Wolfgang's Steakhouse

[balmagowry]

Hmmmm - I've only been to the Luger's in Great Neck, and up until now I thought that meant I was missing something. Now I'm not so sure. Apparently all I was missing was the rushed, brusque service and the inability to cook a steak to the requested temperature - my experience at the GN Luger's has been pleasant and leisurely, the steak marvelous.

[Fat Guy]

Are the prices about the same as Luger's?

I'd have to compare the menus side-by-side to be sure, but I think the prices were close, with Wolfgang's being a couple of dollars more on some items. Wolfgang's is probably not looking to make its money by charging a lot more than Luger's for the same items, though. Rather, the strategy seems to be to sell expensive wine and seafood items: the waiter's spiel includes an attempt to sell you a mixed seafood platter that no doubt costs a zillion dollars (there is no mention of price), there are 3-pound lobsters on the menu, etc.

[SteveW]

Steven, pleasantly surprised you gave so much praise to Wolfgang's. Any chance you took some pictures?

-Steve

[marcus]

Fat Guy's is the first credible review that claims that Wolfgang's steaks are as good as Luger's. I've seen more than half a dozen that say that it isn't. As steaks are very variable, I think that we need more data points before we jump to conclusions, and in particular we need FG to make a few more visits.

[SteveW]

Fat Guy's is the first credible review that claims that Wolfgang's steaks are as good as Luger's.  I've seen more than half a dozen that say that it isn't.  As steaks are very variable, I think that we need more data points before we jump to conclusions, and in particular we need FG to make a few more visits.

Yes, you're quite correct.

-Steve

[enrevanche]

I, too, have heard mixed reports about Wolfgang's (some people really like it, others are unimpressed.)

Count me in the "really like it" camp. My wife and I had a perfectly delightful meal there a few weeks back. The steak (porterhouse for two) arrived at the table cooked a perfect medium-rare with a light char, just as we like it, and the first words out of my mouth after tasting were, "Looks like they've cracked the Luger's code for buying and aging meat." Sides (creamed spinach and German-style hash-browns) were great.

The only criticisms of the food that I can offer: (1) the chopped salad, aka "Wolfgang's Salad," that I started the meal with wasn't anything to write home about, and (2) Wolfgang's steak sauce isn't as good as Luger's.

One cautionary note, which may actually be seen as an advantage by many: the bartender pours with a heavy hand. I ordered a bourbon before our meal, as is my usual habit in steakhouses, and the drink I got was almost big enough to swim in (it would have been a double, or better, most places.) I radically cut back on my alcohol intake a few years ago, and found this to be almost a little more liquor than I wanted. (Tough problem, I know. )

[balmagowry]

You're lucky to be married to someone who shares your tastes in doneness of meat. The porterhouse for two sounds ideal, but The Boy and I are Mr. & Mrs. Sprat - I like mine mooing and he likes his (:delicate shudder:) well-done. Don't suppose they could easily accommodate that....

Edited May 4, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[Fat Guy]

Porterhouse isn't the only option at Wolfgang's. You can also get a strip, a rib-eye, and I think maybe a filet. The odd man out at our table had the rib-eye because he couldn't accept anyone else's doneness requirements. I had a bite and it was delicious.

I agree that the Wolfgang salad sucks, with its gelatinous dressing and ill-conceived combination of shrimp, bacon, green beans, and unripe tomatoes. But I totally prefer Wolfgang's sauce to Peter Luger's, only because I don't think anybody in history has concocted a worse sauce than Peter Luger's. Also, a point of clarification: Peter Luger's sauce is not "steak sauce." It's supposed to go on the tomato-and-onion salad. From the packaging, if you buy a bottle of it: "Since 1887, This zesty sauce has been prepared at the world famous Peter Luger Steak House. Traditionally, the sauce is served on salads of jumbo sliced tomatoes and onions."

[enrevanche]

balmagowry writes:

You're lucky to be married to someone who shares your tastes in doneness of meat.

Ah, this is but one of the many, many reasons that I'm lucky to be married to her. We get along remarkably well, especially considering that we're a mixed marriage, culinarily speaking: she's from Kansas City, where they think "barbecue" means ribs, brisket and burnt ends; I'm from North Carolina, where every young child knows "barbecue" means pulled pork.

