Peter Luger Steakhouse (2001-2003)

[Fat Guy]

I'm the third generation of my family to eat there intermittently, and I don't like the bacon!

[Wilfrid]

Lunch at Peter Luger didn't do much for Plotnicki's temper, did it?  This was the day he came back yelling "horsehit" and "whack".  :wow:

[jordan]

I am not 100% sure that the fries are not available at dinner, but I am sure that the home fries are not available at lunch.  Please don't get me wrong I think that the home fries and the steak fries are good, just not great.  

By the way, have you tried the lamb chops?  They are offered as a double cut or you can have them butterflied (my choice).  They are fantastic.  I will often share one order with the table as a first course with the tomato and onion, shrimp cocktail and (sometimes) bacon.

[Rachel Perlow]

I've had their lamb chops, very good. I'm the weird person at the table who doesn't get the steak. I've had lamb chops, salmon and lobster the times I've been there. I have to be in a "steak mood" to eat steak.

[Steve Plotnicki]

I can report that my Tuesday lunch at P.L. falls into the category of fantastic. And that is even with my cheesburger being overcooked. Just the taste of that aged beef in the burger is enough to quiet the Jonses I get for that flavor every now and then. I mean the steaks there are great. But what really makes them unique is the taste from the aging process. Having the same flavor in a burger for $5.99 is sort of a crime.

But we had sliced tomatoes, cheeseburgers with fries and one slice of bacon which I thought was excellent. I'm sorry we didn't order more. Fat Guy, what is it? Did you grow up ultra-orthodox and don't know your bacon? Me I grew up kosher but when I was a kid, I was anemic and the Doctor told my mother to feed me BLT sandwiches for the iron. This stopped of course when I started going to Yeshiva. But I never lost my taste for that bacon. We ended the meal with a rather large Hot Fudge Sunday. I can easily say that lunch was perfect. And the room there is somewhat nicer with the light coming in the windows.

[Fat Guy]

I've got some news for you, reb Plotnicki: Those slices of ham they serve at Luger's, not only are they not great bacon, they ain't bacon at all. Unless you're Canadian, which I know you aren't. If you want to taste a better version of hammy Canadian back bacon from the loin cooked like it's real bacon even though it isn't, order it at MarkJoseph. But as far as I'm concerned, that stuff belongs strictly on an Egg McMuffin.

Inspired by the form of Luger's bacon (which I sampled for a second time this week), though decidedly not its substance, I went over to Holland Court the other day and had them slice me a few pieces of real American bacon a quarter inch thick. I rendered it a bit in a skillet and then blasted it under my DCS infrared broiler on a ceramic platter, much the same way I imagine it is done at Luger's. And it totally kicked the ass of the bacon at Luger's. Walk around the corner and test the theory yourself.

They overcooked your burger? That's a shame. Overcooking is the last problem I typically expect at Luger's. How did you order it and how did it come?

[Jinmyo]

Those slices of ham they serve at Luger's, not only are they not great bacon, they ain't bacon at all. Unless you're Canadian, which I know you aren't. If you want to taste a better version of hammy Canadian back bacon from the loin cooked like it's real bacon even though it isn't, order it at MarkJoseph. But as far as I'm concerned, that stuff belongs strictly on an Egg McMuffin.

What's all this then, eh?

:wow:

Canadian back bacon (usually known as "pea meal bacon" because it is dusted with, that's right, pea meal) is gorgeous stuff. As is any kind of bacon that isn't that grocery store pre-sliced stuff in the slimy plastic.

It should be about 1/2 an inch thick, grilled until lightly blackened but still tender. Now do an eggs benedict, chop coarsely and mix with roasted garlic mashed potatoes, or make a sandwich with some ripe roma tomatoes and tallegio.

Or open faced on a piece of buttered baguette with a swipe of Dijon or even Keene's. Or with scalloped potatoes or...

