FYR's New Executive Chef Dives into Dry Aging
We talked with chef Zach Warn about the restaurant's beefed-up dry-aging program. Plus, we share the results of our recent brownie taste-off.
Chef Zach Warn Has Big Plans for FYR’s Dry-Aging Program
By Erin Edwards
Hotel restaurants play a unique role in our food scene. They often give outsiders a first impression of a city, for better or worse. They can also be a place for celebration, or, if you’re a local, to feel like you’re “not in Columbus.” Hotels are also a place where chefs have the budget to up the ante on ingredients.
Chef Zach Warn, the new executive chef at FYR in the Hilton Columbus Downtown, knows a thing or two about hotel dining. He and his family recently moved to Columbus from Las Vegas, where he was executive chef at T-Bones Chophouse inside the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa. He’s also done stints at Amalfi by Bobby Flay at Caesars Palace and FIX Restaurant & Bar at the Bellagio, among others.
Whereas Warn’s predecessor at FYR, chef Sebastian La Rocca, drew greatly from his South American heritage when developing the restaurant’s menu, Warn appears to be leaning into his fishing and farm-to-table roots growing up in Crescent City, California, near the Oregon border.
“I grew up doing farm to table with our family out of necessity,” he says. “That’s just how they lived.”
After living in the desert for 12 years, he says he started to miss seasonality. Moving to Ohio and joining FYR has afforded him an opportunity to connect more with local farmers and purveyors, such as Hershberger’s Farm for produce and RL Valley Ranch for beef.
“We [had] access to anything from around the world at our fingertips [in Vegas], but getting out here and immediately going to these farms and seeing the cows and cattle, it’s just a different feel as a chef.”
What is Dry Aging?
Along with his steakhouse experience at T-Bones Chophouse, Chef Warn brings to FYR a particular interest in dry aging, a process that uses dehydration to tenderize proteins and concentrate flavor. Though dry aging is most associated with beef, Warn is interested in using a similar process on just about whatever he can get his hands on—from duck to amberjack to scallops.
As Warn explains: “When we’re dry aging [beef], the lactic acid bacteria will start breaking down the outside of the meat. The enzymes will start making the meat tender. And with that lactic acid bacteria, it starts giving you kind of that funky, dry-age flavor. So, we’re looking to dehydrate, dry out that outside [of the beef], create that lactic acid bacteria and those enzymes.”
FYR uses large-format, bone-in primals like strip loins and rib-eyes for its dry-aging program. These large steaks spend weeks in the restaurant’s airflow-controlled, DRY AGER-brand dry aging cabinets. Some beef cuts are aged for 30 days, while tomahawks ($205 on the menu) are aged 45 days.
During the process, a dry-aged steak will start to form a bark-like crust called a pellicle. This crust is most often removed. Though not inedible, Warn says, “It’s just too much funk than any human being would really want to have.”
One reason why your dry-aged steak is expensive? Dry aging results in a lower yield because proteins lose water and trimming is required to remove the meat’s dry exterior. (That’s why you won’t see smaller cuts like filet mignon. You’d have to trim away too much, plus they’re tender already.)
But for steak lovers, there’s a payoff with dry aging: a tender steak with a concentrated, deeply umami, nutty—and sometimes funky—flavor.
“Once you take off that super rough outside, you just get this gorgeous bright red [interior]. The flavor is absolutely amazing,” Warn says.
FYR’s Approach to Dry-Aged Beef
FYR’s approach is a bit different in that it bastes its dry-aged steaks with Middle West’s Spirits’ Straight Wheated Bourbon in order to reduce surface mold.
“One thing that we’re not really looking for is fungal growth [when dry aging],” explains Warn. “So when the pellicle forms, that’s when we really start basting with the bourbon to keep down surface growth.”
That means a lot of babysitting, from basting daily to making sure these steaks don’t spend too much time in the cabinet getting overly funky.
“The hardest part about [dry aging] is it takes time to make money on those pieces of meat,” Warn says. “You’re investing in your dry age, you’re investing in product that you have to continuously check everyday, because to lose 15 grand worth of meat, it would crush you. Plus, you have to build it back up in a 30 day timeframe.
“It’s kind of the fun and the chaos of it,” he adds.
Dry-Aged Fish, Duck & More
Chef Warn has already added dry-aged Ora King salmon from New Zealand ($135) to the FYR menu. With fish, Warn takes a different approach than the one used for dry aging beef.
