You think you’ve had a good steak until you’ve dined at downtown Cleveland steakhouse Urban Farmer. An Ohio-raised, grain-finished wagyu New York strip steak ($76) comes to your table cooked just the way you like it. In our case, a perfect medium-rare so tender and marbled with fat that it barely needs a steak knife.
That is the baseline for a steakhouse, but Urban Farmer exceeds it by a mile. It is thanks, in no small part, to the sourcing and quality of its ingredients, most of which come from within Ohio.
“Being a farm-to-table steakhouse, we want to support local economics,” says head chef Vishwatej Nath. “Local farmers, foragers, distilleries, wineries, maple syrup guys we work with are all within Ohio. It’s great to give back to the local community.”
Urban Farmer is a big city steakhouse taken to the next level. Sure, they’ll cook your steak perfectly, but the restaurant, based in Cleveland’s Westin Hotel, prepares much of its food, including its charcuterie options ($14-$22) in-house.
This is not a place for modesty. No matter where you’re sitting in its enormous dining room, with large leather booths and stately wood finishes, you’ll feel like you’re celebrating signing some kind of momentous business deal.
For those undecided on dinner, Nath recommends one of Urban Farmer’s unique spins on the steakhouse experience: A three-component tasting platter of six-ounce New York strip steaks ($66).
“You have 100% grass-fed, which will be a little bit leaner because there’s not much fat in it,” says Nath. “We have corn-fed beef, which is fatty and has a lot of juiciness to it. We have a 21-day dry-aged New York strip that gives you an awesome appreciation of what dry-aged does to the meat, making it more supple, juicy and tender, and it concentrates it as well.”
So yes, as far as Cleveland’s celebratory restaurants go, you’ll be hard-pressed to find one more spectacular than Urban Farmer.
1325 E. Sixth St., Cleveland, 216-771-7707, urbanfarmercleveland.com
