Traders, You Still Have the $10 Strip-Club LunchIn a move not exactly akin to Frank Bruni visiting Robert’s at the Penthouse Executive Club, Midtown Lunch reluctantly tries out the lunch special at Rick’s Cabaret.
Competitive Eater Crazy Legs Conti Experiences ‘Deja Chew’Crazy Legs Conti, the world’s eleventh-ranked competitive eater and bon vivant about town, describes his diet as “benign gluttony — everything in moderation, including excess.”
NewsFeed
Adam Perry Lang Seeks to Create the Perfect Beef Animal
In the meat business, sourcing is the ultimate boast: It’s not enough to claim your meat is “prime,” when any meathead worth his cholesterol knows how promiscuously that once-proud term is thrown around. No, today’s steakhouse has to have boutique sources or, even better, their own prize bull, as at Primehouse NY. But no meat man has a more obsessive take on quality than Adam Perry Lang. The Robert’s and Daisy May chef tells us that he’s currently in the process of researching what will be his own beef program in Montana. “It’s so important to understand it, to be able to control what’s happening. I want to say that I’m doing everything I can to get it where I want it. I want to raise beef the right way. I want to know I’m doing the right thing.”
NewsFeed
Food Writers Continue to Be Confounded by SteakDetails recently put out a list of “The Best New Steak Houses in America,” and it was not inaccurate. Most of the places across the country that delight enlightened meatheads made the cut: Cut in LA, Michael Mina’s butter-crazed Stripsteak in Vegas, and Robert’s (ill-served by an unrepresentative piece of choice beef in the picture) are indeed among the best going. But writers and diners alike are too happy to be served a big steak to gauge it accurately, which makes all steakhouse features unreliable at best.
Mediavore
Jay-Z Now Has 100 Problems; Beef Prices Through the RoofJay-Z now has 100 problems: He’s being sued by the staff of the 40/40 Club for withholding tips and paying less than the minimum wage. [NYP]
Beef prices are getting higher, and the supply of the best stuff getting shorter. Guess what that means for your next steakhouse bill. [NYT]
There is a slew of new restaurants opening in the Hamptons, although none are what you would call world-shaking. [Newsday]
Ask a Waiter
Sara of the Penthouse Executive Club Knows Your Children’s NamesTwenty-seven-year-old Sara (who asked that her last name not be used) has been a waitress at the Penthouse Executive Club since it opened in June of 2003 and has been popping Champagne bottles and serving tuna topped with quail egg in the lounge area and private rooms ever since. (The in-house restaurant, Robert’s Steakhouse, employs only male waiters.) The New Orleans native remembers how surprised she was the first time a woman came in alone and talked openly about her husband, but now she doesn’t bat an eye. “I generally know my guests by name,” she says, “and whether they have children.” We asked her to show, er, tell us a little bit more.
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Paul Liebrandt Back in Play; Rat Chief Vows to Exterminate the BrutesThe city’s rat-patrol chief vows that “the rats will not win.” [NYT]
In Vogue, Jeffrey Steingarten reveals that New York’s top unemployed chef, Paul Liebrandt, is doing a restaurant with Drew Nieporent. Snack asserts it’s Montrachet. [Snack]
Amusing slam of Bruni’s Robert’s Steakhouse review from conservative mainstay National Review. Need we say more? [National Review Online]
The Other Critics
Chodorow Sure to Be Pissed Over New ‘Times’ Steakhouse ReviewThis one is bound to kill Chodorow. Bruni visits a steakhouse even more vulgar than Kobe Club and awards it one star: Robert’s Steakhouse, inside the Penthouse Executive Club. Adam Perry Lang, as most recognize, is one of the city’s top meat guys. [NYT]
Meehan affirms that Kefi’s has terrific food at a bargain. He notes that it was strangely quiet the nights he was there, but that has changed, we’re told, since the Underground Gourmet gave the restaurant four stars. [NYT]
Think of this less as a review of Gilt than an excuse for Steve Cuozzo to acknowledge Chris Lee, one of the city’s most underappreciated chefs, whose ill fortune it was to follow Paul Liebrandt and his alienating high-concept cookery. [NYP]
What to Eat Tonight
The Skinny on Fat Tuesday: The EatsAsh Wednesday, if you don’t know, marks the start of Lent, Christianity’s season of self-denial and austerity. Some mark Ash Wednesday Eve consuming loads of meat and drinking. Here’s our short list of places to celebrate Fat Tuesday.
User’s Guide
The Go-Go Gourmet
You have to hand it to David Burke. The frequently mulletted meat-and-lobster whiz has done it all: He pulled off an experimental gastronomy restaurant in a neighborhood populated mostly by septuagenarians and rethought the hamburger inside a department store. Now, in his crowning glory, he has created a menu for bikini bar Hawaiian Tropic Zone on Seventh Avenue.
