Piedmontese is Primo: The tender cut is low in fat, high in flavor and chock-full of protein.

By Ric Bohy

Gene Baratta, a missionary for meat, flops a couple of Cryovac-sealed slabs of beef on his cutting table, cuts them open and slices a thick piece of prime rib from each.

As soon as the air hits them, their slightly purple cast disappears and is replaced by bright, fresh red. It's just about the only thing they have in common.

"This one has everything you usually look for in good beef," Baratta says, hefting the piece of USDA Choice Black Angus prime rib, its outer surfaces capped by hard, white fat, which also heavily marbles the muscle itself. This, as every beef lover knows, is where much of the taste and tenderness lies. It's taken to the nth degree in one of the priciest types of beef in the world, Japanese Kobe, where cattle are hand-fed bottled beer and get daily massages to distribute their fat throughout the muscle. It's extraordinary, raw or cooked.

"Now this one," Baratta says, hefting the other piece of prime rib in his left hand, "goes against everything I know as a meat man." Except for a small, creamy white cap of fat at its small end and a couple of tiny, y-shaped cores of fat in the thick of the muscle, this cut is otherwise nearly fat free. "If somebody showed this to me before I knew what it was, I'd have said it was junk, get it out of here."

Baratta, whose family has sold wholesale meat and seafood from their Fairway Packing Co., in Eastern Market, for about 50 years, then launches into a sermon on meat. Specifically Piedmontese beef, of which Fairway is the largest distributor in the country.

"Pied," as Baratta calls it almost affectionately, isn't normal beef. It's almost paranormal. Raised for more than a century in Italy's Piedmont region in the foothills of the Alps, it comes from a particularly broad shouldered, short-horn "double-muscled" steer. Described simply, that means it has denser muscle (meat) and less fat.

It has so much less fat and cholesterol that some cuts compare favorably with skinless chicken, it whomps the bejeezus out of traditional choice beef (which Baratta says accounts for go percent of the restaurant market) and has far more protein than any of it. Ask for a testimonial, and Baratta will tell you that in the more recent time since Pied was introduced to this country in the mid-'80s, the American Heart Association has endorsed it as heart-smart for healthy people over age 2.

"It makes up only a tiny fraction of the beef we sell, but I truly believe it's the future of the industry," Baratta says. This despite a cost premium of about 20 percent, making it comparable in price to USDA Prime. Increased production may one day shrink that high price, but it still will be dictated to some degree by the rock-rigid certification process for Piedmontese. It's tested at the slaughterhouse where inspectors "pull plugs" from the beef and test them for the presence of a gene that appears only in Pied. Then the USDA analyzes the beef for 13 points of provenance, including the absence of antibiotics and growth hormones. If it misses any one of these points, it can't be sold as certified Piedmontese.

If this, so far, sounds a bit like the marketing for buffalo meat some years back - absent the finicky certification process - it is. But the comparison stops there. Pied, properly cooked in about a third the time of traditional beef because of its low-fat makeup, is at least as tender and juicy as any meat you'll find. As for flavor, I sampled the prime rib cuts side by side and gave the edge, a very slight edge, to the Black Angus. Tasted at different times, I couldn't discern a difference.

There is, however, a marked difference in taste between the traditional ground-beef burger at Royal Oak's Red Coat Tavern - its signature, and long one of the top burgers in the area - and its Piedmontese burger. Try one with all the usual Red Coat toppings and you won’t go back, even at $1 more. Combine that with the fact that the half-pound patty of Pied has only 5 grams of fat, compared to a McDonald's Quarter Pounder - half the size, but with 22 fat grams. Wash the Pied burger down with a chilled stein of Czechoslovakian Pilsner Urquell, my perennial vote for the finest beer there is, throw some onion rings on the side, and you have a tough-to-beat lunch or dinner.

Giovanni's, the grand old (but nicely face-lifted) southwest Detroit Italian house, offers Piedmontese filets and tenderloins. Dearborn County Club, too, serves Pied filets, as does the upscale, Sinatra-certified Excalibur in Southfield, which grills the butter-tender, juicy cut to a turn and still likes the looks of a nicely togged clientele enough to ask for jackets and ties on the men after 7 p.m.

But there's just one restaurant in metro Detroit - and it makes the same claim nationally - that serves only Piedmontese beef: La Bistecca Italian Grille. It's fitting in this thoroughly Italian, energetically excellent white-linen operation, opened about three years ago on a rather arid stretch of concrete in Plymouth.

Because I have limited space here, suffice to say that you'll have a four-star experience in a dining room elegantly outfitted with a combination of traditional and contemporary fittings; an expert waitstaff (I have to mention Wendy Gonzalez by name) headed by general manager Ray Borden; and a smart wine list that recently earned La Bistecca a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. The fact that owner Jerry Costanza wears chef's whites and works the floor, personally refreshing water glasses and coffee cups, and personally tending to his clients' needs, itself speaks for the quality of the experience here.

As for the food - wrap your imagination around such dishes as Chef Giuseppe Arella's appetizer of fresh mission figs (sorry, this is a seasonal special) stuffed with mascarpone and prosciutto, sauced, with a port wine reduction; tender veal Marsala; and a meal that always begins with tangy marinated bean salad and crusty, peasanty ciabatta, one of my favorite breads. Another favorite is the housemade spumoni, here ratcheted up with a coating of chocolate hardened into a crisp shell.

But the star of the food show at La Bistecca is the 20-ounce porterhouse steak - Piedmontese, because it's all they serve - with caramelized onions and sometimes with that favorite Italian green, broccoli raab or rapini. Do yourself a favor and don't ask for it grilled past medium. That's a waste of truly fine meat. And if it's not the most tender, tastiest porterhouse you've ever had, call me and we'll argue about it.

Certified Piedmontese beef is sold retail at all Hiller's Market locations, and Long Lake Market in West Bloomfield.

Meat missionary Baratta says he's happy to sell Piedmont beef to retail customers - at wholesale prices at his Fairway Packing Co. In the lobby is a photo of Baratta with a Piedmontese steer. There's a look of love in the meat man's eyes. It's not, incidentally, returned by the steer.

Fairway Packing Co., 1313 Erskine, in Detroit's Eastern Market; 313-832-2710. La Bistecca Italian Grille, 39405 Plymouth Rd., Plymouth; 734-254-0400. Giovanni's, 330 S. Oakwood, Detroit; 313-841-0122. Excalibur Restaurant, 28875 Franklin Rd., Southfield; 248-358-3355. Red Coat Tavern, 31542 Woodward, Royal Oak; 248-549-0300. Hiller's Market, call 248-344-1030 Long Lake Market, 1075 W. Long Lake Rd., Bloomfield Hills; 248-647-2266.

Bohy is HOUR Detroit's editor, and chief food and restaurant critic.