Restaurants and steakhouses, and the chefs in them, needed a dish that would get heads turning. Not that technical identicality is going to stop a restaurant from marketing their food. That means the tomahawk is a conscious stylistic choice, not a revelatory or epiphany-inducing cut of meat off a tiny little rare part of the cow. It’s just that a tomahawk steak has that extra two-foot section of rib sticking off of it. They both cook the same, cut the same, and eat the same.

The meat for both steaks comes from the same part of the cow and has a big chunk of bone attached. How could its quality be exaggerated? But the more specific John got, the more his answer (and mild cynicism) made sense.įrom a technical perspective, a tomahawk and a ribeye are practically identical. A thick, juicy, tender, flavorful steak attached to a caveman’s ax handle. It’s a tomahawk steak, for Pete’s sake! Everyone talks about it like it’s the ultimate cut of meat. We were a bit taken aback by his honesty. The tomahawk steak is a high-quality, good-looking steak with an inflated price tag. The baseline John established almost as soon as our conversation started was that a tomahawk is a very good cut of meat but it’s as popular as it is mostly due to its visual appeal. So welcome to the pricey and maybe overhyped world of tomahawk steaks. We learned a lot from the guy and we’ll do our best to pass along his knowledge. He had a lot of good stuff to say about tomahawk steaks and an endearing, matter-of-fact way of saying it. They’ve been serving the area for more than a century, which we’d say imbues him with a certain amount of firsthand and inherited expertise. Our guy writing this article is based in Wilmington, Delaware, so he talked to local butcher John Eleutheriou at Haldas Market to learn all there is to know about tomahawk steaks. We wanted to get expert advice from a real-life human. And not just quick-Google-search educated.

But how did the tomahawk steak become so popular? And why is it so damn expensive? With tomahawk steaks in the spotlight for the moment, we thought we should get at least a little educated on them. You’ve likely seen posts pop up on your social media feeds with customers wielding this premium cut of steak like its namesake weapon.

The current darling of both foodies and chefs appears to be the bombastic tomahawk steak. It wasn’t that long ago that wagyu beef was all the rage in high-end restaurants. The culinary world churns through trendy dishes with remarkable speed.

Tomahawk steak price