Plateau: The Josper post

There’s one name that has become synonymous with cooking great steaks and that is Josper, makers of the famous grill. As the hottest burning indoor grill available, the Josper is what top steak houses are using to cook your steak and from the popularity of places like Goodman, what the Josper brings to the party is clearly loved even if not everyone knows why the steak in front of them tastes just that little bit better than those served elsewhere.

When Head Chef of Plateau Restaurant Allan Pickett recently Tweeted us to say that Plateau had acquired a new Josper and would we like to come and see what it could do, we jumped at the chance. 

We first ‘discovered’ Plateau in May last year (read post here) at which time Chef Allan Pickett had been there for around a year. Talking to Allan on that occasion, he told us that he was on a mission to drive quality higher; since then, we’ve been back several times (not on blog) and always enjoyed a great meal. The Josper grill then is his latest step forward in dialling up the Plateau experience.

There are three things you notice when you use a Josper grill, first, obviously, just how hot it is standing in front of one of these things with the grill running up to 500 degrees C. To put this in perspective, Lead has a melting point of 327 degrees while brass melts at 930 degrees. Second, just how physical working the station is: the grill door, which will be opened hundreds of times during a service, is heavily sprung and opening it is like pumping serious iron in the gym. Third, just how much skill is required to get the cooking right; at this temperature, the margin for error clearly decreases. Spend an hour behind a Josper and you’ll never view your steak in the same way ever again.

If that weren’t enough, there’s also the risk of a backdraft when you open the door, that is, the reintroduction of oxygen into an oxygen starved environment causes the flame to jump out of the oven. If your not familiar with the term (or the risk), see the Hollywood film.

Chef Allan Pickett works the grill

steaks cooking

Steaks on the grill today included a fillet, a rump and a bone in ribeye. As you would hope and expect, the steaks are 28 days aged and come from Devon, a county that excels in beef production. While the ribeye would be our normal choice and was of course fantastic (see the picture below for the marbling), the Josper surprise was how good both the rump and the fillet were. Despite the fillet being the leanest cut, the high temperature Josper reduces the cooking time so that less of the flavour bleeds out during cooking. With the charred outside, but a rather unfillet-like juicy inside, I found myself really enjoying it.

ribeye

rump steak

fillet and ribeye

fillet

And here’s a bit of fun, pieces of streaky bacon placed on the grill needed less than a minute to cook but resulted in some of the best bacon I‘ve tasted as it perfectly brought together the fat, the crisp and the smoke. From there we sampled a couple of burgers, including the regular burger (home made of course) and the “piggy” burger which is a pork burger topped with pork BBQ sauce and slaw: different and delicious.

"piggy" burger and regular burger

Finally, there’s the veal chop. This has been marinated for 24 hours in herbs and butter then cooked sous vide for an hour before being finished on the grill. The result is stunning, one of the best I’ve tasted. Again, the flavours are locked in while the meat has just the right level of firm juiciness, no dry toughness here as is found too often elsewhere. 

veal chop

It’s early days for the Josper at Plateau but it’s already being used to great effect on the meats. Most of what we tried here is available in the Bar & Grill but for the fillet and the veal chop which are available in the Restaurant. However, it does raise another interesting issue: most Jospers are in steakhouses with a fixed and basic menu, but at Plateau, the menu is always changing. In turn, this means they are free to innovate across the menu with the Josper to see what else might be done and how the grill might improve the overall offering. In our view then that makes for another interesting year of eating ahead at Plateau.


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Disclosure: we were guests of Plateau