Atlas Beer Cafe named one of Queenstown's Top 10 Restaurants

Atlas is pleased to be named as one of Queenstown’s Top 10 Restaurants by travel/experiences website Experience Oz + NZ in their most recent yearly Top 10 lists for all of Australia and New Zealand’s major regions for activities, accommodation and restaurants.

The list highlights 10 of the best restaurants in Queenstown, covering a "balanced range of both cuisine types and budget levels" – with Atlas coming in at number 7.

The review commends our "extensive array of beers" and reports our steaks to be "large, perfectly cooked, easy to cut and great value for your dollar". It concludes by praising Atlas for "dispensing quality brews and top views all at a reasonable price – what more could a visitor to Queenstown want?”

We couldn’t agree more!

Read the full review here.

How to cook the perfect steak. Part 2

Hello there...

In the last post we wrote about a few popular cuts, marbling and what aged steak is. Now it's time to get cooking so here are our steps to steak-cooking perfection.


Take your steak out of the fridge. Make sure you take your steak out of the fridge before cooking it. An hour is preferable but at least 20 mins if you are pressed for time. This is important as cooking a cold steak can result in a steak that's overcooked on the outside and cold on the inside; the muscle fibres in the meat will seize up and it'll be tough eating. Not good.


How thick is your steak? Most steaks from the supermarket are sliced on the thinner side so pan cooking will be fine. If you've got a nice thick chunk of steak from the butchers a little time in the oven will required to finish off cooking the steak. So get the oven on to a temperature of around 220c.


Choose your pan. A heavy based frying pan is ideal and also something that is flat bottomed as this will ensure even heat distribution. For thicker steaks a little time in the oven, once seared, is an approach so an oven proof pan is needed


Season it. You can rub some olive oil on the steak and season with salt and pepper on both sides, patting the seasoning into the meat. Avoid seasoning the steak in the pan as putting the seasoning directly into the hot pan can burn it.


Get the pan nice and hot. Use an oil with a high smoking point. The pan needs to be really hot so the outside of the steak is seared. You don't want to braise the steak. Searing will help to seal the juices inside the meat and will also encourage the natural sugars in the meat to caramelise. Some people like to flavour the pan with a little butter, you can do that but don't use butter as the primary cooking fat as it'll burn - it doesn't smoke high enough.


Whack it in the pan and turn it. Let the steak sear on one side for a minute and then sear on the other side for a minute and continue to turn the steak every minute. This ensures an even cooking and keeps all the moisture in the middle of the steak. Whilst you are turning the steak you can baste the top with a little butter or some chefs rub a garlic clove on the meat. Avoid putting crushed garlic straight into the pan as the garlic will burn and it tastes a bit bitter then. 


The fingertip test. Most people have heard of the method of testing a steak's temperature. With one hand (keeping it relaxed) touch the tip of your thumb to your index finger. The palm area at the base of your thumb is how a steak should feel to touch.

Index to thumb: rare
Middle to thumb: medium rare
Ring finger to thumb: medium
Pinkie to thumb: well done


Rest the meat. Once the steak is cooked to your desired temperature don't plate it up straight away. Put it on a warm plate in a warm place and let it rest. You can cover it with tin foil too. Don't whack it onto a cold plate as you want it to retain heat for when you serve it. Rest it for about 2 mins. 

Resting is important as when the steak was placed in the hot pan all the juices were forced into the middle of the steak by the heat. If you were to slice the steak straight from the pan all those juices would just flow out onto the plate. Resting allows the juices to slowly migrate back through the meat to the outer parts of the steak again meaning the steak will be beautifully juicy. Some juice will flow onto the plate, that's all right. You are still keeping more juice in the steak itself by resting and you can tip the resting juices back into the pan, de-glaze the brown tasty bits with some wine and you a have jus to serve with your steak.

Our approach at Atlas is to sear the steak in a super hot pan and turn the steak a few times to really sear the outside of the steak and get that tasty caramelisation going. Then, as our steak are very thick, we transfer them to the oven to continue cooking. The advantage of thicker steaks is that you can really cook the outside thoroughly resulting in great flavour and still have the steak medium rare on the inside. That's trickier to do with portions that have been cut a little thinner. The steaks are then rested in a warm place for a few minutes before being served up with fries, salad and our delicious demi-glace and Cafe de Paris butter.

Atlas Beer Cafe: How to Cook the Perfect Steak - Part 1

Ready for the pan

Apparently, if there's one question a chef gets asked the most it's how to cook a steak properly.

