Cuts of Beef Available at Peter Luger
I headed to Peter Luger for the lunchtime rush on Thursday, my stomach empty and ready to take on the massive $114.90 porterhouse for two.
I brought along my friend Will, a steak lover who has been to many of New York's top steakhouses — including Club A and Keens. I knew he'd be able to help me decide how Peter Luger's porterhouse compared to its competitors.
As I walked toward the entrance, New York's usual symphony of jackhammers filling the air, I spotted two tourists on the sidewalk. They were holding up the gold coins Peter Luger hands out with the check, happily snapping selfies with them.
Peter Luger is considered an institution in New York's dining scene, beloved by tourists and locals alike. I couldn't wait to finally try its signature dish.
The minute we walked in, the sound — and scent — of sizzling steak filled the air.
Will and I couldn't hold back our excitement as we breathed in the scent and made our way past a long line of people waiting to hear their name get called.
A man in a suit with a clipboard, who I recognized as my bartender from the week before, took down our names and told us it was about a 30-minute wait. When I inquired about bar seating, seeing it was full, he told us to keep an eye out because it was first come, first served.
Just a few minutes later, he called my name and pointed at two empty seats that had just opened up at the bar — making sure we didn't miss them.
We took our seats and the Peter Luger menu was laid out before us.
Right off the bat, the bartender explained that he was going to take our drink order while a server would come and take our food order. It seemed as if he was getting ahead of one of Wells' main gripes.
The critic had complained in his review that Peter Luger's system of ordering from two different people (as well as paying two separate tabs) when you're seated at the bar was needlessly complicated. But we hardly noticed as the server, who recognized me from the week before, came by just a few minutes later to take our food order.
Since I had already sampled the restaurant's burger, Caesar salad, fries, and bacon, our main focus was on the steak.
We ordered the medium-rare porterhouse for two, as well as the creamed spinach for two ($12.95) — which numerous diners I spoke with had raved about during my previous visit — as well as the jumbo shrimp cocktail (we paid the market price, which was $20).
The shrimp, which Wells said always tasted like "cold latex dipped in ketchup and horseradish," was up first.
The waiter brought it with a basket of bread and a plate with two squares of butter, telling us that "everything was hot" except the shrimp.
"Hot shrimp wouldn't be good," he joked, the first of many cheeky remarks he served along with the food during our lunch.
We laughed at the quip but soon found that the bread was actually quite cold. While I selected a piece that was far softer than the breadstick I tried to chew through last time, both Will and I had been hoping for some hot carbs on the chilly day.
"Bread should be warm and sticky and gooey," Will remarked, reminiscing about the puffy, pull-apart bread we had eaten at STK Downtown the year prior.
Then, it was time to actually try the jumbo shrimp cocktail.
Will found the look of the plate, which came with four large shrimp and three lemon wedges, to be a bit strange.
"That's a weird way to present shrimp cocktail," he said. "They just look sort of dumped on."
He also wasn't a huge fan of the texture, finding the shrimp to be quite rubbery. But Will did like the taste and thought the cocktail sauce complemented it well.
I liked that the shrimp were super meaty, reminding me of the prawns I used to eat when I lived in Australia. I didn't mind their chewy texture, probably in part because I kept dunking them in the cocktail sauce — which I thought had a nice tang.
Next up were the two stars of the show: the porterhouse steak and the creamed spinach.
Before I get into the steak, I need to tell you about this spinach because it was, well, incredible.
Now, I like spinach just fine, but I don't go out of my way to have it. I'm a romaine or mixed greens kind of girl when it comes to salads. I once had to make spinach-egg muffins when I tried the South Beach Diet before starting college, and I think I'm still scarred from the taste.
But I would eat an entire bowl of the creamed spinach at Peter Luger by myself if I could. Both Will and I were surprised by how much we loved it.
The spinach was soft without feeling mushy or watery, and there was a surprising depth to its flavor. It tasted so much like the filling in my mother's homemade spanakopita (Greek spinach pie) that I half-expected to find feta cheese hiding in the bowl.
