You’ll know it’s a Vetri restaurant immediately from the museum-quality Berkel slicer on a pedestal near the open kitchen where longtime Osteria veteran, chef Jesse Grossman cranks the flywheel to shear aged prosciutto and mortadella to be draped with creamy ricotta over fresh focaccia. It could be mistaken for a banquet hall if not for the Picasso and Miro on loan from Vetri’s partners hanging on the walls. There’s hardly even a sign outside its front door at the back of its strip mall parking lot, where the former Tredici has been transformed into an open 130-seater with tall ceilings (and predictable noise). The element of surprise is the understated simplicity of Fiore Rosso. But stylistically, these two restaurants - one a study in polished minimalism, the other an irrepressible exercise in experimentation and showmanship - could not be more different. Both places have been packed with an eager audience. It’s all part of their efforts to redefine the modern steakhouse experience, along with the creative use of less-expensive cuts (like zabuton or rib lifter) and broader menus to offer more balanced meals seasonal vegetables and options that hold more intrigue than the typical wedge salad and baked potato. Check averages at both ultimately range from $110 to $120 per person. The focus on large format cuts, however, is meant to encourage sharing, ultimately serving smaller portions of better meat per person than the individual steaks most American diners are accustomed to. porterhouse intended for four at Fiore Rosso, and far more than that for some of the chops on display in the dry-aging cases at Bardea Steak. Not surprisingly, the price tags at both restaurants might make you gasp at hitting - $168 for the 40 oz. Their sprawling “meat kingdom” offers no fewer than five different breeds of steer, as well as dishes with elk, ostrich, and kangaroo that frequently arrives with pyrotechnical fanfare - billowing smoke, tubes of bubbling lychee cream - that assure tableside drama. Likewise, the already ambitious team behind Bardea Food & Drink in Wilmington was “too far along to turn back” on the construction of Bardea Steak, says Scott Stein, whose partner, chef Antimo DiMeo, had plunged deep into researching beef and cutting edge techniques to intensify flavors. He and partner Jeff Benjamin had an irresistible real estate opportunity for their first project on the Main Line, and they’ve delivered the bistecca luxury of an Italian grill at Fiore Rosso in Bryn Mawr. Most conservative restaurateurs, I imagine, faced with wholesale price hikes of up to 40% for beef over pre-pandemic costs, are not likely saying to themselves “Let’s open a steak restaurant!”īut conventional wisdom has rarely been a guiding force for chef Marc Vetri.
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