Usually when I term a restaurant "meat and potatoes", it refers to an unpretentious, simple menu of classic American fare that most people would recognize as "comfort food". Not Peter Luger's. This restaurant serves nothing but "meat and Potatoes", unless you count the bacon infused creamed spinach, or bacon sides, or the salad served 2 ways, beefsteak (no surprise here) tomato with onions, or tomato without onions.
Bread on the table is so commonplace that it doesn't register on my radar unless it is exceptionally good or awfully bad. The house rolls at Peter Luger are the former. The darker bread didn't even make it into the photo; it's all I can do to refrain from asking for more, but I must, to make room for what is to come.
Besides corn fed, dry aged, prime grade beef, this restaurant is known for it's steak sauce. So well known it can be purchased from them and shipped anywhere in the country. We have the vestiges of a half dozen bottle shipment to prove it. The sauce is sweet from red ripe tomatoes, molasses and tamarind. It has grated mild horseradish as one of it's main ingredients and the flavor rounds out with onions, garlic and spices. It's so good they should bottle...oh, that's right, they do! It makes a great dressing for their "salad" as seen in the above photo, in fact it's the only thing available to use for that purpose. In all fairness, they have added Cesar and mixed green salads to the menu in recent years, and they do offer other dressings for those.
What they do, they do well, and that is grilled meat, whether it be Porter House steak, lamb or a burger. They know it too; Peter Luger will only accept payment with cash or their own credit card. You have to love them for their confidence! After several trips to this restaurant, I say with experience that they can make a perfect medium-rare steak consistently. On our last visit one person at our table asked for a well done steak and was dissatisfied, because it was... well, done, as it were. Let the buyer beware. The photo above shows a single steak, but they most often sell Steak for Two ($75).
Bacon is thicker than average and cost $2.95 per strip, which can add considerably to your ($8) burger cost if you stop by at lunch time. Cheese is another $2.95, but that is not a complaint, as it was thrilling to get a meal for two people in this restaurant for under $35.
For lunch on our last trip to Peter Luger, I ordered the chopped steak ($10) and was delighted that it was indeed chopped and not ground meat. The luncheon menu includes potatoes and a vegetable with each selection of meat, so this meal included thick cut, perfectly rendered, french fries, light as a feather, and grilled onions.
For dinner on another evening during the same trip, I decided to try the lamb ($45), that was again grilled to medium-rare succulence. The portions were so large I shared one of the two chops on my plate. Prior to that time, I had felt magnanimous offering my dining companion more than his "fair share" of Steak for Two, but it was quite apparent, after the lamb (for one) that I can't eat a whole portion of anything this restaurant dishes up!
178 Broadway
Brooklyn NY 11211
Reservations:(718) 387-7400
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