“Have you ever been to Howlin Ray’s?” asks chef Kevin Meehan. “It’s the shit.”
When he first visited Chinatown’s Howlin’ Ray's, the Kali chef experienced something beyond the euphoric red crunch of poultry, beyond the numb lips, beyond the avalanche of forehead moisture and that endorphin-charged need to consume a bird that hurts so good. It was all about the seasoning: a cayenne, paprika, brown sugar and ghost pepper dusting of breasts, wings, and thighs beyond anything Meehan had previously known. “It’s not just fried chicken,” he says, “it’s a dining experience.”
He couldn’t shake that Far East Plaza blend of spices, so he did what comes naturally: Meehan stepped inside his Larchmont Village stunner of contemporary California cuisine, and he cooked something new. His pop-up-turned-brick-and-mortar—with such limited kitchen square footage that Meehan famously grows herbs and vegetables in the lawns of the restaurant’s residential neighbors—would be ground zero for a Howlin’ Ray's-inspired dish. One that wouldn’t attempt to compete with spiciness levels, but would share in the goal of mass protein powdering. And he knew exactly what he wanted to elevate: a rib-eye.
“What I use is Flannery Beef prime Holstein meat,” Meehan says. “This is the kush shit. I don’t serve it because it’s cool, I serve it because it’s delicious.” And because a dry-aged cow canvas is already substantially more flavor-packed than fresh chicken, this wouldn’t make sense as a Nashville-hot, singed-tongue situation—this would be done the Kali way, using Chino Farms black garlic.
The restaurant’s iconic wheat berry “risotto” is cooked with a fermented broth, which leaves behind a soggy black-garlic byproduct. When later dried and ground, it creates a garlic powder that’s less pungent than what you’d find at a typical pizzeria, and with more of an umami-powered profile. Meehan mixes this with salt, pepper and a few other hush-hush ingredients inside a shaker labeled Howlin’, which he generously pumps onto his Flannery beef à la Howlin' Ray’s owner Johnny Ray Zone. The Holstein rib-eye is slowly seared in its own trimmed and rendered fat, in keeping with Meehan’s waste philosophy. The onyx char-crusted American beauty is then garnished with another shake or two of the Howlin’ black ash and whatever onions looked best at the farmers market earlier in the day, and finally, dollops of black-garlic ketchup.
At $70 you’ll be tempted to split the dish with a partner, or maybe skip it entirely, but with nearby mouth-party palaces Gwen and APL charging similar and even higher prices, Kali’s 16-ounce rib-eye makes too much sense for anyone on a red-meat prowl. The experience is a carnivorous carnival of dry-aged beef, melting fat and a subtle yet singular outer-caramelized coating that all started with a Chinatown chicken trip.
Kali is located at 5722 Melrose Ave, open from noon to 2pm and 6 to 10pm Monday to Friday, from 6 to 10pm Saturday, and from 11am to 2pm and 6 to 10pm Sunday.