Peter Luger Steaks Its Claim

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“You’re not being rude enough,” was the first thing I said to our waiter (Tony) as he was cheerfully guiding us through the menu and drink order.

He just smiled and shrugged, “That’s not the way we do things around here,” and then kept on being more solicitous than a billboard lawyer at a fender-bender.

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Which is another way of warning you that when  it comes to atmosphere and service, Peter Luger Las Vegas is as far from the actual Peter Luger (the one located at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge in actual New York), as Caesars Palace is from actual Rome. Except for the food — which hits most of the benchmarks established in the glory years when Luger was widely considered the best steakhouse in the country.

Back then, Luger was famous for several things: cash only (unless you had a PL credit card), rude waiters, and having the best beef in the city. These were the days before any Podunk purveyor of prime could access superior beef from around the globe — a time when New York City got all the best steers, and few in America even knew what dry-aging was.

Trading on that reputation, the family (yes, it’s still family-owned) has finally started to expand, opening first in Tokyo in 2021, and a week ago in our humble burg.

Before we get to the food, back to that rudeness thing. From our experience, it has always been an apocryphal complaint — the sort of gripe jaded New Yorkers hurl at any place where “Do you know who I am?” has no currency.

For those who wish to believe such malarkey, here is a pic of me in Brooklyn, twenty-three years ago, being totally abused by a waiter:

Image(Obviously hates his job)

On both of my visits in the 90s, I went early without a reservation (the second time with three teenagers in tow), and humbly asked if they could squeeze us in. And they did, remarkably quickly, with a smile, in one of the stark, Teutonic rooms — more German beer hall than American steakhouse — at bleached wood tables saturated with a century of beef fat, smoke and history.

Service was cheerfully brusque, the kind you get from sassy diner waitresses when they tell you, “You’re not having that; you’re getting the _____ and he’ll have the ____, and anymore questions?” Causing everyone at the table to win by conceding defeat to those in the know.

The porterhouse steaks we ate then were life-changing: a study in mineral-richness, shot through with tangy, gamey beefiness, singular in their haunting intensity. For perspective, the only steaks  I thought were in the same league at the time were from the original Palm, Gallagher’s, and Keen’s in New York, and Gibson’s in Chicago, but Luger was in a league of its own. Dry-aged beef was a rarity then, today in New York it’s as common as Yellow Cabs.

Then and now, Luger stubbornly avoids anything fancy. The dry-aging still permeates the beef, causing textures to tenderize, and flavors to intensify and “double-back on themselves” (Pete Wells) — the sizzling plate spitting butter and melted tallow so hot you can finish cooking your slice on the sloped sides of the platter if you want it a percentage more done.

Image(Iconic porterhouse)

Is the beef as good today as the steaks I remember?  Tough to say, as I consider those Luger steaks in the 90s as the apotheosis of the porterhouse which has rarely been equaled — even after tucking into hundreds of slabs of dry-aged steer from Soho to Tokyo. But the buttery mouthfeel and nutty, umami undertones I tasted at the fourth Peter Luger will no doubt send some fetishistic foodies into fits of tantric foodgasms, placing this beef at or near the top of any in town.

Some menu items, struck me as better crafted here than there: an incredible crab cake, pristine cold seafood, crispy/creamy German potatoes, along with some non-food improvements: well-spaced tables, better stemware, large circular bar brought front and center into the restaurant (the former Rao’s in Caesars Palace) — all calculated to produce both as sense of masculine comfort and a “wow” factor which the original lacks, all while catering to the demands of a three-hundred seat Vegas steakhouse slinging 2,000 lbs. of steaks a day.

Image(Finally, a place to go for a $139 shot of gin)

Upon taking one of those seats, they give you a fancy cocktail menu, and a wine list full of interesting bottles. The one in Brooklyn has always been infamous for being barely above the “red, white, or pink?” level of choices, unless your tastes run to overpriced Cali cabs. (Regulars — the ones with that coveted private credit card — usually bring their own.)

You will then be given a menu with a large letterbox in the center outlining steak for two, three or four, priced from $148.95 to $285.95. Those steaks are all porterhouses — for the uninitiated, a thick, t-bone containing part of both the sirloin and filet. All are broiled and brought to the table sliced amidst the hiss of fat coming off white-hot plates. They are what you order at Peter Luger in the same way you go to Mott 32 for the Peking duck. Everything else is window dressing.