“The difference between us doing seafood versus beef is we’re not looking for lactic acid bacteria, we’re not looking for funk, we’re not looking for spoilage or mold,” he explains. “When you see the cabinet, you’ll see there’s a light on top that prevents bacterial growth. For the salmon that we have in there, we’ll keep them in about 10 days. … They look fresh. The skin will definitely look a little leathery, but once you cut [the fish] open, it’s the brightest color, it’s this amazing fat content. It’s really a special thing.”
As March nears, Warn says he’s gearing up for the Arnold Festival—a customer base that is serious about proteins and tallow (a newly trendy beef byproduct that the FYR kitchen uses liberally). “We were gonna dry age some bison and get some cool cuts for those guys,” he says.
In springtime, Warn plans to start dry aging more seafood such as swordfish, amberjack and whole branzino. Warn says he’ll soon begin introducing dry-aged Hudson Valley duck as well. (Keep an eye out for a series of Friday duck dinners at FYR.)
“The cool thing about dry aging is it doesn’t stop there,” Warn says. “You could put scallops in there for 24 hours to dry those up and get a real nice firm texture, and then you get that amazing sear on them.”
Where’s the Beef?
During my visit to FYR this winter, the restaurant’s dry-aging cabinets were tucked away in the back, next to the kitchen. Soon, Warn plans to move them up front near the entrance.
“I mean, we’re proud of what we’re doing,” he says. “I think if you had some crazy science experiment going on with a bunch of crazy fungal growth—that might not be what people want to see. The way that we’re dry aging ours, I think it’s more of an art form than anything.
“We want [guests] to see where their steak comes from. We want them to know the ranch it comes from.”
Indeed, it seems FYR’s answer to “Where’s the beef?”—a question made famous by a different Columbus restaurant—is easy: front and center.
Our Brownie Taste-Off Shows Homemade is Hard to Beat
By Bethia Woolf
My friends Liz Martin and Tania Peterson are the minds behind the Columbus Cookie Classic and Columbus Baking Classic amateur baking competitions. Last weekend, Tania hosted a brownie taste test to help refine the judging rubric and work through the logistics for their upcoming brownie bake-off. Sample sizes, cutting technique, palate cleansers and more were under review. At the same time it was fun to see the results of the taste test.
We sampled 20 brownies in total, 10 homemade and 10 store-bought. We also sampled in a different order to make sure that palate fatigue did not unfairly affect the results.
When the results were revealed, we were surprised to learn that all five of the top-ranked brownies were homemade.
Top five brownies overall:
“Dessert Course” Chewy Brownies
“Dessert Course” Fudgy Brownies
Four of the top five brownies included a mix-in. Of these, three featured chocolate chips (King Arthur and both “Dessert Course” brownies), and Ina Garten’s recipe included nuts. Only one of the top five, the NYT Cooking brownie by Lidey Heuck, was a plain old brownie. That recipe currently has 4,240 5-star reviews on the NYT Cooking website.
Among the store-bought brownies, the rankings were as follows:
Bite This by Annie’s OG Not F*cking Box Brownies
Crust & Crumb was just one point ahead of No. 3
Sweet Ghost was one point behind No. 2 (Read our interview with Sweet Ghost’s founder here.)
Angie’s Rainbow Cookies’ brownie and Dorothy Lane Market’s Killer Brownie (tied)
It is worth noting that the top three store-bought brownies are all available at the Worthington Farmers Market, making it easy to organize your own blind tasting to determine a personal favorite. You can also purchase Angie’s there, but it’s a little hard to blind taste the Angie’s as they are quite distinctive!
We found it interesting that the highest-ranking brownies were all homemade. A few possible reasons? Perhaps it is hard to beat the freshness of a homemade brownie, and we suspect that store-bought versions may be baked slightly longer to improve stability and packability.
If you are interested in tasting your way through 20 brownies, or if you think your recipe could take the crown, visit columbuscookieclassic.org and mark May 17 on your calendar for the inaugural Columbus Baking Classic. Tasting tickets are expected to sell out quickly. The Columbus Cookie Classic returns this fall on Nov. 8.
The brownie tasting was a blast and made me so excited for the competition in May! I felt a bit bad for some of the bakery brownies because we intentionally selected ones with unique mix-ins to see how they'd fare, and our tasters ended up feeling like those didn't qualify as traditional brownies (something the bakers likely weren't going for to begin with). For example, I loved the Angie's rainbow cookie brownie and went back for seconds and thirds after the tasting, but it didn't make the top of my rankings because the rainbow cookie component was so prominent - something I'd want and expect if buying a rainbow cookie brownie for any other purpose.