Go ahead and lick your chops because a new Meat Market is bringing dramatic dining to Boca Raton.
The sexy-swanky steakhouse has an opening night set for Thursday, Oct. 5, and a chef-tastic menu with Instagrammable dishes such as the 64-ounce Swinging MS-9 Wagyu Tomahawk Ribeye served suspended and rum-flamed at your table. There is also — from the bar — a Bone Marrow Luge, a somewhat self-explanatory shot poured through an inner bone.
“We like to push our creativity to the highest level and are always setting new trends for ourselves through research and experimentation, like our housemade selection of sauces and butters, and we’re now hand-carving ice blocks to hold our caviar,” says executive chef Sean Brasel, who has appeared and competed on TV shows “Miami Ink,” “Chopped” and “Knife Fight,” and was even dubbed “Grilling God” by Food Republic.
The Tampa-based Meat Market splashed onto the SoFlo scene in 2008 with a now-shuttered venue in Miami Beach. In 2014, they opened in Palm Beach, garnering glowing reviews, and there is also a franchise-owned eatery at the Fairmont El San Juan Hotel in Puerto Rico. Now the plan is to have a next-level location in buzzy Midtown Boca Raton, near Town Center mall.
This latest eatery iteration, at 6,000 square feet, will have a main dining room, a bar/lounge, two private rooms (that can be combined to form one space) and two outdoor covered patio dining areas. On the horizon is the launch of weekly events Meat Market Wednesdays and After Work Fridays
The new Meat Market is adjacent to the Renaissance Boca Raton Hotel, which is itself undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation expected to be completed later in October. At the hotel, Meat Market has plans to open WET by Meat Market, a standalone tiki bar with its own food and beverage menu for both resort guests and the public. The kitchen will also be the caterer for the Renaissance’s corporate and social banquets and events.
Meat Market is at 2000 NW 19th St., Boca Raton. For reservations, go to meatmarket.net or call 561-245-6777.
Here is more about the restaurant in excerpts — edited for brevity and clarity — from interviews with Brasel, as well as CEO/partner David Tornek and COO/partner Sebastien Tribout.
Q: Why Boca Raton?
Tornek: I lived in Miami Beach for many years, and we had a Meat Market down there, and we also — before Meat Market — had Touch restaurant. So we would always get people down from Boca … (who) would always say to us, “Why can’t you do something like this in Boca?” At first, you know, we … went to Palm Beach. And then, going between Miami and … Palm Beach as many times as I have, I kept thinking to myself: Why aren’t we doing something in Boca? … The population in Boca has … changed over the last five to seven years and especially the last few years, and there’s a lot more people in Boca that want to go out and have a great time.
Q: Is there anything different from your other locations?
Tribout: The fact that we are serving breakfast is definitely different from Tampa and Palm Beach or Puerto Rico. So the breakfast element is one of the unique things that Midtown Boca would have if we compare this entity to the other restaurants. I’m a big breakfast fan. I love breakfast. I can see that the Boca Raton demography liked it too because I see a lot of breakfast options when I drive around.
Brasel: It has a few more rooms. We did a little wine room. Yeah, it’s bigger. You know being able to combine the pool aspect with the dining aspect can also put some cool things (in our plans). So it gives us the ability if we want to do some al fresco dinners by the pool.
Tornek: When you come … and you see the way we did the dining room, with these kind of like little nooks with the banquettes, it’s more Boca. People in Boca, we feel, are going to really appreciate that. We want to always be a local restaurant. We never want to be just a chain restaurant that just comes in and and, you know, it’s the same as every other restaurant. So there’s always going to be a part of the menu that’s different in each location, based on the chef that we have there. And then every day we have — it’s more than just the chef specials — a whole page of all kinds (of menu items): There’s like a drink of the month, there’s different food items, there’s different wines, there’s different desserts. And the impetus of that was that we are fortunate to have a lot of repeat business during the week and so people are coming in all the time. They don’t want to have the same thing sometimes. Sometimes they do. You can come here five times a week and you’re gonna get something different five times a week. So that’s the objective of having that type of a menu. … Each restaurant is going to have a different chef and a different creation as far as those food items, so that’s going to make it a little different.
Q: What can you tell us about the partnership with the Renaissance hotel?
Brasel: It’s a new adventure for us. We’ve done catering. I’ve catered the Super Bowl and catered, you know, huge events. To be able to combine the restaurant with … the hotel aspect and be able to bring catering in, the pool and everything, I think it’s going to be another level up for us. The excitement for me is being able to do things with the pool, being able to do things in the catering aspect. The possibilities for what we can do are just exponential now.
