In the meat business, sourcing is the ultimate boast: It’s not enough to claim your meat is “prime,” when any meathead worth his cholesterol knows how promiscuously that once-proud term is thrown around. No, today’s steakhouse has to have boutique sources or, even better, their own prize bull, as at Primehouse NY. But no meat man has a more obsessive take on quality than Adam Perry Lang. The Robert’s and Daisy May chef tells us that he’s currently in the process of researching what will be his own beef program in Montana. “It’s so important to understand it, to be able to control what’s happening. I want to say that I’m doing everything I can to get it where I want it. I want to raise beef the right way. I want to know I’m doing the right thing.”
Lang’s moralistic take is more than just Haute Barnyard rhetoric. Having just established a meat mecca in Las Vegas at Carnevino, the chef has been flying around the country, touring ranches and slaughterhouses, and talking to breeders about genetics and feeding. The product he’s looking to help create is at the very least two years away, Lang says. But once it’s in place, he will be able to serve vertical integration on a plate. We can’t wait to carve a slice.
