Wholly cow: are trendy organic steaks ready for prime time?

Health-conscious and trendy L.A. diners have always been on the forefront of the organic food movement, and chefs here have made an art form of pricey, pesticide-free veggies and fruit.

But are we ready for organic steak?

BOA Steakhouse is betting that we are. The high-end Wilshire Boulevard restaurant now offers a 14-ounce steak that is certified organic, meaning the cow has grazed on pesticide-free grass and never received any antibiotics or growth hormones.

The cost: $44. That's $5 more than the comparable steak, a dry-aged New York cut.

But a number of local chefs are skeptical. They believe the ruby-red and lower-fat organic meat will be hard for their customers to swallow. The taste is gamy and the texture is sinewy.

Kerry Simon, chef and partner at the Simon LA restaurant in the Sofitel Hotel, is trying to make his menu as organic as possible but has found organic beef a challenge.

"The organic is a little gamier in flavor," he said. "I think it's a new product and it's going to take some time for it to grow into the next level and be really flavorful and really tasty."

BOA was drawn in by the novelty and an organic steak's appeal to its more health-conscious guests.

"My accountant eats organic beef only and has always wanted to come in," said Brent Berkowitz, general manager at BOA in Santa Monica. "That got me thinking about it."

Seven months of research, testing and tasting later, the eatery is selling about 30 of the cuts a week.

While a handful of L.A. restaurants are offering the organic beef, the majority of high-end houses say they think the day of the organic steak is down the road.

"The flavor profile is very different and it would not by something that we would be comfortable with right now," said Roger Drake of Morton's of Chicago Inc.

Nonetheless, organic beef has plainly gotten the attention of the city's top-end beef purveyors including Morton' s, Wolfgang Puck's CUT at the Beverly Wilshire, Grill Concepts Inc., which owns the Daily Grill restaurants, and Palm Management Corp., owner of The Palm. Executives at all of these restaurants say they're monitoring the market and could someday add organic cuts to the menu.

Not prime

The high cost and unreliable distribution are also negatives cited by the eateries that are holding off.

"I relate it to the earlier days or organic when fruits and veggies were kind of old and not always flavorful," said Chris Blobaugh, chef and partner at Wilshire Restaurant. His restaurant serves an organic steak for $36 and a "natural" kobe steak for $38, including side dishes. The term "natural" is unofficial, and refers to cows raised according to some or all of the organic requirements, but lacking certification from the U.S. Agriculture Department.

"Obviously you have to have great taste and the flavor profile has to be really good or it's not worth it," said Blobaugh, who admits he's still looking for an organic steak that really delivers on flavor. "Just because it's organic or natural doesn't mean it tastes great."

Part of the problem is that by definition, organic steaks can't be a traditional prime cut. The USDA ranks beef when it is harvested by measuring the fat content in the muscle. The fattiest receive the best rating, which is prime, given to about 3 percent of all the beef produced in the United States. A few of the top steak houses including Morton's, Ruth's Chris and BOA serve prime beef exclusively.

However, cattle raised organic are allowed to exercise and eat grass and organic corn. The healthy lifestyle doesn't lend itself to the fatty marbling that most American steak lovers crave.

With South Americans however, it's a different story. Some of the world's most lauded steaks are raised organically in Argentina.

"I could guarantee the only problem with organic beef is it's chewier," said Adolfo Suaya, an Argentinean and partner at the Lodge steakhouse in Beverly Hills. His restaurant sells organic buffalo, ostrich and sometimes beef steaks. "The taste difference is small, but Americans are all about tenderness."

Kerry Simon serves natural beef on the regular menu at the Sofitel and is offering organic steak as a special. While he admits he's "still playing around with it," the organic steak specials typically sell out.

At the Daily Grill, chefs aren't yet satisfied with the taste and the aging process and also find the high price and minimal distribution are obstacles.

"It's a little bit of everything," said John Sola of Grill Concepts. "From how we want to approach it, we haven't seen the right flavor profile. But it's something were definitely looking into."

Supply challenges

Another challenge is that most people who are really health-conscious don't eat steak, said BOA's Berkowitz. But for his restaurant, part of the lure of organic beef for the company's Santa Monica, Hollywood and Las Vegas locations was that no one else was serving it regularly. Also, he figured it would be popular with health-conscious steak aficionados--an admittedly small but growing segment of the dining market.

So executives at the restaurant's parent company, Innovative Dining Group, met with their meat supplier, Premier Meat Co., to establish a steady supply of organic beef.

"It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be," said Andy Rocker of Premier Meat. "The farmers are kind of new to the business aspect. They're family farmers not familiar with consistently needing to supply a source with products."

The organic meat business is a small piece of the nation's $14 billion organic food industry, in large part because resources are scarce.

There are currently less than 100,000 organic beef cows in the United States. BOA Santa Monica alone now goes through about two cows each week. Raising the cows is a challenge for most farmers, who must graze the cattle on land that has been pesticide-free for seven years and go through an expensive and arduous organic certification process. If one of the cows becomes ill and has to he given antibiotics for it to survive, it's no longer organic and is shipped out and classified as natural.

"We've got a much larger demand right now in the U.S. for organic beef and meat than we have a supply," said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association.

Most organic beef currently served in the U.S. comes from New Zealand and Australia, though Premier Meat managed to find organic suppliers in Omaha, Neb., and Liberal, Kan.

Cummins believes that the supply will increase, as more farmers understand the process and rewards of going organic.

"If you're pasturing beef cows, it is not that hard if you haven't been spraying pesticides," he said.

For many beef consumers, however, the concept of a healthy steak is illogical.

Long Beach's Callista Lee is a big fan of the steaks at the Pantry, the venerable 24-hour restaurant located a few blocks from the Staples Center. She hits the diner, hardly high-end but extremely popular, before sports events.

"If the Lakers are playing, does it make it Kobe beef?" she wondered. That makes about as much sense to her as organic beef.

"When I'm eating a T-bone bigger than the plate," she said, "do you really think I'm concerned about my health?"

By EMILY BRYSON YORK

Staff Reporter