called a “cherry chuck salad.” He often presents us with dudes acting terribly in restaurants, from the starstruck choking man with a wallet chain and the “nuggets of meat” nachosplainer on a bad date in season one to John Early telling the three hilarious waiter brothers to quit it and the hungry professor who wants to eat Robinson’s burger in season two. Robinson has a fixation on douchebags and the meats they eat throughout his work. An original Ezra Koenig song about sloppy steaks plays. The earnest, beleaguered server begs the table, “No sloppy steaks guys, please - I mean it.” But they slop ’em up, pouring glasses of ice water all over their T-bones, and the waiters are helpless to stop them. But he fixates on the steaks, circles back to them, and doubles down: “Big rare cut of meat with water dumped all over it, water splashing around the table.” Finally, we see past-life piece-of-shit Shane, out with his boys ordering sloppy steaks at Truffoni’s. “Slicked-back hair, white bathing suit, sloppy steaks, white couch.” At first, it seems like he’s just listing things that sound funny. “I used to be a piece of shit,” a Tim Robinson character named Shane says in a sketch from I Think You Should Leave’s second season. ![]()
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