[Steve Plotnicki]

Steve-I ordered it medium rare and it came medium well. I almost sent it back but the flavor and the aroma of that aged beef was so intoxicating that the plate became glued to the table. As for the bacon, I thought it was a fine rasher. But speaking of bacons, have you ever had any of the Grateful Palate's specialty bacons? If not, mosy on over to their website and check it out. Or maybe you will want to join their Bacon of the Month Club. And if you want to buy anything, Call Dan Fredman there and tell him Plotnicki sent you.

But I am intending to lunch there again within the next few weeks and I will check the bacon out a second time. Have you tried the Chopped Steak yet? The guy eating next to us had it with those groovy looking sauteed onions on top. It looked great. How about the Prime Rib? Could they possibly serve prime rib that is aged like the Porterhouse?

[Jason Perlow]

It should be about 1/2 an inch thick, grilled until lightly blackened but still tender. Now do an eggs benedict, chop coarsely and mix with roasted garlic mashed potatoes, or make a sandwich with some ripe roma tomatoes and tallegio.

Uh.. jinmyo, arent you vegetarian? at least that is what I surmised from reading your writings.

[Fat Guy]

Plotnicki, I've been a member of the club for two years. For a time my eGullet signature line was "I am a member of the Bacon of the Month Club."

I've had the chopped steak. It is the hamburger. But as I mentioned in my original post on this thread, it's swimming in steaklike juices.

I was there on rib day (were we there at the same time?) but couldn't prevail upon anyone at my table to order it -- and I wanted a burger with bacon because I wanted to see if they put that same Canadain bacon on the burger. They do. It's pretty hard to manipulate, so I ate it with fork and knife.

As a theoretical proposition, if they are buying actual sides of beef, they've got all that beef and most of it isn't steak. As far as I know you only get like four Luger-sized porterhouses out of a side of beef. Then you've got to sell off all that extra stuff to a secondary market, or figure out a way to use it. The steaks for one help out with the short loin sub primal, but there is still a lot of extra product there, so I guess that's the hamburger. And then you've got all this other stuff. You know all this, right? So I guess if they're acquiring the product, and the rib sections come from the selfsame steers that provide the porterhouses, then why wouldn't they be fantastic?

[Jinmyo]

Jason, no. I was a vegetarian for many years but some allergies and age have made it neccesary to eat meat. I cook vegetarian meals and know a great deal about various vegetarian cuisines and maintaining a good protein/carbohydrate balance for each meal. The real "virtue" of vegetarian food is that almost anyone can eat it, so no arguments. And it can (and should, but often doesn't) help one to learn how to draw with a large palette of flavours. But I must say that over the past years, working with bones and flesh and silverskin and fat has given me a much deeper, more "organic" understanding of even celery.

[ahr]

I once ordered a chunk of prime rib for the table in addition to our steak for however many we were. It was at an early dinner about twenty years ago, and I remember only two things: it was very closely trimmed, and it was the best prime rib that I had ever eaten. The dinnertimes I've asked about it since, it hasn't been available.

How about Luger's for the first eGullet NYC get-together? At lunch? Tomorrow?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Fat Guy-I was there for lunch on Tuesday. Is that when you were there? Also, my expertise on butchered meat lives and dies with the kosher cuts. And porterhouse is traif. But I can say with reasonable confidence that they buy the porterhouse and ribs seperately. They aren't buying whole sides of beef. Those cuts demand so much more money than the surrounding areas of the cow that the wholesalers butcher them to be sold seperately and they sell off the other parts. The chop meat must come from the trimmings ofwhole ribs and loins that have been aged and then butchered into steaks and/or tied into roast beefs. I mean how many burgers could they sell a day 20 or 30? For the amount of steaks they sell their each day, you should be able to get that much chopped meat easily from the butchered scraps. And of course we're not counting rejects. Meat they age which they decide won't cut it as steak for some reason so they grind it.

