Nation's Restaurant News
Costly beef steers chefs to cheaper cuts, but most diners don't balk at higher prices - Culinary Currents
Dec 8, 2003
by Bret Thorn
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Alison Barshak, chef at Alison at Blue Bell, a mostly seafood restaurant in Philadelphia's suburb of Blue Bell, took her rib-eye off the menu and tried replacing it with a lamb dish. "And people kind of started saying, 'We want beef' very loudly," she said.

So she put a 10-ounce rib-eye back on the menu for $28. But with other entree prices ranging from $16.50 for risotto to $25 for crab cakes, she thought the steak "skewed people's perspective of what the menu is."

So two months ago she swapped the rib-eye for a 10-ounce hanger steak for $23. "The customers love the flavor," she said, "but it's an unfamiliar cut," so her servers have had to describe it for diners.

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