Peter Luger Steakhouse
Last night, Chris and I ventured into uncharted territory (Brooklyn) to have dinner at Peter Luger Steak House:
I made reservations a month ago (no joke – I called them in early May asking when their first available Wednesday was and June 6th was our lucky day) and we were definitely excited about having big juicy steaks. To give you a little background about Peter Luger’s, they started in 1887 and only select cattle that are considered PRIME by the USDA. Once they have the PRIME meat, they look at the color, fat, and conformation of bones. According to Peter Luger’s website, the color must be pink with an even conformation of fat dispersed throughout. This is referred to as marbling. If selected, the loin is brought back to the premises of the restaurant where the dry aging process begins. The loins of beef sit in a temperature controlled cooler where air circulates around them. After the meat is properly aged, it is butchered and brought up to the kitchen for broiling. Whew! That is a lot of work for a piece of meat!
We were promptly escorted to our seats for our 7:45 reservation and started munching on rolls:
They had actual pieces of onion in their bread! Another shot of our expertly arranged rolls:
I usually really dislike onion bread/bagels/onions in general, but this bread was tolerable because the onions weren’t too pungent, but still had a little flavor. The butter that came with the rolls was also really creamy and tasty. Okay, onto the food we actually paid for…
Since we had a month to prepare for our glorious night of steak, I asked for suggestions on what to order from some Peter Luger regulars. Out of all the people I spoke with (some had never even been to the steak house), everyone said that I absolutely HAD to try their bacon, so that was the first thing we ordered:
Do you see how much fat is on that bacon? I dove right in and it was incredibly juicy and fatty (making it a great piece of bacon). Chris, on the other hand, is health-conscious and picked off the pieces of meat (initially). After a while, he basically just dove into the fat. Even though he winced at the idea of the fat clogging his arteries, he agreed that it was definitely a good piece of bacon.
We also ordered the steak for two since my friend said it was a better deal than each person ordering their own steak:
The steak was definitely one of the biggest pieces of meat I’ve ever seen (a close second would be the 22 oz porterhouse I had at Shula’s in Orlando). The steak was one tasty piece-o-meat. It was juicy, tender, marbled, and had a great crust on top. A close-up of my plate:
In a previous entry, I mentioned that we purchased some Peter Luger Steak Sauce to put on our steak and that I thought it tasted like over-priced cocktail sauce that went better with shrimp than steak. I still think it tastes like cocktail sauce, but surprisingly, it paired really well with the steak from Peter Luger. One thing that surprised me about the steak was that I thought it was slightly plain on its own. I usually don’t use A-1 or anything with steak (I think it ruins the flavor) but for some reason, I couldn’t eat the steak without the steak sauce.
We ordered creamed spinach as our first side dish:
If you end up going there, I would pass on the creamed spinach. It’s a little too salty and it loses some of the spinach flavor. Plus, there’s so much steak that you don’t even need to order sides!
Our second side dish was French fried potatoes (a fancy way of saying french fries):
Another side dish I’d pass on. The fries weren’t crispy enough and they tasted slightly stale. Plus, they didn’t offer ketchup and we didn’t want to offend them by asking for it since we had so much Peter Luger sauce. A picture of me and Chris before we started on our eating adventure:
When we were almost done with our meal, I looked outside (just randomly) and saw John Turturro! He was very nicely dressed (I think he even had a scarf on?) and was having dinner with friends.
EDIT:
Chris and I went back for their burgers and they are pretty amazing:
