A buddy of mine, Doug, and his chef friend, Dave, recently undertook a fantastic endeavor to pit two great meateries against one another in a home cooked steak-off challenge:

Lobel’s vs Eataly.

They took to searing up two two-pound steaks, one from each powerhouse NYC butcher. They spent about $80 at Lobel’s and $50 at Eataly, scoring two delicious looking, highly marbled, two-pound porterhouses.

Inspired by watching the PIORA cooking method of bathing the steaks in clarified butter, they eagerly followed suit.

But they elaborated and improved upon that brilliance by first searing in bacon fat. YES!

Then they finished the steaks in the oven for even cooking, and slathered with bernaise sauce.

On the side they whipped up some duck fat potatoes and creamed spinach. Solid choices. Lots of fat. Doug took to naming the dish “Porterhouse ala Cardiac Arrest.”

My buddy Doug, like me, is a meat aficionado. But he was wise to enlist the help of his chef friend Dave… You might recognize him as a winning contestant on one of Guy Fieri’s many cooking game shows… Namely, Ultimate Recipe Showdown. On the show, Dave blew away the judges with an awesome party dish he called the “Shrimp and Scallop Margherita,” which looked (and tasted) absolutely amazing. As it turns out, Doug helped conceptualize the dish. Doug and Dave actually have some loose plans for creating a cooking show involving lots of booze. Check out Dave’s impromptu, self-video’d intro to the steak-off below:

So who fucking won the steak-off? Doug and Dave both agreed that Lobel’s eked out the win (of course…) BUT at a cost of an extra $30 for what was only a small margin of victory. Lobel’s was better, they said, but Eataly had a meatier taste. You decide which is the better buy between the two…