The waiting game: At Porto, an innovative piece of equipment gets used in innovative ways
Back in 2017 during the annual National Restaurant Show, Executive Chef Marcos Campos visited the booth of Dry Ager, a German company creating cutting-edge equipment for dry-aging meat. Marcos was already familiar with Dry Ager, which blends old-world methods with state-of-the-art technology, from seeing it in use in European restaurants.
And he was definitely knowledgeable about the benefits of aging meat — a process that naturally intensifies flavor and increases tenderness — from working at his father’s butcher shop in Valencia, Spain, since the age of 13.
But Marcos saw other possibilities for the Dry Ager beyond its meat magic and wanted to explore what it could do for fish and seafood. Turns out, the folks at Dry Ager were curious too and Marcos became a U.S. brand ambassador for the company to do just that.
In Porto’s Atrium, just beyond the wood-burning grill, you’ll see the two beautiful glass-and-stainless steel cabinets perched on the counter. Take a closer look and you’ll see whole turbot and John Dory hanging next to seafood sausages and tuna belly wrapped in seaweed. Through his experiments, Marcos discovered that, like with meat, the flavors of dry-aged fish are concentrated from the reduction of water. But unlike with traditional methods there isn’t much shrinkage. The Dry Ager’s precise controls for temperature and humidity, ideal airflow and continuous sterilization, work together to create a perfect microclimate for aging fish, and yes, meat, in Porto’s case a Spanish-style dry-aged grass-fed beef called Vaca Vieja.
