Well, this is a bit disturbing. When people ask me to name my favorite restaurant in the whole wide world — keeping in mind I've seen less than 1% of the whole wide world — I usually say it's Peter Luger's, the legendary steakhouse in Brooklyn. That's because the times I've eaten there, I was bowled over by the superb steak and sides.
It sounds like a good answer. I mean, I'm not saying my pick is the Wendy's down on Venice Boulevard. What I don't mention is that I haven't dined at Peter Luger's in something like fifteen years.
If there's any truth at all to a new review of the place in The New York Times, maybe I ought to be citing that Wendy's. Read it if you want to see how brutal a reviewer can be to a once-great dining establishment. Or just take a look at the last paragraph which [SPOILER ALERT!] says…
The restaurant will always have its loyalists. They will laugh away the prices, the $16.95 sliced tomatoes that taste like 1979, the $229.80 porterhouse for four. They will say that nobody goes to Luger for the sole, nobody goes to Luger for the wine, nobody goes to Luger for the salad, nobody goes to Luger for the service. The list goes on, and gets harder to swallow, until you start to wonder who really needs to go to Peter Luger, and start to think the answer is nobody.
Yow. And what's disturbing is that it rings true. Others have told me in the last few years they'd suppered there and wondered what the fuss was. "What exactly is it you like about that place, Mark?" I was asked not that long ago. I worried that my love of it might be sadly have past its expiration date. But it's true that I haven't been there for about twenty times as long as they age their filets.
The last two visits to New York, I was with Amber and I wanted to take her there for what I told her many times was the best steak I'd ever had. What stopped us was the hassle of getting out to Brooklyn, waiting for a table, dining, etc. The price always seemed steep and most of my experiences there were when someone else — someone who worked for a big company with a big expense account — was check-grabbing. There was also the matter of time.
The seaters and servers always acted like they knew you wouldn't go anywhere else no matter how long it took to get you to your table and put hot meat on it. It always consumed enough of an evening that I couldn't do anything else so this was my choice: Spend one of my limited nights in New York going to Peter Luger's or going to a great restaurant in the Theater District, perhaps with friends I only see when I'm in Manhattan and then attend a Broadway show.
I always opted for the latter and I probably always will. I didn't even get around to taking Amber to my second-favorite restaurant in New York City, which is (or maybe was) the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. And that doesn't even require shlepping out to Williamsburg; just over to East 42nd Street. I'm thinking now that maybe I avoided both eateries because I'd built them up in my mind to be much more than they could be and I feared being disappointed or, worse, disappointing her.
So I guess there are three questions here, the first being to wonder if Peter Luger's has really gotten as bad as the Times critic says. I'd ordinarily not take one critic's word for anything but I have heard such talk from others.
The second question I suppose would be: "Will this review cause the folks who run Peter Luger's to shape up and return it to its former glory?"
And the third question is: "Even if they do, until I sacrifice the time to get out there and see for myself, assuming I can ever bring myself to do that, what am I going to use for a favorite restaurant?" Because that Wendy's down on Venice sure ain't gonna cut it.