Copycat Brasserie Les Halles Steak Tartare (Anthony Bourdain’s Recipe, Made at Home)
Prep time: 20 minutes (plus 30 minutes to chill plates) Cook time: None Servings: 4
Brasserie Les Halles opened in 1990 on Park Avenue South in Gramercy. Anthony Bourdain worked there as executive chef in the late 1990s, wrote Kitchen Confidential from its kitchen, and in 2004 published the restaurant’s full cookbook. The book went out of print. The restaurant closed in 2017. Bourdain died in 2018. The steak tartare recipe is still here.
The dish is 20 minutes of knife work and mixing, no cooking required. Four ingredients separate the Les Halles version from generic steak tartare: anchovy paste dissolved into the dressing before anything else, a full ounce of Cognac, a Dijon-oil emulsion rather than a thin loose sauce, and — most critically — beef that has been hand-chopped with a sharp knife. Bourdain was clear about the last point in print and in conversation: a food processor destroys steak tartare.
The Beef: What to Buy and Why It Matters
Steak tartare is raw beef. What you buy, where you buy it, and how fresh it is are not decorative concerns.
Buy from a butcher you know, and tell them specifically that the beef will be eaten raw or that you are making steak tartare. A butcher cutting a fresh piece to order for you has far less surface exposure to potential contamination than pre-packaged supermarket beef that has been processed, wrapped, and refrigerated for unknown days.
The Les Halles Cookbook specifies sirloin. Center-cut sirloin tip — sometimes labeled sirloin tip roast or loin tip steak — is the cut: lean, moderately tender, with a clean beefy flavor that is not overwhelmed by excess fat or connective tissue. Beef tenderloin (filet mignon) is the other common choice for tartare, leaner and more expensive. Both work. Tenderloin is easier to hand-chop because it is softer and has no sinew to navigate; sirloin has slightly more flavor. At $8 to $12 a pound for sirloin versus $20 to $28 for tenderloin, this recipe costs roughly $12 to $16 in beef for four servings.
Keep the beef in the refrigerator until the knife hits it. Cold beef chops cleanly. Beef at room temperature is soft, and a soft protein mashed instead of cut produces paste.
The Dressing: Anchovy, Cognac, and a Real Emulsion
Most French steak tartare dressings are thin — a loose mixture of egg yolk, Dijon, Worcestershire, and Tabasco that coats the meat lightly. The Les Halles dressing is thicker: the oil is whisked in slowly, emulsified like a vinaigrette going toward mayonnaise, which gives it body and means it clings to each piece of chopped beef rather than pooling at the bottom of the bowl.
The anchovy is the signature. Four fillets, minced to a paste against the cutting board, whisked into the egg yolk with the mustard before any other ingredient. This is not intuitive — steak tartare does not conventionally contain fish — but the anchovy does not produce a fishy flavor. Dissolved into a fat-based emulsion, anchovy behaves as a flavor amplifier: it contributes glutamates that deepen the savory quality of the beef without announcing themselves. Remove the anchovy and you can taste the absence — the dressing works but is one layer flatter. Add the anchovy and you cannot tell what it is, only that something is correct.
The Cognac goes in last, after the oil is fully incorporated. One ounce carries flavor compounds that are only soluble in alcohol and bridges the minerality of the raw beef with the acid-rich dressing.
The Chop: Eight Minutes of Knife Work
This is the part that takes patience.
Place the cold, trimmed beef on a clean cutting board. Sharp knife — the sharpest you own. Use the tip of the knife as a pivot, rocking the heel up and down across the surface in smooth strokes. Work forward across the beef, then rotate the pile 90 degrees and repeat. Gather the mince back into a pile after every few passes and start again. The goal is a uniform, fine mince — pieces about the size of a small pea, with clean edges.
The whole process takes 7 to 8 minutes for 1 1/4 pounds of beef. It requires no unusual skill, only patience and a sharp knife. The result looks different from ground beef: there is visible texture, each piece has a distinct edge, and the color is a uniform bright red from cut cell edges rather than the brownish-pink of ground beef where cells have been crushed. That texture is what you are paying for when you order tartare at a restaurant.
Food Safety: What Bourdain Actually Said
Bourdain addressed the question of raw beef food safety directly and without a disclaimer: he was aware of the risks, considered them acceptable for healthy adults who sourced carefully, and chose to serve and eat steak tartare regardless. He was not dismissive of the concern. He was specific about risk management.
The practical version: buy from a trusted butcher, specify raw use, work with cold beef, serve and eat immediately, and keep raw beef away from other foods and surfaces. Beyond that — healthy adults who eat sushi, carpaccio, oysters, or rare steak are taking a comparable food safety position with every order. Pregnant women, immunocompromised individuals, the elderly, and children under 5 should not eat raw beef.
One caution worth stating plainly, because it circulates as kitchen folklore: freezing does not make raw beef bacterially safe. Freezing at 0°F for seven days is the FDA guideline for killing parasites in fish destined for sushi — it does not reliably kill E. coli O157:H7 or Salmonella, the surface bacteria that are the actual risk in beef. The only real controls are fresh sourcing, cold handling, and immediate service. If reducing surface bacteria matters to you, sear or blanch the outside of the whole muscle for a few seconds, trim the cooked layer away, and chop the interior — the inside of an intact cut is effectively sterile.
Cost Comparison: Les Halles vs. Homemade
| Brasserie Les Halles (2017 prices) | Homemade (4 servings) | |
|---|---|---|
| Per order | ~$22–26 | — |
| 4 orders | ~$88–104 | ~$16–20 |
| Per serving | ~$22–26 | ~$4–5 |
The restaurant is gone. The recipe is in a cookbook, exactly as it was served.
Tips & Variations
- The traditional tableside presentation: In French brasseries, steak tartare is sometimes assembled tableside — the server brings the dressing components and the chopped beef separately, combines everything at the table, and shapes it in front of the guest. At home, you can replicate this by preparing the dressing in advance and chopping the beef and mixing it fresh at the moment of service. It takes 3 minutes once the prep is done, and the theatrical element is real.
- Add a raw egg yolk on top: Many classic French versions serve the tartare with an additional raw egg yolk placed in a small depression in the center of the disk. The guest mixes it in themselves at the table. This is entirely optional — the dressing already contains emulsified yolk — but it is traditional and adds richness.
- Caper berries as a garnish: The recipe calls for capers (small buds) mixed into the tartare. Caper berries — the larger fruit of the same plant — make a distinctive garnish alongside the finished plate.
- Spice adjustments: Bourdain’s recipe uses Tabasco as the heat element. Sriracha adds more garlic and vinegar; sambal oelek adds a fruitier heat. All three work; the quantity is always to taste.
- For two servings: The recipe halves cleanly. Use just under 10 oz of beef, 1 egg yolk, 1 tablespoon Dijon, 2 anchovy fillets, and halve everything else. One large sirloin steak from a butcher is usually 10 to 12 oz — buy it, use it all, and make a slightly larger portion.
More French Brasserie Classics, Made at Home
- Copycat Balthazar Steak Frites — the SoHo brasserie’s double-fried frites and hanger steak with a shallot-red wine pan sauce
- Copycat Balthazar French Onion Soup — the most copied soup in New York, made at home
- Copycat Pastis Steak Frites — the Meatpacking District brasserie rival, tarragon pan sauce
- Copycat Minetta Tavern Black Label Burger — the most famous burger in Greenwich Village, dry-aged beef and caramelized onions
- Copycat Katz’s Deli Pastrami Sandwich — the Lower East Side sandwich that has been made the same way since 1888