Fat Guy writes:

...I totally prefer Wolfgang's sauce to Peter Luger's, only because I don't think anybody in history has concocted a worse sauce than Peter Luger's. Also, a point of clarification: Peter Luger's sauce is not "steak sauce." It's supposed to go on the tomato-and-onion salad. From the packaging, if you buy a bottle of it: "Since 1887, This zesty sauce has been prepared at the world famous Peter Luger Steak House. Traditionally, the sauce is served on salads of jumbo sliced tomatoes and onions."

Very interesting. Of course, we have slathered Luger's sauce on our tomato and onion salad since being instructed to do so by our waiter on our very first visit, but we have also used it with the steak; we really like it. (Difference of opinion is what makes horse races, after all.)

In re: the steak sauce vs. salad dressing issue, I note that the Peter Luger folks seem to think that what they're selling is steak sauce:

http://www.peterluger.com/petlugsauc.html

Now you can enjoy the taste of world-famous Peter Luger's Old Fashioned Steak Sauce...

Edited May 5, 2004 by enrevanche (log)

[Fat Guy]

Does anybody have issue 48 of Art of Eating around? Issue 47 has Ed Behr's article about Luger's where he refers to the stuff as steak sauce, and issue 48 I think contains correspondence on that issue. I can't actually remember what it said, so maybe I'm wrong. But my understanding, though, is that the steak sauce at Peter Luger is the one served with the steak: a mixture of butter and meat juices that collects at the end of the tilted plate and gets spooned over the steak. The Peter Luger Sauce is more like a cocktail sauce than a steak sauce, and in my opinion tastes terrible on steak, shouldn't be put anywhere near steak, and wasn't intended for that use -- nor should a flavor-masking tomato-and-horseradish sauce ever be served with a Prime dry-aged steak. As between what the packaging says and what the Web site says, I view the packaging as more authoritative, but I would defer to what the owners say if anybody gets a chance to ask them.

[PoorLawyer]

Porterhouse isn't the only option at Wolfgang's. You can also get a strip, a rib-eye, and I think maybe a filet. The odd man out at our table had the rib-eye because he couldn't accept anyone else's doneness requirements. I had a bite and it was delicious.

I agree that the Wolfgang salad sucks, with its gelatinous dressing and ill-conceived combination of shrimp, bacon, green beans, and unripe tomatoes. But I totally prefer Wolfgang's sauce to Peter Luger's, only because I don't think anybody in history has concocted a worse sauce than Peter Luger's. Also, a point of clarification: Peter Luger's sauce is not "steak sauce." It's supposed to go on the tomato-and-onion salad. From the packaging, if you buy a bottle of it: "Since 1887, This zesty sauce has been prepared at the world famous Peter Luger Steak House. Traditionally, the sauce is served on salads of jumbo sliced tomatoes and onions."

Couldn't agree more about the Luger's steak sauce. It tastes way too sweet to be on a steak to me (not that I would really put steak sauce on a good steak). If I'm going to use ti, I feel that A-1 is to steak sauce as Heinz is to ketchup....anything else is disturbingly wrong!

[Fat Guy]

I found issue 47. I found issue 49. Where the hell is issue 48? Surely somebody has it.

[Fat Guy]

Aha! I found it!

Well, it is hardly dispositive, but at least I'm not imagining things:

In A of E 47 on steak and knives, I wrote that Peter Luger's "house steak sauce is bad." Frank Tricano, "a satisfied Peter Luger client," responded in no uncertain terms that "the subject sauce is not a steak sauce, but a 'sauce to be served on salads of jumbo sliced tomatoes and onions,'" as per label instructions on "Peter Luger Steak House Old-fashined Sauce." Apparently that's right, though at the restaurant the sauceboat stays on the table, without instructions, throughout the meal, and the uninitiated diner naturally assumes a connection to the steak. Anyway, I didn't like the sauce, but I liked the steak and the restaurant.

(Art of Eating 48, Fall 1998, p. 23)

[slkinsey]

Though the son's comment was impolitic, it was also true: ""Luger is a factory. You're seated, then you're pushed out." I essentially refuse to go to Luger's for dinner anymore, because it's just not pleasant to be treated that way: reservations are only theoretical and you often have to wait, you're in and out in an hour, and it's a lot of cash to drop that quickly on a meal. Lunch is the only time when I can really enjoy myself there.