This is 60-day, dry-aged beef, cured on-premises in a 4,000 square foot meat locker below the restaurant, so it ain’t cheap, but $150 for a “steak for two” will easily feed four, unless you have an NFL tackle among you. If you insist, lamb, chicken, and Dover sole are there for the pikers, and the bar burger (if it’s anything like the original we had in Brooklyn) will be a showstopper.

Image(This crab doesn’t filler round)

The rest of the menu is unapologetically old school. I happen to be a fan of the Luger steak sauce, even though Pete Wells (in a New York Times take-down in 2019) described it as ketchup and horseradish fortified with corn syrup. Unlike his though, our shrimp were not the consistency of “cold latex,” but pristine and perfect.

And the signature tomato and onion salad may be a bit bizarre, but it’s as much a part of the Luger legacy as sizzling fat:

Image(Just like Grandma used to make)

Wells insults the dish by stating it “tastes like 1979” but that’s exactly the point: this was your grandma’s idea of sweet-sour salad in 1966. It is  outdated, un-seasonal and about as voguish as a dickey… and all the more glorious for it.

Desserts are no-nonsense classics: hot fudge sundae, properly-crusted New York cheesecake, chocolate pie – all of them served mit schlag (“with unsweetened whipped cream”) reminding us of this place’s German roots and sending everyone home with a satisfied grin.

The staff is an all-star lineup of local restaurant pros who have put in their time from the biggest operations to the smallest sandwich shops. Jacob “Jake” Leslie is now Director of Food and Beverage at Caesars. We’ve seen him come through the ranks from The Goodwich, to Libertine Social to now running the whole shebang at a gigantic hotel.  Executive Chef Eric L’Huillier has gone from Pinot Brasserie (Joachim Splichal’s once-underrated bistro in the Venetian) to being top toque at Wally’s, to now heading a kitchen with ten broilers expected to feed hundreds of customers an hour.

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Front of the house is anchored by David Oseas (pictured above with L’Huillier – who was previously at Rosa Ristorante in Henderson), along with one of our favorite wine guys: Beverage Director Paul Argier. Argier is responsible for the vastly-improved, multi-national wine list, which isn’t cheap, but still possible to mine for relative bargains — once you understand that $125 is the new $75 when it comes to Strip wine lists.

Walking into PL and seeing them all running the place made it feel like old home week, rather than another soulless Strip branding exercise. It is a huge restaurant but also a welcoming one. How it stacks up against our other top-shelf purveyors of prime probably depends upon your expectations when approaching a restaurant with such a storied history.

Image(Super somm Paul Argier is there to serve)

Peter Luger started in 1887 as a cafe and billiard parlor. It had hit hard times when the Forman family resuscitated it in 1950, turning it into a cathedral of beef (and the template for the modern American steakhouse) in the latter half of the last century.

Back then, the Formans were known for being the toughest customers in town when it came to sourcing prime grade beef. But in the twenty-first century, these kinds of top-shelf, tender, well-marbled cuts — which used to be the  exclusive province of a few select steakhouses — are now sold world-wide. I used to consider it a treat to fly to Chicago or New York to dive into a Brobdingnagian, dry-aged porterhouse. Now there are a dozen steakhouses within 20 minutes of my house where I can indulge my Flinstonean fantasies.

The final question thus becomes: Is the meal worth the tariff?

Lezbee honest here: You don’t go to Peter Luger for innovation or chef’s creations. You are not here for the appetizers, or the side dishes, or seasonal eating; you here for the main event: the meat and the bragging rights to having taken down one of the world’s greatest steaks. One hundred and thirty-five years on, from the point of view of a palate who has eaten them all, this one is still one of the best ones, and more than worth boasting about.

And, as always, it will be served with a smile.

Our meal for two came to $341 (including one cocktail, three glasses of wine, and a comped shellfish tower), and we left a $100 tip.

Image(Mit schlag is German for “more please”)

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Steer and Loathing in Las Vegas

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Any freak…can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs.

There I was, standing at the entrance, of my own free will, and not on drugs. But they would’ve helped.

Had I lost a bet? Gotten waylaid on my way to CUT? What possible confluence of forces could’ve driven me to such an etiolated place when I’m surrounded by properties  brimming with boffo beef?