So which is the best bacon you've had?

An eGullet lunch at Lugar is a great idea (in fact lucnh anywhere is a great idea.) I don't know about tomorrow (today) though.

[Fat Guy]

I was there on Wednesday, if memory serves correctly.

Best bacon I've had? From the guy at my CSA (community supported agriculture) group. After that, from the guy at the Union Square Greenmarket. Nitrate-free farm-fresh bacons that have been sliced very recently are almost always going to beat out the stuff that gets shipped around presliced and preserved. But the next eight or nine of my favorites have come from Grateful Palate. I have a list somewhere of what I've liked. No Canadian bacon on that list, though. I just don't consider it bacon. It's really pork loin and is closer to ham than bacon. Ditto for Danish bacon. It's the only thing the Grateful Palate has ever sent me that I felt compelled to complain about, and it turned out a lot of other complaints had come in that month and they replaced everybody's bacon.

I know the Forman ladies inspect whole sides (or at least quarters) of beef and stamp them with the Luger stamp. As for what gets delivered to the restaurant, I couldn't say -- but I'd think it would still bear the stamp. At a bare minimum they're getting whole short loins. Perhaps they order some with the rib section still attached. I don't know.

I don't think porterhouse is trayf per se. I see short loin cuts for sale in Israel. I think it's just that removing the sciatic nerve is a bitch and that American butchers don't bother to do it. Is the sciatic nerve integral to the porterhouse, or is it something removable. Again, I don't know for sure. I don't see anything about it in Ubaldi.

[ahr]

An eGullet lunch at Lugar is a great idea (in fact lunch anywhere is a great idea.) I don't know about tomorrow (today) though.

Prime rib is available weekdays, until it runs out.  Sorry, SS, but BYOB (bring your own bacon) is not permitted.

Let’s be bold.  I propose… next Wednesday, March 20, at noon.

[tommy]

i'm in.

[Wilfrid]

Dammit, I'm in London - hopefully eating squirrel.  Hope you get a turnout for this.

[yvonne johnson]

I'd like to join you. I'm on spring holidays next week, and I've never been to Peter Luger's. AHR, good for you....a NY eGullet meal at last.

[Steve Plotnicki]

How about lunch next Friday. It's the only day I'm in town next week. I'm going to post a new thread.

[tommy]

you people.  i'll not able to make it then.    and i was very much looking forward to finally making it to luger's.  i was going to order that burger and everything.  perhaps wilfrid and i will plan a trip the following week.  just the two of us.  all romantic like.

[Wilfrid]

tommy, my heart is fluttering in my rib-cage like a trapped canary.

By the way, if you're in the vicinity of a certain midtown boxing bar around eight this evening, you can embarrass me in front of my wife.   Come to think of it, I can probably leave that to Annique.  

[jordan]

Not to change the subject but since you mentioned rib, I am wondering if anyone has tried the rib-eye at the old homestead.  The prime rib is great too, but they char the rib-eye and it is juicy and delicious. I suggest you try it, it is the best (of its kind) in the city.

[Wilfrid]

I did try the rib-eye, and it was good.  They also willingly butterflied the filet mignon for my Beloved, who likes beef but cannot eat it bloody.  Quaint place.  They also offer an opportunity to try Kobe beef without breaking the bank by including a chunk of it in the mixed grill.  Haven't tried that, but (as you can see) I had a good squint at the table next to ours who were eating it.

[jordan]

Not to change the subject but since you mentioned rib, I am wondering if anyone has tried the rib-eye at the old homestead.  The prime rib is great too, but they char the rib-eye and it is juicy and delicious. I suggest you try it, it is the best (of its kind) in the city.

[ahr]

Yvonne, hold the congrats 'til you're at the table, staring at the meat.

Steve P., Friday works for me as well as Wednesday.  Or shall we poll for the week following? (Sound of lunch, slip-sliding away...)

So nu, where's that new thread?