Beef reveals its 'Deep Cuts'

The idea is intriguing: Chef Gene Gonzalez breaking the “butcher’s code,” revealing secret beef cuts so savory that the cutters keep the prized bits—usually amounting to less than 1.5 kilos per cow—for themselves.

In an Iron Chef-style event at Café Ysabel, complete with sizzle and red room lighting, an offstage voice, dripping with gravitas, announced: “You’ve been lied to!” as each deep cut was revealed. 

The four-course meal included:

• Bavette: A French chefs’ secret weapon, known as flap steak, best enjoyed with rubs and marinades.
• Ribeye Cap: The “crown jewel” of ribeye, prized for its melt-in-your-mouth richness.
• Delmonico: Chef Gonzalez calls it the “rebel ribeye,” known for its deep, bold flavor, prized by Wall Street types—now available to the Filipino.
• Picanha: The celebrated “Queen of the Grill,” tied to Brazilian and Argentinian beef palettes.
• Flat Iron: Named for its shape, this cut—grilled in butter—is as flavorful as chuck and as tender as tenderloin.
• Hanging Tender: The “hidden gem” of the night, a single piece of which hangs from the cow’s diaphragm; also known as “hanger steak.”

I asked Chef Gene if sharing all this info violates any butcher’s rules—like breaking the magician’s code of silence. “Well, I’ve been eating these cuts for a long time, and wanted to share this. Sometimes we don’t have the resources to afford a prime-rib steak or a tomahawk. It’s just too expensive. So this makes it more accessible, because even though there’s less of these cuts in the cow, often it’s cheaper to buy. So why not share knowledge?”

All this wouldn’t be possible without Butcher’s Secrets, the flagship brand of Silk Road Consumer Goods, founded by Julio and Vanessa Sulit during the pandemic lockdown. They wanted to celebrate the versatility of steak without the hefty price tag.

That’s right: These cuts are rare and limited, but they’re no more expensive than any other prized cuts. How so? Simple answer: volume. Julio shares how they started buying whole slabs of Australian and USDA beef during lockdown, doing their own research on cuts and selling to restaurants. Now they operate 25 “cloud kitchens” just for delivery and takeout. But there were always these leftover bits that “I usually just ate the trimmings of as lunch in our commissary,” recalls Julio. The couple got the idea of selling those bits online through Grab, and Gonzalez, always on the lookout for new meat experiences, became a regular customer.

For the launch, Café Ysabel was transformed into a traditional steakhouse as Chef Gene gears up for a December Steak Festival featuring these “secret” cuts, which had been sitting in his ager for days. No wonder the steak was so deliciously tender.

A cow map helped us identify each cut, and the meal came with inspired pairings, like potatoes Dauphinoise (au gratin), Yorkshire pudding, caramelized onion demiglace, croquette Alfredo, cauliflower puree, duck fries, a lovely anchovy olive garlic Hollandaise (with the hanging tender), and a truffle and wild mushroom demiglace (with the flat iron).

History was on the menu as well. The bavette cut (French for “bib”) is so-called because of its long, draping shape; the marbling melts deep into the muscle, turning every bite into pure flavor. Known to chefs as the spinalus dorsi, the ribeye cap is the outer edge of the ribeye steak: that wavy marble strip that wraps around the eye. It’s incredibly tender, buttery, and rich thanks to dense marbling and thin muscle fibers.

We moved on to the picanha, a Brazilian cut favored by churrascarias in Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay. “This cut has a layer or stream of fat around it and takes very well to charcoal grilling.”

Next came the Delmonico, with its New York City ties to the famous Italian steakhouse, and a following among “the learned, the pinstripe suit-wearing Wall Street traders,” Hollywood types, and, er, mafioso. “The Delmonico is a historical cut,” the chef says, offering “ribeye-level luxury.”

The flat iron is cut from the shoulder, delicious grilled with butter, up there with most prime cuts. But my hands-down favorite was the hanging tender. Imagine: just one cut from each cow, but the flavor was out-of-this-world succulent and juicy. No wonder it was wiped out at our table almost immediately.

The good news is, you can get your hands on—and your teeth into—these cuts yourself through Butcher’s Secrets. “We want to tell people that there is more to steak than just ribeye,” said Julio. “Premium doesn’t have to mean expensive or reserved for special occasions,” added Vanessa.

It does require a little kitchen magic, perhaps. “There’s nothing really to cooking a steak,” insists Chef Gene midway through our experiential meal. “It’ll take some charisma, but there are no secrets.”

Not anymore, that is.

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Café Ysabel is located at 175 M. Paterno, San Juan. Visit https://www.butcherssecrets.ph/ for more information.