Q: What about the activations and special weekly events that are slated to start in November?
Tornek: When you walk through those doors, you’re going to have an experience. And I know everybody says that, it’s kind of cliché, but at the end of the day, that’s our objective. That’s my personal objective. … When someone walks through the doors, they can forget the news, they can forget the politics, they can forget everything that causes stress during the day. And for two hours, they can just enjoy themselves. They just sit back, relax, have great food, great service and great ambience.
Q: What makes the Boca Raton clientele unique?
Brasel: Boca, from my experience, is a little more, say, pickier clientele, because they have a little bit of that “I’m from New York” type attitude. But by the same aspect, they also know quality. So I have a lot of contacts with a lot of my Japanese (purveyors). I’m working on some new contacts with some Australian meat distributors. So I think Boca is probably going to lend itself to being able to showcase some of the best meat that I can personally purchase in the world.
Q: Can you describe the innovative menu?
Tribout: We spend a lot of time and resources on what we call research and development. We are lucky enough to travel a lot and to have a passion for what we do. … We always try to combine two things: consistency in the quality, but innovation in the making of everything. We understood a long time ago that the visual has a lot to do with the success of one of our dishes or one of our drinks. And we’re really on the front line. I mean chef Sean (Brasel) is in one of his restaurants six days a week. I’m the same way. We’re looking at the expression of our guests when they see that flaming tomahawk caught on fire at the table or that hot drink with a little float of liquor on top that’s basically burning while you get it to your table, that’s part of the experience, not just the visual and the show aspect of it, but the consistency of the product — not just being forced to have a visual effect, but also having the … quality of the product that matches the visual of it.
Q: What about the beverage program?
Tornek: Our specialty cocktail program is constantly evolving, constantly changing. In Tampa, we just rolled out a rare bourbon list that nobody else has. We’ll do the same thing here in Boca. We’ll do a cocktail of the month … and if people love it, then we want to put it on the regular menu. … With our beverage program, we try to be as as top-notch as we are in our food.
Tribout: Well, we have a very specific beverage program for the pool bar — extremely rosé- and sparkling-heavy — because it’s organic for us to offer lighter beverages at the pool bar vs. the robust wine program we’ve designed for the restaurant guest. Given the nature of the beautiful resort pool environment and the surrounding VIP cabanas, we’ll be offering guests beverage programs that are “chillier” in nature and are very light and refreshing for daytime sips. … We will also have some frozen drinks available at the pool bar. In the main dining room at the restaurant at dinner time, we have about 30 to 32 wine-by-the-glass (options), representing the whole entire world, the old world and the new world.
Q: You bill this modern take on a steakhouse as being “feminine friendly.” What does that mean?
Tornek: Way back to when we started … we would go to a lot of steakhouses and they were all the same. It was the dark woods and if you ordered steak, it was great. If you want fish, forget about it. It tasted like you didn’t even want to eat it, like it had been in the refrigerator for 10 years. So we decided to do the exact opposite. The dynamic was changing. Women were going out on their own. They didn’t need a man. They have plenty of money to spend for themselves. And that was the start of it. And women like steak just as much as men do. If they don’t order steak or if they’re vegetarian, let’s give them some great dishes instead of making them feel like, “Oh, you shouldn’t be here because you’re not ordering steak.” And then on the steak side, we decided to go ahead and have the smaller cut, which was a 6-ounce fillet. And so what we did is we started with the decor. We didn’t go darker, we went to light. We went sexy, we went pretty instead of male-oriented heaviness. And then with the menu we went the same way. … So if a guy comes in and wants to have a 12-ounce fillet, you can have it. But if a woman comes in and wants a 6-ounce, they can have that too. Nowadays it’s kind of flipped. Now women are coming in and ordering 12 ounces and the guys are ordering 6 ounces. … You know, over time, things change, dynamics change, and I think it’s important to be aware of them and to be out in front of them.
Q: What have you learned from all the other Meat Markets and all the other restaurants you’ve opened and been involved with that served you well here with this project?
Brasel: Listen to your customer. Are they ordering it? Don’t try and force something on them that they don’t want to eat. Give them what they want. But then … there’s going to be four people at the table (and) three of them want something simple and the fourth guest wants to be creative. If you have that ability, and you listen to your customers, then that’s how you succeed. … I think the biggest thing that I learned through the business and through (doing this) over and over is, it doesn’t matter how much I’m in love with my dish, if the customers aren’t, it doesn’t matter. Listen to my customers.
