A Strip to Bountiful

When you go to your typical local steak house, the beef isn’t the only thing that gets trimmed.

Whether mammoth national chain or home-grown meat market, these places can bone out your wallet faster than an ambidextrous butcher with a head full of methamphetamine and hands full of razor-sharp blades.

Maybe you want to begin with a simple salad or seafood appetizer. Ka-ching! Perhaps a glass of wine or a cold beer. Ka-ching! A couple of side dishes — potatoes and veggie. Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Then, of course, there’s the steak. Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Ka-ching! And that’s before tax and tip and parking. So how about a steak house where you can gorge your inner carnivore for fifteen bucks or less?

Welcome to Las Tablas Colombian Steakhouse. First, however, a few caveats. The seafood selection is pretty limited and the lone salad a pallid affair of chopped iceberg lettuce, cucumber, and pinkish, underripe tomatoes. There’s no beer or wine license, so no beer or wine. You can get potatoes, but vegetables are uncommon. And the steaks don’t have some fancy-ass Japanese pedigree.

On the other hand, the beef is tasty, modestly tender, and precisely cooked. If you want a cold one or a glass of red, you’re welcome to bring your own. The food is filling and portions are large enough to eliminate any real need for appetizers or extra starches or vegetables. And then there’s the price — no more than $15 for anything on the menu.

Appetizers are okay, though not nearly as good as entrées. Beef and potato empanadas are flavorful, but their pastry wrapper is unfortunately tough. Arepas are better, if a little pasty. Snatch some of the wickedly delicious criolla sauce from the papa chorriada — a single red potato blanketed with sauce and molten mozzarella — and they become a lot more appealing.

Of course there’s churrasco, and it’s quite good — a New York steak, cut thin but still medium-rare under its perfectly seared-charred exterior. You can get it alone or in combination with a half-dozen equally carefully grilled prawns and chimichurri that trends more sour than tart owing to the inclusion of green olives.

What I liked even more was bistec a caballo. It’s a meat-lover’s portion of crusty-tender skirt steak smothered in a terrific criolla sauce — tomatoes and onions, long and lovingly cooked until deeply caramelized and almost mahogany brown — and topped with a pair of over-easy fried eggs. Those eggs really make the dish, releasing a stream of runny, golden yolk at the touch of a fork, enriching the smoky sauce and giving it a lushness that’s pure luxury.

And speaking of luxury, I suggest you not leave without at least one order of coconut flan, whose rich, silken texture puts most crème brûlées to shame.