What does your favourite steak say about you?

With less than a week between now and National Steak Day, you may find yourself asking that time-old existential question: what does my choice of cut say about me? The same way in which your inner self can be appraised by the name you tick on the voting ballot, your postcode, or your preferred Gallagher, the steak that speaks to you is, too, a reflection of the man who chooses it.

Conventional wisdom has long decreed that the filet mignon is the finest of slices, the don of dining, the culinary equivalent of flashing a little blue Tiffany box. But in 2022, the rules of the gastro landscape shift once again. To better understand yourself via the medium of meat, here’s our assessment…

Tom Gold/Turner & George

Mined from the lower middle of the back, the laziest, least-worked area of the cow, which may or may not be reflective of its eater who simply wants a cut with a denture-friendly, pedestrian texture. Marbling, which is to say the network of fat, is absent, meaning that flavour is minimal – what fillets lack in taste is pummelled in vats of murky sauce. Orderers of this steak have all the gear but no idea: they rock up to the cricket crease decked out in Kookaburra but are stumped on the first ball; and they love jetting to Paris, but haven’t yet realised there’s more to see than the Ladurée boutique and Da Vinci’s painting of a half-smiling lady.

Tom Gold/Turner & George

There’s a fine degree of marbling here, and your local chop shop may hang it for a little extra bovine punch. You lean more towards the knowledgeable side of culinary awareness, but don’t hyperbolise too hard about it: you don’t necessarily hop from The French Laundry to Noma to Den to Pujol via Frantzén, but you’re somewhat well versed in the usual foodie ‘zines – Bon Appetit, Luncheon, Gourmet – and you dabble in the Dave Chang podcast and the odd ep of Chef’s Table. Your knives (Global, of course) are sharpened regularly, the terms wok hei, chiffonade, and omakase are safely within your lexicon, and a heavily thumbed copy of Kitchen Confidential is often found on your nightstand.

Tom Gold/Turner & George

Your London postcode, with no doubt, begins with an E. Your daily uniform consists of a chore jacket (French-blue, naturally); barrel-leg trousers that crop high above your vegan Birkenstocks; and you’re probably reading this while jumping on your single-gear or fixie before riding off to grab a small-batch brew of kopi luwak. Ah – you also have a penchant for paying £32 for a cut of onglet at any one of Hackney’s monotonous small-plates restaurants, despite the fact you can pick one up for a snip of the price at the butchers. One gets the impression that you feel as though gentrification is a merciless byproduct of current socio-economic trends, but fall short of realising that you might actually be advancing problem.

Tom Gold/Turner & George

Pretty great cut, so you’re likely a pretty great guy. You probably recycle and have a direct debit with Barnardo’s. We’ll let you off.

A cut from the back-end of the cow, the rump, widely labelled as the steak-eater’s steak, is worked a decent amount and is best-suited for dry ageing, which jacks up the flavour and beefy smack. It’s a versatile piece – good for flash-frying, grilling, drowning in marinades, bouncing podcast ideas off – so those who order it are most likely well-rounded individuals. Your name is probably Jamie – nice, neutral, agreeable, not as stiff as Ken, not as a chi-chi as Kenneth – your wardrobe might be bedecked in Arket basics in tones of navy and grey, you grew up supporting Wolves, and you likely clock out of work at six on the dot, not a minute later, and no one kicks up a fuss about it. Jamie: nice, neutral, agreeable, much like the rump.

Tom Gold/Turner & George

The fore rib of the cow is a statement of intent, a reflection of your inner self, your outer self, an extension of your beliefs, your heritage, your province, your locale, your self-regard, your great-grandma. It is a whacking cut of animal, the type that could feed a small Neapolitan family, encrusted in a layer of fat as thick as one of BoJo’s thumbs and with a dagger-long bone jolting from its side. In similar style, the T-Bone and its bigger brother, the porterhouse, is a Flintstones-looking cut, a composite steak defined by the thoroughfare of a bone that separates the fillet from the sirloin. All three trims of beef are fashioned to be a centrepiece – those who cook with it back themselves with all the rigour of a carpenter approaching a block of hinoki. You fire off unedited emails; you’re able to grab the waiter’s attention when requesting the bill; you don’t need a Monzo to manage your bank balance. The steak will be cooked to pink or it will be bust – and you’ve put a wager on yourself.

Still need your fill? We go inside the rarefied world of extreme-aged steak

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