Bone Marrow Is the New Black: How Offal Became So Hot

One of the consequences of nose-to-tail cuisine, a movement that embraces a waste-not/want-not approach to the use of animal protein, is the growing prominence of offal, also known as variety meats, on menus. Until recently, animal extremities and innards like brains and hearts were a serious turnoff to most American diners, who’d been spoiled by the ready availability and relative affordability of prime cuts of meat. But the recession caused many consumers to put the brakes on steaks, and it caused many chefs to reconsider ingredients that they’d previously tossed. In 2009, The New York Times proclaimed that butchers were the new rock stars, and a shining luminary in that firmament, Chef Chris Cosentino from San Francisco, deftly demonstrated to a rapt audience at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago how to deconstruct a pig’s head, using every last bit from ear to snout. Benefiting from their small-is-beautiful aura of specialization, butcher shops have made a comeback, and organ meats have put in an appearance on menus around the country.

• Beef tongue, prized in many ethnic cuisines but shunned by mainstream diners, has been turning up all over. Cleveland’s hip steakhouse Urban Farmer puts it on the house-made charcuterie board, while New York City’s North End Grill pickles it. The Gorbals in Brooklyn serves up Beef Tongue with Romesco and Lemon Croutons, and Mettle in Austin offers an unexpected Beef Tongue Banh Mi with pickled vegetables. What’s more, tongue has reportedly become the rage in Japan, where hundreds of restaurants are promoting it as a fashionable new cut of beef. Meanwhile back in Seattle, Red Cow changes things up with Lamb Tongue with Potato and Frisée in champagne vinaigrette.
• Trendy and ubiquitous, bone marrow is the new black. American Cut Steakhouse in New York City lists it as a steak topping and also menus a Hot Bone Marrow Salad topped with Burgundy escargot and short rib. Le Pigeon in Portland, OR, offers Squid and Escargot as a starter and serves it with bone marrow, garlic and parsley in a red-wine sauce. Last November Smith and Wollensky rolled out Bone Marrow Butter-Crusted Ribeye finished with Madeira demi-glace and garnished with cipollini onions. Roasted Bone Marrow with chanterelles and pink peppercorn has turned up at State Bird Provisions in San Francisco, while The Macintosh in Charleston, SC, features a signature Bone Marrow Bread Pudding (pictured) as a side dish. In line with its positioning as a Southern Table and Bar, Yardbird, operating in Miami and Las Vegas, offers a countrified Smoked & Roasted Bone Marrow with onion jam.
• And there’s more. At his new Cockscomb in San Francisco, Chris Cosentino uses beef suet to make crust for his meat pies, and Chicago’s Bang Bang Pie Shop has made a selling point of the lard used in its pastry crusts. Los-Angeles based Top Round, a beef-sandwich specialist, touts its use of beef tallow as a frying agent for its hand-cut French fries; across town, L’Assiette Steak Frites also offers beef-tallow fries to accompany steaks. Wildcraft in Culver City, CA, gets rave reviews for Tendine, beef tendon chips with smoked paprika, citrus and oregano, while Two Boroughs Larder in Charleston, SC, scores a double header with Beef Belly Tartare and Fried Veal Sweetbreads.

While most of the offal action has been driven by independent restaurants, some chains are also experimenting with nontraditional meats. Cosi, the fast-casual premium-sandwich specialist, has introduced a Pork Belly Banh Mi in a special Asian ginger sauce with jalapenos, carrots, cabbage and daikon. Eureka Restaurants, which are rewriting the casual-dining playbook with fresh, handmade foods, boasts a Bone Marrow Burger topped with bone marrow-porcini mushroom butter and mustard aioli.

Last February, Bon Appetit ran a story on Why Chefs Are (Finally) Cooking with Blood, which examined the myriad uses of what was dubbed “the final frontier of all things offal.” Chefs around the country are using it as a flavoring agent, thickener and essential ingredient in a wide range of ethnic dishes, like Chef Paul Qui’s Dinuguan, Filipino pork blood stew. Chef Alex Stupak opined that for many chefs it is an ethical imperative to use all parts of a slaughtered animal. Whether consumers are ready to follow them on this walk on the culinary wild side remains to be seen.

Photo by Andrew Stephen Cebulka