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Most of us who enjoy steak tartare, preferably with a high pile of hot fries on the side, know it from eating it in a restaurant or a bistro and not from preparing it at home. But the dish is not difficult to make after all, it involves zero cooking. In fact, making a batch doesn’t require much more than a butcher you trust, a very sharp knife, clean hands, and freezingly cold bowls and plates.
Tartare is served “dressed” with any number of possible sauces, which are enlivening and essential, but the dish is obviously all about the meat: you want the best, most vibrantly delicious beef you can find. The cut? A lean one, but the cut is less important than the quality. Riad Nasr, of the restaurant Frenchette, who, during his time as a chef at Balthazar and Minetta Tavern, might well have sold more steak tartare than any other individual in the history of New York City meat eating, makes his from whatever is at hand. “Filet is good,” he told me, �