How STK Dominates The Steakhouse Game

What's up, guys? STK is all about STK. But this STK isn't your daddy's steakhouse. Young Hollywood is about to take you behind the scenes of this vibe dining empire. I am now inside the kitchen of STKLA with Chef Robert Lavato. You're kind of the man behind the magic of STKLA. How about that?

The magic behind the magic, yes. That's what you meant to say.

STK has sort of like this magical, sexy, mysterious vibe.

The vibe is definitely what we're very well known for. As much as uh the food.

Walk me through the menu here. There's a lot to choose from. How does one pick?

One of each, that's usually my way to go. Uh however, uh obviously we're known for a steak. Our steak program is something we've been refining for the last few years. And I think right now we're in a pretty comfortable position to say we have a pretty damn good steak program. We go through uh Pervera, this Lin Heritage, uh based in Chicago. The product overall is just outstanding.

Well, you mentioned the word Chicago. Now, I I wrote down a list of cities, Chicago being one of them, where STK's located. Uh just to talk about its global impact on the food industry. Doha. Doha's here. Chicago, as you mentioned. Vegas. Bangkok, Denver, London, LA. What's up, LA? Here we are. Milan, two in New York City, Orlando, South Beach, Toronto. Chicago. Mexico. Mexico, San Diego, Puerto Rico, two in Dubai, Brazil, two. Mexico City, Atlanta, Ibitha, Nashville.

It's um growing faster than uh we anticipated. However, it's uh a great path to where we want to be in a couple years.

Any visitors walk here?

Mariah. Teja Kalil was here. Army Hammer. Carrie Washington, Julia Roberts. And that's just to name a few.

I'm in the kitchen, let's get cooking.

Let's get cooking. We got a porterhouse, King of Steaks. We start with a little bit of the basics. which is just a little bit of butter. Definitely get some salt. You get some cracked pepper in there.

This weighs almost as much as me. Ready? Third. That's a heavy piece of meat. Okay. Anyway, more butter. More butter. A little more pepper. Okay. And let's do a little more salt. Okay.

Behind us, we have a broiler. It cooks things really fast. It's really hot. You're gonna have some of that butter react to the heat, which is going to help us create some of that crust. We're going to like some nice sexy crust on it. You gotta watch it a little bit. You're gonna get a nice, perfect carmelization. And after that, rotate it a little bit. We're gonna move to the bottom broiler, so it's kinda like a little bit not as intense as the top. Gonna give it a little rotation there.

Okay. How much longer we got on that?

So that's gonna stay here about another six and a half minutes.

Once this is done, you're gonna have to pair this with something so I can enjoy the the full sexy meal that STKLA, right?

I mean, depending on the full body of the wine, medium body would go just as fine.

Okay, so we got the steak. We got the wine. Now the stuff in the middle, we got some sides, maybe some sweets. What do we got?

We're gonna do corn pudding. We're gonna start sauteing the the corn. And the butter. We have some here already melted.

The butter's melted already?

It's already melted. It's like so nice and hot. Just watch the butter. So we're throwing in a little bit of corn in there. We're gonna definitely cook the corn. You got a little bit of sizzle. Adding your half and half. Then we add the cornmeal. So it's a super fine cornmeal. We're gonna add this slowly as the cream is hot. You don't want to just dump this in there or else it's going to be all lumpy.

That is heaven. Tuna tartar. Yeah. You got a little avocado. You got a little Ahi tuna and Terra chips. You're trying a little bit of your avocado there. What's the key to a good tuna tartar? 'Cause lots of places do it, but not all places do it well.

It's such a simple dish. It just you have to so uh strongly rely on very fresh quality products. Right. Um in this case the tuna. Um what we call Ahi number one is just uh sashimi grade tuna. So we got a little bit nice, bright and beautiful tuna right here. Last but not least, we got a honey soy emulsion. So very basic. Uh Dijon, honey and uh soy. And at the end, we'll finish with the little bit of a Terra chips. So you just stack on.

Mmm. Little bit of heat, a little bit of sweetness. You got that honey and Dijon kinda Like you said, it's fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh. Fresh, fresh, fresh. I'm gonna try a little Justin Cabernet. Now, how does one pair their wine with the steak? 'Cause again, like your menu, there are so many options. A cab is super steak friendly, but you got Pinot, you got Zinfandel, you got so many choices. Chef, this is superb. So one side is the filet, the other side is

So, so this is your filet and then you're gonna have your New York strip on the other side.

Wow. Cheers to that. Oh, well.