An Ode to Tri-Tip
If you’ve spent most of your time in the Midwest or East Coast, you likely haven’t heard of Tri-Tip before. You’ll thank us for changing that.
Introduced to us by our Californian friend (and expert tri-tip grill master) Dennis, the steak is the staple of Santa Maria Style barbecuing. It is an incredibly flavorful, tender, well-marbled steak - and makes one of the best steak sandwiches we’ve ever had.
As luck would have it, our journey took us right through the Santa Maria region. On our way up to Pinnacles National Park we stopped in San Luis Obispo (shortened to SLO if you live there), just north of Santa Maria. We hit up the Firestone Grill, and had one of the best meals of the trip: Tri-Tip sandwich. Tri-Tip salad. And some pretty solid fries to top it all off.
And just in case you aren’t sold yet, here’s some photos of a not-terrible job I did a couple 4ths of July ago at grilling and serving Tri-Tip.
Most local butcher shops will be able to get Tri-Tip, and there are plenty of good instructional videos online about the best ways to grill it up.
Do yourselves and your friends a favor, and tri it out (see what I did there).