Steak tartare: Riffs on beef in the raw

Steak tartare is enjoying a surge in interest from diners and imagination on the part of chefs.

Petition Kitchen Perth beef tartare.

The exact origins and history of steak tartare — once known as steak a l’Americaine — are a little hazy. What is more certain, however, is that the bistro classic of raw, ground or chopped beef, egg yolk and seasonings/condiments has had a resurgence across the country, doing service as a vehicle for all kinds of flavours and cheffy ideas. Here are four of the best …

Petition Kitchen, Perth

In central Perth at everyone’s favourite “instant” precinct, the State Buildings, Petition Kitchen is the rowdy, chicly semi-restored heritage diner of choice for the city’s aspirational crowd. Chef Jesse Blake is keeping ’em happy with edgy, informal dishes such as his rather exceptional tartare of organic young beef with a subtle Middle Eastern accent: black and white sesame, fresh radish wafers, grilled unleavened bread wafers and a central dollop of creme ­fraiche. The meat — as raw beef needs be — is outstanding.

Bennelong, Sydney

The “bar menu” — if you will — of the glamorous Bennelong restaurant at Sydney Opera House is called “Cured & Cultured” and it’s here you can share the joy of this dining space without committing to a table. The focus is Australian produce — raw Mooloolaba yellow fin tuna, for example, red claw yabbies from tropical north Queensland, or large black ­culatello from pigs raised at Byron Bay. Chef Peter Gilmore was never going to settle for a mundane take on tartare, of course. His involves diced, cold-smoked wagyu from grower David Blackmore, mixed with fermented, Korean-ish chilli paste, cultured rye, wheat, puffed green rice, sesame, seaweed and mushrooms, topped with a raw yolk. When the bar snacks are this sophisticated …

Monster, Canberra

Our national capital has had a rash of new and rather interesting ­hotels in the past few years; Hotel Hotel gets our nod for its arty, design-first approach and the open-space informality of its cafe/­library/bar/restaurant Monster. This space is whatever you want it to be, any time of the day, but at lunch, you want it to be your dining room and you want them to prepare their Japan-inspired take on tartare. With big, fried tapioca and squid ink crackers for crunch, the meat is seasoned with nori, white sesame and house-blended togarashi. Little turbans of whipped avocado, and caramel-like jubes of sticky, toffee-ish cured yolk add richness and fun to an inspired bit of lateral tartare interpretation.

Fuyu, Perth

Perth’s latest pan-Asian dining room has been a restaurant — in Nedlands — for many years, its last incarnation being Pata Negra. Owner David Coomer got bored with an ­Iberian muse and went back to the flavours he refined over the years at Star Anise, so Fuyu is a little Thai, ­Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese; not quite a rollicking Asian diner, not quite a refined dining ­experience, either. Fuyu’s reading of the steak tartare is one of the best things on the menu, too: quality, hand-chopped beef scattered and mixed with Vietnamese herbs, fried shallot, a subtle ­dressing and salt-cured duck egg, served with vividly pink beetroot tapioca ­wafers and whole betel leaves. So it’s a DIY jobbie too: scoop, crunch, wrap, suck … A colonial legacy, of sorts, reimagined in Australia.