Designing Delicious: Asador Bastian

Chicago hardly needed another steakhouse. The former meatpacking capital’s storied beef culture stretches back over a century, with Gene & Georgetti and Gibsons among its enduring institutions. Doug Psaltis added a glossier sensibility to that tradition with RPM Steak in 2014, pairing a sprawling selection of domestic and imported beef with a sleek dining room.

For Asador Bastian in River North, Psaltis and Hsing Chen—his pastry chef wife, business partner, and French Laundry alum—looked to the grill houses of San Sebastián. The meal centers on txuleton: a thick, bone-in ribeye cooked over charcoal and sliced to share. Patrons choose among beef selections whose flavors reflect the animals’ breed, diet, and maturity. Following Basque tradition, Psaltis seeks out older cattle, including retired dairy cows, for their deeper flavor.

The restaurant opened in 2023 inside the 1883 Flair House, which underwent an extensive renovation. “We kept the facade and replaced the nervous system, the vertebrae, everything,” Psaltis says. Designer David M. Sullivan furnished the bar with olive-green leather banquettes and red-oak millwork. Upstairs, 1930s Murano glass chandeliers illuminate the dining room, while a 10-seat chef’s table in the kitchen gives guests a direct view of the grill.

Psaltis consults five boutique producers for each offering, drawing from Japanese wagyu, French Simmental, Australian galiciana, and more. The butcher’s room is his cathedral. “I always think there’s kind of an elegant brutality,” Psaltis says. “It’s kind of like the movie American Psycho, with big chunks of meat that I just carved.”

From there, Psaltis trades the blade for the flame, cooking the steaks over white-oak embers that lend their aroma to the beef and produce a melt-in-your-mouth-worthy caramelization. “That’s the magic where the meat gets really perfumed by the charcoal,” Psaltis says. The menu’s Spanish influences extend to pintxos-style sides and seafood sourced from Barcelona’s markets, with turbot al pil-pil and spider crab arroz cremoso among the offerings. Psaltis has plenty to say about beef, but Chen’s burnt Basque cheesecake gets the last word.