Just had to add this to this thread, had a ridiculous entree the other night at a favorite restaurant. Filet mignon, in puff pastry, topped with king crab chunks and hollandaise. I could feel my arteries hardening, and there was so much crab atop the steak that I couldn't eat all of it. Defnitely a fine way to eat a filet!

Take one bite of the Filet at Charlie Palmers in Las Vegas and you will never want to eat any other cut of meat for the rest of your life (of course you wont want to eat anywhere else for that matter)...I have been known to book last minute, one night trips to Vegas for this very reason.

The best filet we have ever had (over 80 years combined) can be found at the Brasserie Grille in the Christiana Hilton in Newark, DE!

Bandera has a Worcestershire butter they put on their filet that is exceptionally good. Their skillet cornbread is also very good

As a native Midwesterner who grew up in cow country on corn feed beef, the fillet mignon was never really one of my favorites. A top sirloin, KC strip or London broil were served weekly in our home. The fillet just requires too much doctoring to impart much flavor and the flavor is ordinarily the flavor of the sauce, bacon or spices and not the meat. Having said that, I wouldn't turn one down if just done simply (salt, pepper, broiled at high heat, medium rare) with some creamed spinach and a nice hearty red wine to wash it all down.

You didn't buy and freeze a number of those because? You can easily trim the tenderloin and make your own cuts. You can also drag age them yourself at home fairly easily.

That could be your problem right there.

A drag aged piece of meat. This one, not so tender.

I prefer filets for the following reasons:

1. I hate fat. I nearly gag when I get a piece of fat in my mouth. This results in a couple of things:
(a) I prefer less-marbled cuts of beef. The filet avoids the fat, yet still has a greater level of tenderness.
(b) I can't stand to pay a bunch of money for a steak that requires me to trim off 50% of its mass in fat.

2. I like bloody-as-hell steaks. The filet is one of the thicker cuts that yields a high bloody-meat-to-cooked-surface ratio

3. I do not want to spend my dinner cutting out all the useless crap that I won't eat: fat, bones, connective tissue. I get paid to perform autopsies, so I don't volunteer to do them for free at dinnertime.

Fat does not "equal" flavor. Or, if it does, then the statements "salt equals flavor" and "Tabasco sauce equals flavor" are equally correct (and nonsensical). Wine expert Kevin Zraly would probably yell at you and say that fat has no flavor at all (since it is neither sweet salty, sour, or bitter), merely mouthfeel.

Your argument is typical of people who tend to eat corn-fed beef. An aged, grass-fed steak, no matter the cut, will have plenty of flavor, I assure you.

It has fame for being expensive, but it is often not. When you consider the waste involved in a cut that has bone, gristle, and fat, the per-ounce cost of a filet is about the same. Sometimes the absolute cost is lower than a NY strip on the same menu.

I, like another poster mentioned, rarely order a steak in a restaurant because I can do it just as well at home. That said. I almost always order a Filet in restaurants and usually buy Ribeyes for home

Well. Now that would certainly be embarassing.

And wrong.

I was just kidding.

I actually think it would be really funny to be "corrected" by someone who uses words like mouthfeel.

I get it - filet is the cut for people who really don't like to eat meat.

I personally find that the surgery is well worth the effort when you are talking about meat cooked on the bone vs. meat cooked on its own. Meat cooked on the bone has a completely different (and IMHO, better) flavor than meat cooked without the bone. Perhaps that's why so many people need sauce for their filets.

And a nice seared layer of fat around the edge makes a NY strip just about perfect, even without the bone.