The Single Barrel (Lincoln)
Part cavernous country bar, part bourbon bar, part steakhouse, and part party barn, The Single Barrel is a place seemingly content on dabbling. The first thing I thought was how strikingly big the room is, and how it’s designed for those eight wonderful cash-cow days each year when the Huskers have a home football game.
Diamond coasters.
Advertisements on the coasters came as a shocking unpleasant surprise and reminded me of those hackish menus at The Cheesecake Factory where every other page is an ad. My Spidey sense was tingling.
I had a Manhattan and it was decent, very similar to how I make them at home. Then the cheesy bread came out and it was alright, but it comes in a paper wrapper and then you just have a piece of trash on the table until the bread’s gone. The bread certainly doesn’t need to be served with the paper, and it was some time before the server removed it.
A cheesy, with its own piece of paper trash to contemplate.
The Single Barrel is stepping it up with locally procured ingredients and making salad dressings from scratch, better than what you often find at other steakhouses with the classic Chef Sysco salad: iceberg, dried-out red cabbage, and dried-out carrot shreds in a wooden bowl with a bottled, sweetened “Italian” dressing.
Gruyere alright.
I started with a bowl of French onion soup, served very hot and savory. I didn’t need to add any seasoning, and they thankfully use Gruyere instead of the gross white “Swiss” you see at many places. My only complaint is that it’s a red-onion-only affair, and this imparted a sweeter taste overall. I prefer a mix of white, yellow, and red onions, but it was still good.
And then something interesting happens at The Single Barrel, because your napkin has only one fork in it: if you’ve used your fork for eating a salad or appetizer, you are asked rather aggressively by the server to keep your fork, even if it has a bunch of dressing on it, meaning that if you’ve ordered a steak after your salad, you’re obligated to lick off the dressing from your fork and use it when you eat your steak. This seems completely obnoxious and should change immediately. You should either get two forks in the napkin, or be presented a new fork with your entree. I’ve never seen anything quite so insulting at a restaurant which is trying to be “nicer.”
Meat medallions.
My entree was the beef medallions on mashed potatoes with Brussels sprouts and a mushroom gravy. I liked my dish quite a bit, and it was certainly plenty of food. The steak was tender even though thoroughly cooked, and the Brussels sprouts were cooked right and the gravy with the potatoes wasn’t to heavy. But this is the kind of dish that at a “nicer” restaurant screams for freshly-cracked pepper. The tables should have pepper mills or it should be offered without asking by the server.
My dinner companions each had medium-rare steaks, and they said they were indeed medium-rare and not overcooked, which is common at many other steakhouses. When we asked the server for Worcestershire sauce, our server acted like it was an unusual request, which I found quite unusual. One of the steaks was dry-aged for supposedly a month, but Ripshaw was suspicious of that, having eaten many dry-aged steaks in his time. He also claimed to be able to taste the gas-grill gas in the steak, something I didn’t notice but he has an excellent sense of taste.
I found the food to be generally very good, but the service gaffes and the issues with forks make The Single Barrel a work in progress. Our server brought out the dessert tray and asked if we wanted dessert while we were only halfway through our entrees. This is unacceptable as well. And our server put the check on the table a few moments later, making us feel rushed when it wasn’t a busy night. Also, we all ordered drinks at the start and they arrived after the salad and soup, which shouldn’t happen, either.
The Single Barrel must start putting two forks in the napkin before I go back, and they need to train the servers in basic dining service if they are to be considered a classier place in town.
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I had an insightful e-mail exchange with Chef Brandon Harpster afterwards regarding the provenance and aging regime of the meat at The Single Barrel. Beef is sourced from Nebraska Beef LTD which is a large meat-packing outfit in Omaha. The facility is located in Omaha but the beef can come from neighboring states (Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, etc.) so it is not necessarily “Nebraska Beef” though Chef stated the steak I ate was indeed from Nebraska. I believe it was the standard grain-finished, non-organic USDA Choice variety that most local steak houses and supermarkets offer. I am 100% confident in my belief that pasture-finished beef is superior in flavor to grain-finished and I would like to see a local restaurant take the lead in offering grass-finished organic beef in Lincoln. Chef gave no indication to the breed or how the animal was raised though I imagine we’re dealing with the usual hormones and antibiotics and that the breed was either Hereford or Angus. I didn’t find the steak to have the flavor or texture of beef that is dry-aged for as long as our server indicated (“about 30 days”) but Chef confirmed that it was aged for 28 days at a facility in St Louis. This is, of course, a bit of an inexact system as I’m sure they’re not receiving daily shipments from St Louis so I have to imagine that their “dry-aged” beef ranges anywhere from between two and six weeks. Primal cuts are shipped from Omaha to St Louis and returned to Lincoln as sub-primal cuts where The Single Barrel then portions them into individual steaks. This strikes me as very unusual and not exactly environmentally friendly but Chef claims this is the nearest facility that will age meat to their specifications. Chef stated that he hopes to dry-age in-house in the future which would give The Single Barrel much more control over what is actually being served. I was surprised to see a “dry-aged” steak at all on a Lincoln menu (seems we’ve forgotten this time-honored technique here in the land of steak) and I hope to see more of this from other area restaurants and supermarkets. Yes, I tasted a gasoline flavor (no doubt from a gas grill) and the steak was under seasoned. This left me wanting high-quality sea salt and freshly cracked pepper but the tables are set with standard iodized salt and shaker pepper, unworthy of a steak of this quality. The overall menu states local sourcing and from-scratch cooking (I hope this too catches on here in Lincoln) and I sensed the cooking here was very clean and product focused. I believe what we have here is a smart and sensible Chef who is working to produce food of a higher standard than what is typical of the market so I expect things to improve here and am looking forward to my next visit.