Hudson chophouse a nose-to-tail experience
Restaurant goes beyond popular cuts and offers chance at eating picanha, bavette, heart, tongue
More than any other request, I’m asked about the best steakhouse in the area. We have 677 Prime in Albany, Black & Blue Steak and Crab in Guilderland, Delmonico’s in Colonie and Clifton Park or, a quick drive up the Northway to Saratoga Springs for Morton’s the Steakhouse and celebrity chef David Burke’s Salt & Char. At the other end of the meat equation are those willing to try complex, less familiar cuts. Skirt steak has gained popularity in recent years, picanha entered the common lexicon, and chefs like Shaina Loew-Banayan of Cafe Mutton in Hudson have been plating up the forgotten parts, giving us roasted pig face and smoked cow tongue.
At Iron & Grass in Hudson, chef Mark Fredette is doing both, searing off wagyu and porterhouse for those who want upscale cuts and applying his passion for whole-animal butchery to a chophouse menu. It’s a chophouse rather than steakhouse because the menu spans many cuts of beef, pork and lamb. Servers with laser pointers swirl their red dots over cow rumps and pork bellies in largerthan-life butcher illustrations on a black wall, pointing out muscle groups for guests pondering which cut to choose.
At its core is the commitment to grass-fed, grass-finished, mostly local beef, with exceptions for the newly introduced wagyu and premium cuts like ribeye or tenderloin. There are, as Fredette explains, only 14 ribeyes on a single cow, so he counts on customers willing to order picanha or sirloin flap. Sometimes he has dry-aged tongue or beef-heart carpaccio among starters; his goal is for no part of the animal to go to waste.
Fredette hails from Massachusetts and has a resume spanning training at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and working restaurants in Alaska, Boston and New Orleans. Since then he has established strong relationships with local farms and has a firm belief in regenerative agriculture after a decade in the Hudson Valley running the acclaimed Clermont Cafe at Tousey Winery in Rhinebeck, the culinary program at the nonprofit dairy farm Sprout Creek Farm and as executive chef at The Artist’s Palate, a farm-to-table restaurant in Poughkeepsie. Working with a veal hip in a culinary class at the age of 14 sparked his interest in butchery, while CIA classes in animal fabrication spurred his plan to open a nose-to-tail chophouse.
And here it is in an interesting location on a busy road southeast of downtown Hudson. Iron & Grass opened quietly in 2021, about 5 miles down Route 9 from the heart of Warren Street, past Meisner’s farm stand. The long building was once a Montessori school, after being built for a baseball-themed retreat on 12 acres of flatland on the site of a former drive-in movie theater. Its surprising length means Fredette was able to open The Conery, a seasonal ice cream shop within the building, two months before the restaurant itself. In summer, outdoor dining comes with sunset views.
There’s been an effort to soften the dining room with scattered Persian rugs on the concrete floor. Tables are clustered, each offset from the next, with a 360-degree room view, and I’m struck by the feeling that physical dinner theater could occur around us at any minute. It doesn’t in any thespian way, but I did notice that our fellow diners were dressed for a night at the theater, with the exception of four younger, tattooed friends with flowing manes who might easily have rocked the whole joint.
It’s no surprise to find New York wines from Tousey Winery on the wine list along with some
from the Finger Lakes, in keeping with the local theme, but the rest globe-trots from Europe to California, all reasonably priced; most glasses are under $12 and bottles under $40, save for a few three-figure options for those who must. Spirits include local New York distilleries like Cooper’s Daughters in nearby Claverack, and my bourbon old fashioned is served over a sphere of ice.
We start by daubing sauteed baby artichokes in black garliclemon aioli and swishing fat-rich cuts of crisp pork belly in its pooled maple-sherry glaze. The pork has a half inch of crackling, that ideal salty, umami crunch, in contrast to soft winter squash underneath. But in calling the “French onion” burrata a play on onion soup is more confusing, mostly because the presentation is cold, so while the burrata gushes stracciatella from its folds, the beefily sauced onions feel like a late-night fridge raid. Good ingredients married in haste.
There are excellent sides whether your weakness is mashed potatoes whipped into submission with butter, cream and salt, or truffle fries topped in fresh black truffles. With the farms’ names printed alongside, we stick to simple presentations, charred broccolini with lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper and charred edges from a ripping pan heat, and forbidden black rice with shallots and sea salt and a perfect al-dente bite.
You could satisfy cravings with a tomahawk ribeye or New York strip, each served with pan jus and seasoned with sea salt. I chose a wagyu picanha, that little-known rump cap known as culotte in France, popular in Brazil and more recently a barbecue star. As an underused muscle coated in a thick layer of fat, it’s meltingly good, the salt bringing out superb flavor and barely requiring any effort to cut. My guest’s roasted half chicken surpasses expectations with juicy breast and leg meat and crisp, seasoned skin topped in a jumble of mushrooms and buttery demiglace. Only the Delmonico potatoes disappoint, and for a minor reason. Award-winning McGrath Cheese Co. is run by Colin McGrath, colleague and former cheesemonger of Sprout Creek Farm, and while these Hudson Valley beer-washed cow’s milk Hootenanny cheese curds would be fantastic on a cheeseboard, their sharp funk in this dish is potent enough to overpower, like strong blue cheese.
There’s oxtail bourguignon making use of tail meat and either house-aged or grass-finished ground beef for a burger. The local is made with Pym Farm grass-finished beef on a house-baked roll topped with onion and a side of crispy smashed baby potatoes, although the bun goes beyond toasted to charred. It’s a nice twist on the traditional, if not as juicy as I’d hoped, and my kids balk when I have them try the house-made ketchup alongside. It comes close to the tang of commercial ketchup, but it’s sweet, like a cross between ketchup and barbecue.
The original plan was to exclusively source local meat, but Fredette has faced pandemicrelated difficulties. When restaurants closed during the lockdown, many farmers switched to
direct-to-consumer sales, selling at a higher price point and sustaining the disruption to the supply chain indefinitely once restaurants reopened. And after being sold some inferior cuts last October, Fredette shifted gears, sourcing more widely along the East Coast and bringing in ribeye from Joyce Farms in North Carolina. The wagyu picanha is from A Bar N Ranch in Texas.
Beyond steak, Fredette includes New England chowder in a nod to his roots, sustainably sourced Gulf of Maine salmon and pasta tossed with Sunday gravy featuring dry-aged beef. In steakhouses everywhere, people don’t quit until they’ve had dessert. We go with it, choosing Fredette’s spongy sticky toffee pudding, which is right on the money, with a globe of vanilla ice cream and softly sprung if capped in a modest toffee crown. Had it oozed more liberally on all sides, it might have earned a perfect 10.
Iron & Grass strives hard to make its large open space work for an intimate restaurant, and servers seal the deal with happy, engaging service and lessons in bovine anatomy. You might find a lone steak elsewhere on Warren Street, but this principled, farm-to-Hudson chophouse could be the farm-lovin’, nose-totail restaurant people have been asking for.