Name: THE BLACK LAB
Address: 8 Rue des Champs, Wasquehal, 59290, FR
Telephone: 03 20 89 81 10
Price range: €€
Rating: 2.5

France

Wasquehal

THE BLACK LAB

Bavette de flanchet is the French butcher's name for the flank steak, the flat, coarse-grained muscle from the lower belly of the steer behind the ribs, as distinct from the bavette d'aloyau, which comes from the sirloin end and is the one bistros usually mean when they write bavette on a chalkboard. The flanchet is the cheaper and chewier of the two, with long parallel fibres, almost no marbling and a strong beef flavour, and it is the same cut that Americans grill for fajitas and the British call flank or skirt. In France it has traditionally been a pot-au-feu or braising cut, and more recently a grilled steak for those who want flavour over tenderness; in Argentina it is the matambre, stuffed and rolled; in Mexico it is arrachera, marinated and grilled for tacos. The cut rewards knowledge and punishes carelessness more than any other steak.

Everything about cooking it follows from the fibres. The steak is thin, two to three centimetres at most, and the grain runs visibly along its length, so it is often marinated for a few hours in oil, acid and aromatics to soften the surface and season it deeply, though salt and time alone do most of the work. It is cooked hot and fast, on a grill or in a smoking pan, for two to three minutes a side to rare or medium-rare and no further, because the fibres tighten and go tough past that point; a flanchet cooked to medium is already a different, chewier piece of meat. It rests for five minutes, then the step that matters most: it is sliced thin, on a diagonal, across the grain, so that each slice contains short fibre fragments rather than long strands. Served whole it is a mistake; served sliced against the grain it is tender enough to eat with a fork.

Judge it on the slicing before anything else, because a plate of flanchet cut with the grain is tough regardless of how well it was cooked, and a plate cut against it is the cut at its best. The surface should be deeply charred, the interior red to pink and juicy, and the flavour should be beefier than a fillet or a sirloin, with the marinade or the salt in support. Mark down meat cooked beyond medium-rare, which will be grey and fibrous, slices that are thick or cut lengthwise, an unrested steak that has bled across the plate, a marinade so acidic the surface has gone mealy, and a kitchen that has sold flanchet at aloyau prices without saying which it is. A good one comes with frites, a shallot or chimichurri sauce and a sharp knife, and the knife should barely be needed.

Bavette de flanchet

There was a meat on the table and i couldn’t finish it at all. 

I asked my meat to be medium which was but i couldn’t chew the meat at all. After couple of tries i stopped to be honest.

Too much black pepper no salt at all. Why do you even sell this?

THE BLACK LAB

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