Many dishes on the Atlas menu are very popular. But, if there's one meal that's made us famous around town and become an Atlas (if not Queenstown) institution... it's our steak and fries meal. So we've decided to write a couple of posts with some helpful hints on how to cook the perfect steak - Atlas style!

To begin:

Just explaining what temperature a steak should be cooked and for how long is tricky. 

There are many variables to consider like the cut of meat, thickness of the cuts plus different cuts have different structure.  So it helps, from the offset, to have a little info on some of the different cuts available to you.

A few suggested cuts:

Eye-Fillet: 

This is the most expensive cut. It doesn't have much fat and and a result is really meaty. The downside can be that the lack of fat means it doesn't have so much flavour but as long as it has good marbling (more on marbling in a minute) it can be really delicious. Eye-fillet is from the loin area of the beef.

Rib Eye or Scotch Fillet: 

This cut is regarded by some people as having the best flavour. It's from the upper rib area of the animal and has an eye-sized piece of fat in it which also adds flavour to the cut. As these muscles don't really support the cow's weight or work as hard as other muscles the result is a cut with a softer texture. Often called Rib if on the bone and Scotch if the bone is removed. 

Sirloin: 

The sirloin is a multi-muscled area and it can have a few different cuts, which all get called Sirloin, which is confusing! Whilst not as tender as the steaks from the loin or the rib area the sirloin steaks are still very flavourful. The Sirloin section is next behind the rib section. The term comes from Old French - surlonge meaning sur la longe or 'above the loin'. There are stories of an English King knighting a steak and calling it Sir Loin, hence the name, sirloin. It's not true!

Rump: 

Moving along the beast we come next to the rump section. Like the sirloin this is a multi-muscled cut with grains running in different directions. Rump is what we serve at Atlas as it's delicious and provides us with nice, big, juicy steaks! 

The Atlas chefs carefully prepare the rump cutting it down into the different muscle sections so that the grain is consistent and the steaks are more uniform ensuring they will cook with an even tenderness. Rump is best when it's aged and our rumps are aged around 21 days.


And what does 'aged steak' mean?

This refers to how long the meat is hung for by the butcher. As the meat hangs the flavours start to saturate and the meat becomes more tender. 

Marbling:

This refers to the little streams of white fat that run through a cut of meat. As the meat cooks this streaks of fat melt into the meat and almost baste it from within. This makes the steak nice and succulent. Things like the breed of the animal and what it's been fed on can affect the marbling.

So that's a bit of background on a few cuts and some info and on ageing and marbling. In our next post - we get cooking!

Is it jus or is it demi-glace?

Especially for jus?

The delicious gravy that covers our succulent rump steaks has Queenstown locals salivating just at the mere thought of it. An Atlas steak served on a bed of golden fries with a crispy side salad, melting Cafe de Paris butter and demi-glace. 

Demi-glace. But what is demi-glace? It's actually a question that gets asked from time to time by our customers. An intelligible answer is that it's jus, but jus it is not. So being the helpful types that we are at Atlas we thought we'd write a quick post about it. You just never know when it's going to come up in a pub quiz...

Jus

Jus is pretty much the equivalent of "juice" in French. So jus refers to the the natural juices given off from the meat whilst it's cooking or roasting. Roasted meat juices can be put into a separate pan and reduced whilst the meat is resting to make a delicious accompaniment. Or, the juice and browned-on tasty bits from a steak cooked in a pan can be de-glazed with some red wine and simmered down. It's quite common to see jus on restaurant menus and there can be some creative flavours. In essence though, it's always the juices from the cooked meat that form the basis of a jus.

Demi-glace

Demi-glace differs as it is stock-based and has a much longer cooking and preparation process. Traditionally, demi-glace is made by starting off with some high-quality stock with high natural gelatin and thickening a portion of the stock with a roux, vegetables and some tomato puree (this is also know as a sauce espagnole).

The thickened stock and the clear stock are then combined and reduced down to half the original volume. Many restaurant chefs these days take a more uncomplicated approach to creating demi-glace reducing the stock alone to get the desired consistency. We take this approach also when making our demi-glace at Atlas. 

Whilst we can't divulge the exact ingredients we can tell you that our demi-glace is made from top-quality beef stock; lots of vegetables; some tomato puree; a very generous amount of red wine and seasoned with herbs, salt and pepper. The demi-glace then sits on the stove in the Atlas kitchen for hours as it slowly simmers away, becoming tastier and tastier.

So there you have it - a little insight into French sauces. Anyway, demi-glace? Jus? It doesn't matter so long as it's tasty and at the end of the day - it's all gravy!