Was I suffering from sentimentality. In such a malaise that my eternal quest for excellence was enervated?

The answer is more prosaic: I accepted a free-lance assignment to write about Vegas’s most iconic restaurants. And they don’t come much more well-known than THE Steakhouse at Circus Circus.

Thus did I voluntarily enter the one hotel on the Las Vegas Strip which is as appealing as a Wal-mart on payday, bumping elbows with strollers, snot-nosed monsters, and insundry trailer park refugees looking for a good time on the cheap. The one hotel that would cause nary a tear to be shed if it imploded tomorrow.

Counterintuitively, it may be because the Circus Circus is so shitty that this place thrives. For forty years patrons have come, seeking refuge from the surroundings  — a dark enclave from the fear of cacophony and loathing of kiddies cavorting mere feet outside the entrance.

Image(Never give a sucker an even steak)

A little bit of this town goes a very long way. After five days in Vegas you feel like you’ve been here for five years.

If restaurants age in dog years, then THE Steakhouse at Circus Circus is 287 years old. All things considered, like yours truly, it looks pretty good for its age….at least when the lights are low.

When TSACC first opened in 1982 it was quite a sight. There was a meat locker beside the hostess stand when you could salivate over your sirloins. Then and now it was mostly for show, but at least hinted at dry-aging the beef — twenty years before most American steakhouses picked up the chant. Those were heady days to be sure, and tastier times lay ahead, but this was as good as it got in the early 80s and we were thrilled by it.

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

Back then the possibilities for Vegas seemed endless, but it was still a cow town in more ways than one, and this brawny, plush restaurant hinted at a new era of steakhouse sophistication. The cozy bar, hanging beef, green leather booths, and birdbath-sized martini glasses were a revelation. As was an elevated wood-fueled fire pit where you could watch the steak chefs work their magic over spitting flames and smoke, while the smell of sweet/musky mesquite perfumed the beef and the room.

The dark, clubby, masculine vibe has remained intact and aged well and least when compared to most Eighties’ decors. (When it comes to good taste in design, THE Steakhouse is to Hugo’s Cellar what a filet is to a stale cheeseburger.)

No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

It’s been at least five years since our last visit, and experience has taught us that these joints don’t change, but game we were, so gird our loins we did, paid the freight and took the ride.

Unsteady doesn’t describe the half of it.

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Then and now, entrees came with soup, salad and sides, making them seem a relative bargain when compared to a la carte everything, which is now the template for all but the hoariest of emporiums. Back in the day, a forty buck steak could get to a hundy in a hurry when you factored in a complete meal. Now, the meat alone will set you back that much.

Image(We have a beef with prices that steak the bank)

Nostalgia is one thing, but sentimentality served with gouge is another. Yours truly considers himself practically impervious to price tag trauma these days, but those frozen lobster tails got our attention. As did $42 for four shrimp, and a “seafood sensation” of crab legs, oysters and shrimp that will set you back 183 clams.

While we’re at it, riddle me this: Where in this town would one go to eat an onion soup not tasting of onions? Topped with cheese so cheap it is not fit for a grade school lunchbox? Or a bean soup bereft of beans? (See below.)

Image(Cornstarch Circus)

Answer: A once venerated, long-in-the-tooth, union-staffed casino eatery which has been coasting on reputation for decades. Who else would have the crust to charge $178 for two lobster tails when one can be had, a la carte, for 78?

Answer: The same place confident enough in its clueless reviews) to charge $95 for a unseasoned porterhouse of dubious pedigree, served looking like it was hacked into portions with a butter knife:

Image(Past its prime)

“It’s like someone bought a supermarket steak and threw it on a grill and decided to charge 100 bucks for it.”- the quote of the evening.

Looking around the room one has to ask: Who, exactly, is gullible enough to pay these prices for dated, bland food in such a crummy hotel…for four decades?

We asked ourselves this throughout the meal, but kept eating. As disappointing as the meal was…we would be fools not to ride this strange torpedo all the way out to the end.

We had no choice. We were in too deep. It was either finish the meal or shoot the pasties off the nipples of a ten-foot bull-dyke and win a cotton-candy goat.

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So we plowed through, guided by a waiter who was professional, fast and friendly, and who even took the time to guide us to better deals on some side dishes and salads (it gets confusing when factoring in what comes with what).

