I first walked into The Meat Hook in 2009, soon after they had opened on Frost Street.  The gradual dispersion of the Williamsburg gallery scene in the years after that meant that we soon lost contact with these excellent suppliers, but last Sunday we headed over to their new shop after a visit to ‘SEVEN-ish, Seriously Funny‘, installed by ‘Seven at The Boiler’ through May 22.

We picked up 2 beautiful flatiron steaks and a pound of excellent pork secreto. We enjoyed the pork that night, and froze the beef, which they had vacuum sealed for us, for another day.

Last night, on one of the 5 personal anniversaries we share, we treated ourselves to the steaks.

• 2 flatiron steaks (totaling just under 14 ounces) from the Meat Hook, defrosted in the refrigerator, brought to room temperature, dried, pan-grilled to rare-to-medium rare, drizzled with some local Lisbon lemon from Fantastic Gardens of Long Island (this was the very last of David’s citrus), sprinkled with radish micro greens from Two Guys From Woodbridge, and drizzled with a little good olive oil
• sunchokes (12 ounces) from Lucky Dog Organic Farm, small ‘rootlings’ removed, trimmed, scrubbed, sliced very thinly (1/8 inch, but they probaly didn’t have to be that thin), tossed with barely a tablespoon of olive oil, sea salt, and freshly-ground Telicherry pepper, spread in one layer onto 2 Pampered Chef unglazed ceramic pans (a single pan wasn’t enough, since they had been cut so thinly and needed a lot of surface), roasted at 425º for about 35 minutes, or until they were brown, tender, and crispy on the edges, dusted with dried fennel pollen from Buon Italia, and shuffled around in the pans with a wooden spatula
• a dozen spears of asparagus from Lucky Dog Organic Farm, trimmed and peeled, rolled in about a tablespoon of olive oil, and a little sea salt, roasted at 425-450º for about 15 to 20 minutes, served exactly as they were, unadorned, in all their freshness and goodness
• the wine was  a California (Sonoma) red, ROX Scott Peterson All Blacks Sonoma County 2013 from Naked Wines
• the music was ‘Glass Piece (for Annea Lockwood)’, by Steven M. Miller from the set, ‘Between Noise and Silence‘, of collected works and tributes in memoriam to the composer, from Innova Recordings