Interesting... my experience has consistently been the exact opposite. We have never been rushed, and have always felt as though we could take all the time we wanted. Now, that said... as you know, we at the slkinsey household prefer to eat at a somewhat later hour than many. Our typical reservation time at Peter Luger is somewhere in the neighborhood of 9:00 PM. This means that we are probably the last turn of whatever table we occupy, and we typically close the place down. Someone going in with a 6:30 reservation might very well have a totally different experience in this regard. Lucky for me, porterhouse steak at 6:30 has never appealed to me. For one, I feel strange having a pre-dinner Manhattan at 6:00.

[Fat Guy]

You take 9pm reservations at Luger's and you get seated at 9pm? It must be because you're so good looking.

[TrishCT]

Fat Guy,

Since I consider you the god of all that is steak (after all you wrote the treatise), if you say Wolfgang's porterhouse is as good as Luger's... I believe it and will go there... It will be a pleasure not to battle the traffic to Brooklyn...

[Fat Guy]

I'm not going to say that until I have something like 6 or 7 steaks there, a process that could take me a year or more! All I can say at this point is that I had one full-on Luger-quality steak, and a great overall experience.

[zeman]

My money's on the Fat Guy

[Fat Guy]

For what it's worth (not much, but something) New York Magazine has some very favorable comments about Wolfgang's in the new issue:

http://nymetro.com/nymetro/food/reviews/re...9211/index.html

[mikeyrad]

My wife Sue and I and our best friends dined at Wolfgang's on Saturday night. Our rezzy was at 9 PM and we were seated as soon as everyone in our party were present.

Sue and I shared the porterhouse steak for two. What can I say -- food orgasm!!! The sensation of the crunch of the perfectly charred exterior followed by the buttery and juicy meat produced simultaneous "Oh my Gods" from the two of us. I've never been to Peter Luger so I have no comparison, but this was head and shoulders better than the Palm, Morton's, the Strip House or any other steak I've ever eaten.

The veggies were fine, but I honestly don't remember much about them. I was so focused on the porterhouse.

[bloviatrix]

This week Frank Bruni reviews Wolfgang's Steakhouse.

As part of the review he and companion threw their arteries to the wind and dined at both Wolfgang's and Luger's on the same evening.

In other words, does Wolfgang's manage to hold onto the beefy rapture as it edits out Brooklyn and the Williamsburg Bridge?

An answer to that required a very special journey on a very caloric night, during which a friend and I willingly (and, truth be told, gleefully) sacrificed our cardiovascular futures on the altar of Thorough and Accurate Scientific Research.

At 6:43, we had the Steak for Two at Wolfgang's. At 9:21, we had the Steak for Two at Luger.

At 10:27, we should have had coronary bypass procedures. Instead, we called a taxi, then rode back to Manhattan in the deep silence of our shared protein comas, calculating how many years we had shaved off our lives and wondering whether we would ever again have reason, at company expense, to repeat the experiment. We certainly hoped so.

One other thing this review revealed....it seems our dear Mr. Bruni has quite a sweet tooth.

Edited to correct the link

Edited June 30, 2004 by bloviatrix (log)

[wesza]

I rarely review a "Reviewer". but if the FORMERLY venerable New York Times has a person as inept as "Bruni" reviewing Restaurants I'm bewildered.

This review should be in some type of "self important trend seeking magazine", but not the NYT.

I was associated with a reviewer at the Times for many years, but never have read a so called review that was vaguely as bad as this one, nothing about the nitty gritty that was consequential, but lot's of stylish fluff, about "Arteries", mine were sure effected by all the gloop and syrup. I question the veracity of the review.

Irwin

[Jason Perlow]

As I said on the other thread -- there are some glaring omissions in his review. The creamed spinach? The actual forensic analysis of the aging skill and the quality of the meat?

A steakhouse is all about the quality of the steak, the skill of the aging of the meat and the attention to preparation, as well as the quality of the sides -- none of which got much detailed coverage in this article.

[MonsieurSatran]

It seems from this review that Bruni only went once to Wolfgang's. Am I misinterpeting? Because if not, that is unnacceptable. This is strike number two for Bruni...

[Fat Guy]

He clearly states he made more than one visit: "On my first visit, which preceded my porterhouse-a-palooza by several weeks . . ."