Along the same lines, the wine list is priced for the clientele, not fools like the person typing these words, with lots of bottles well under a Benjamin.

And we found some things to like, like the baked crab cake ($27) that had it all over the gummy, bready one we had had the previous night at Vic & Anthony’s, and two salads (blue cheese wedge, and fresh spinach with (not-so) hot bacon dressing) which were decent enough to justify the $18 price tag. And the lamb chops ($78/two) made up for in taste what they lacked in presentation.

Image(Getting crabby at Circus Circus)

But when the final tally came ($640, including tax, tip and drinks) , we couldn’t defend it. The steak was just too plain and pathetic and so not-in-the-same-league as dozens of better ones on and off the Strip.

So now…years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The high water mark for 80s Vegas steaks was THE Steakhouse, which is the last time the moniker fit. Today it limps along — a once-proud restaurant stuck in a ground chuck of a hostelry from which there is no escape. Time has passed it by but no one has bothered to tell the chefs or the customers — a shared, convenient lie serving both sides, since neither seems to care. Walking into the ass end of the hotel to get there, it feels as if the whole infrastructure, casino, and customers are just waiting to be plowed under.

Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.

In 1983, we marveled at the operation, even if, or maybe because, it was surrounded by the most peculiar hotel in town. Las Vegas has always been a bizarre place. It will never go out of style because it was never in style. No matter how much it has been corporatized, standardized, and lobotomized, it remains a place of gargantuan, tacky hotels stuffed with people driving themselves to death by throwing hard-earned cash at unreachable dreams and mindless diversions.

THE Steakhouse was always a pleasant diversion. It may never have been in style, but it was always more stylish than the fleabag hotel surrounding it. Such was its strength. But the years rob us of vigor, and in old age, the penumbra of despair cannot be shed. Like all washed-up restaurants, it will continue opening the doors, night after night, overcharging for its goods and hoping nobody notices.

We noticed.

Hail, Britannia! Part One

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For a Francophile like moi to admit he was enchanted by London is quite a leap.

“London? Really?” numerous friends smirked, questioning my sanity.

“Somehow I can’t see you hanging out in a Hugh Grant movie, quaffing down warm ale by the pint,” one of them scoffed.

“What are you gonna eat? And drink?” others intoned with eyes narrowed (and a concern usually reserved for discussing chemotherapy).

So strong are the biases against British food, I can’t say I blamed them. But anyone who knows me knows I could find a good restaurant on the moon. And London, my foodie friends, is full of them, if you know where to look, and if you have a secret weapon. And I had both.

Knowing where to look is easy. Stick with the classics, is my mantra. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In London, that means booking tables that have been around since the 19th Century (at least). Spice things up with a modern meal or two, and luxuriate in some old-school imbibing, and you’ll almost forget there is more refined cooking, and much better wine, 300 miles to the south.

Not to dwell on the differences between London and its gastronomic neighbor, but as a casual observer, I would say the Bulldogs are less food-obsessed than the Frogs, but that doesn’t make their grub inferior, just less in-your-face. Paris assaults the senses with its eating and drinking options. London, like the British people, takes a while to get to know.

Perhaps it is because the catechism of classic British diet (from meat pies to mushy peas) is so boring that the really good stuff (seafood, astonishing veg, cheese, and superb beef) get short shrift indeed. This is not the place to explore three hundred years of English eating habits, but I can say with confidence that (most of) the cliches are all wrong, and classic Brit cuisine will knock you over with its simplicity and succulence. Leave the frou-frou to the French — London will bring out the trencherman in you.

Knowing my proclivities for the ancient and iconic (restaurant-wise), my secret weapon (Marina O’Loughlin — for five years the restaurant columnist for the London Sunday Times) — weighed in with a baker’s dozen suggestions, of which we hardly scratched the surface. One week, as intrepid gastronauts know, is barely enough time to sample the hors-d’oeuvres of a country’s cuisine. But we did our best for eight days and here’s what we found:

Image(Tiny tables, quality cooking)

“Unmissable” is how Marina described The Quality Chop House, so to it we repaired for our first evening’s repast. The Food Gal® and I have become ardent urban hikers over the past decade, so the 2.5 mile stroll from our hostelry on Trafalgar Square to the Clerkenwell neighborhood was a breeze, even if we were a bit wooly-headed from ten hours on Virgin Atlantic.