And the steak looked equally promising when it arrived at our table along with the spinach.
While Will and I were working on the shrimp, our server came over and asked whether we wanted them to hold off on the porterhouse until we were done with the appetizer.
I soon realized that this is because the steak comes to your table piping hot. I kept turning my head as I heard the crackle of sizzling fat, hoping our plate was next.
The porterhouse made its entrance to our seats in similarly dramatic fashion. It was still cooking as our server balanced the platter on a smaller overturned plate, resting it at an angle. The fat pooled at the very bottom, glistening under the fluorescent lights.
"It's really hot, don't touch — just like your first date," he quipped.
I'll tell you what I thought of the steak in a second. But first you should know what makes the porterhouse at Peter Luger different from the rest.
The porterhouse at Peter Luger is cut from a short loin. On one side of the T-bone is the fillet. On the other side is the New York strip.
David Berson, Peter Luger's general manager and the great-grandson of its founders, told Insider in February that every steak was handpicked by a family member to ensure it met the restaurant's rigorous standards.
"What defines a Peter Luger steak is we only start with USDA prime, which is the highest grade the USDA will hand out," he said, referring to the United States Department of Agriculture. "From there, we will only select a small portion of it. We go out of our way to ensure each piece of meat is as good, if not better, than the next."
After the steak is brought to the restaurant, it goes into the dry-aging room in the basement for a secret amount of time.
Once the steak has been dry-aged, it gets butchered in-house. A steak at Peter Luger will always be used on the day it's butchered, according to Eater.
Next comes the cooking process. Steaks at Peter Luger are cooked on the broiler, where they are seasoned only with salt and clarified butter.
"We believe in, as my great-grandfather would say, simple goodness," Berson told Insider in February.
The steak is flipped once during the broiling process and then taken out and sliced on top of butter on a serving platter.
As Eater explained, the steak is immediately cut and not allowed to rest on the platter. It is then put back into the broiler for a few more minutes; the length of time depends on how the table ordered it.
Just before the steak is finished cooking, a waiter picks it up and brings it to the table immediately — filling the air with its sizzles and fragrance.
After the porterhouse arrived, our server placed two pieces of steak — one from the fillet side, the other from the New York strip — on our plate, along with a scoop of spinach.
He did it with such quick and practiced precision, using two spoons, it was almost as if the pieces of steak had jumped from the platter to my plate themselves.
Then, using one of the spoons, the waiter scooped up some of the fat that had pooled at the bottom of the platter and drizzled it over our pieces of steak.
As I took my first bite, I was flooded with excitement. The steak tasted amazing.
I first tried the fillet, which melted in my mouth like butter. The flavor was so rich and juicy, I didn't even feel the need to add much steak sauce — and I love sauce on everything. When the end of our meal neared, I found myself picking at the fillet's side of the T-bone, hoping to get even just a few more tiny bites of it.
I gazed at the rest of the massive steak, feeling incredibly lucky for all the goodness to come.
But my hopes were dashed when I tried my next piece, the New York strip.
I was almost taken aback when I bit into the strip, in part because I could barely bite into it. In my experience, the piece was so chewy that it was hard to eat. I could barely focus on the flavor because I kept taking sips from my glass of pinot noir, hoping it would soften up the texture.
It became apparent that I was having the same experience as Wells. The Times' critic had likewise said that while his fillet was "ideal" on a recent visit to Peter Luger, the strip "ranged from medium-rare to medium-well."
The Eater critic Robert Sietsema had also warned that sometimes the porterhouse was "on the tough side," though he noted that he "liked to chew."
Wells had also lamented how — unlike at other steakhouses — Peter Luger caramelizes only the top side of the steak, leaving the underside "barely past raw, as if it had done all its cooking on the hot platter."
My friend Will agreed, noting that only the top side had any garnish. He found that the other steakhouses he had visited were able to deliver porterhouses that were more well-rounded and cooked on both sides.
I couldn't help feeling disappointed, especially because I had loved the Peter Luger burger so much just the week before.
The patty, much like the porterhouse fillet, had been as soft as butter. And it was so plump that I could feel the juices soaking my fingers with every bite.
I prefer my burgers covered with sauces and plenty of toppings, and yet the flavor of the patty was so rich that I didn't realize there wasn't even any tomato or lettuce on the burger until I was halfway done.
Wells had said the burger was inconsistent, noting how on one visit his burger and those of the two people seated next to him at the bar were all cooked differently — even though they had all ordered medium-rare. Everyone I talked to on that day had loved their burger, however, and said it was cooked perfectly.
Will and I happily finished the fillet side of our porterhouse but couldn't get through all of the strip.
I kept hoping that something would change with each piece I took from the strip side, especially because the fillet had been so phenomenal. I tried to ease the toughness with steak sauce and spinach, but the fattiness distracted from the taste.
Will told me he found the strip side to be chewy "to the point where it was almost inedible."
What the steakhouse veteran Will did love about Peter Luger was its atmosphere, which he said had a "more authentic and traditional feel."
"There are construction workers coming in at lunch — you don't get that at midtown steakhouses," he added. "Somewhere like Del Frisco's or Mastro's, it's all corporate and business people just expensing their meals. This is more neighborhood-y."
I wholeheartedly agreed. While I've always found Manhattan steakhouses to be a bit intimidating, I immediately felt right at home sitting at Peter Luger's laid-back bar.
I could see the man in the suit, my bartender from last week, joking around with the restaurant's regulars as he walked around the restaurant. At one point he came up to me and quipped, "you bumped up to the steak."
The atmosphere felt familiar and comfortable. New York City steakhouses tend to straddle the line from clubby to gentleman's club, but Peter Luger felt more like someone's (crowded) kitchen.
The server dropped off our bill, handing the check to Will and giving me seven of Peter Luger's famous chocolate coins.
"I know this isn't fair, but that's how the world works," he said, chuckling with pride at his joke.
One of Wells' biggest complaints in his review was Peter Luger's system for ordering at the bar, including the fact that it requires two separate checks and tips (one for food and another for drinks).
But much like the week before, I was able to settle both of my bills with ease at the bar. The bartender simply pulled out a small credit-card reader and handed me two receipts to sign. I wondered, once again, whether this was one thing Wells' review had affected.
At the end of the meal, Will and I couldn't help feeling let down by (half of) the porterhouse.
"It was a good steak, but certainly not the best I have had in the city and certainly not worth the price tag," Will told me.
"I would go back for the creamed spinach, which was delicious, but would rather go to Club A, Mastro's, or Keens for the porterhouse," he added. "The New York Times' evisceration may have been over the top, but some of the negative feedback was justified."
I had to agree. I knew going in that the steak would be a gamble; Sietsema had written in his defense of the porterhouse that he'd never had the same steak twice at Peter Luger. But $114 is a pretty steep bet for many people.
But after two visits to Peter Luger, I still feel as if my experiences were quite different from Wells' review.
Wells said he once found Peter Luger to be less a restaurant than "an affirmation of life, or at least life as it is lived in New York City."
"This sounds ridiculously grand," he added. "Years ago I thought it was true, though, and so did other people."
But after I wrote my initial review, I found that many still believed this to be true. I received emails from people who had gone to Peter Luger to celebrate everything from their anniversary to their retirement from the Navy. Others told me how they dreamed of going to Peter Luger one day.
It's clear that Peter Luger remains an institution. Critics will surely keep debating about whether that title is deserved, but I think it's hard to argue that it's a special place for many people.
I know I'll be going back. Next time, though, I'm getting the burger.
- Read more:
- I had lunch at Peter Luger after The New York Times gave the iconic steakhouse a scathing zero-star review, and ate one of the best burgers I've ever had
- Peter Luger's manager says its steaks are still 'the best you can eat' after scathing zero-star review from The New York Times
- Here's why Peter Luger's is the most legendary steakhouse in NYC
- We searched for the best burger in New York City
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author(s).
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Source: https://www.insider.com/peter-luger-zero-stars-new-york-times-steak-review-2019-11
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