Described as a “19th Century ex-working man’s eating house revamped into a modern British dining room,” TQCH will put you more in mind of a pub than restaurant at first glance, until you see the menu and discover you might be in the coolest little meat emporium in all of London. That revamping is purely menu-focused, as the stiff, narrow benches in the front room look like they are only fit for the emaciated physique of a chimney sweep. The second room boasts actual bentwood chairs (above), but also tiny, over-matched tables barely up to the task of containing  the wave of tasty vittles soon to be crowded upon them:

Image(Small table, big flavors)

As we came late, and were exhausted from both the flight and the walk, we were interested in comfort food served quickly, and the restaurant came through. Service was extraordinarily friendly to a couple of strangers wedged into the last table of the night. The wine list was the very definition of “eclectic” and we loved perusing every odd-ball bottle.

Image(British beef)

The setting may be old school neighborhood eating hall, but the menu has new-school gastropub written all over it. Marina had raved about the steaks so we dutifully tucked into a Hereford sirloin and found it mineral-rich, fatty, tender, and flawless — even after our weary bones had already polished off half a loaf of tangy sourdough with good butter, pâté de campagne, salt cod brandade, pastrami-cured salmon, and chicken liver/foie gras parfait hidden blanketed with shredded black truffles.

Image(British spuds, French technique)

Our waiter chided us for forgetting to order the layered, buttery potato confit (resembling a mille-feuille of shaved spuds), and set them down on the table (with a wink and without charge) as soon as the steak appeared. He also insisted we end our feast with the olive oil ice cream and it was a show-stopper as well. I was too exhausted to drink much, but dimly remember a couple of glasses of a recommended French red I had never heard of going splendidly with the steak, and a bill that clocked in at around $200 American for small meat-fest fit for the gods.

If the test of a great restaurant is whether you can’t wait to return and try everything on the menu, then The Quality Chop House qualifies in spades.

Image(Tastes like hazelnuts, not salty, stale fish)

If the Chop House felt like the grooviest steak pub in London, Caviar House and Prunier represents the other end of the spectrum: a posh champagne and fish egg boutique where its nutty, subtly saline sturgeon eggs are a far cry from the fishy and salty stuff they throw on everything in America from desserts to Doritos. We couldn’t resist dropping a bundle on these and some smoked Balik Norwegian salmon — accompanied by warm blinis and tangy creme fraiche of the sort we can only dream of on this side of the pond.

Gird your loins if you wish to wallow in sturgeon eggs, because quality this high doesn’t come cheap. A few small bricks of salmon, two glasses of house bubbly, and the tin you see above set us back a cool $275. And no, our hunger wasn’t cured but our lust for quality oscietre was.

From the toniest seafood digs in St. James it was back to workingman’s London — specifically the Smithfield Market — where Fergus Henderson’s St. John has held sway for three decades. No self-regarding epicure travels to London without putting this notch on their belt, so here we marched, thirty years late to the party, to the holy grail of nose-to-tail.

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For the uninitiated, Henderson was not the first chef to serve tripe, headcheese and kidneys, but when he took over this bare bones, inauspicious space (in 1993) next to London’s famed meat market, and converted a former smokehouse into a whole animal-focused restaurant, his influence was felt world-wide. In effect, he discovered a market no one knew existed: boomers in their prime, eager to break out of the steak, fish and chicken template that had defined western menus since the 1950s. The success this restaurant saw in the mid-nineties (and the publicity it garnered therefrom) is partially responsible (or to blame) for why you see pork belly on every upscale restaurant in the world.

You can also lay the ubiquity of short ribs and bone marrow at his doorstep. So far though, despite the best efforts of Henderson’s acolytes, no one has been able to do the same with sweetbreads, pigs ears, and kidneys. Hope springs eternal.

Fergus deserves further credit, or opprobrium, for foisting the inexplicably popular industrial restaurant look on the world — defined by hard seating, minimalist decor, and lighting less flattering than a hospital waiting room. The look may be overdone elsewhere, but in its original incarnation it works, since the food is as spare and uncompromising as the surroundings. There is nothing fancy about the joint, from your first bite of crispy pig’s foot, to the bare bones oleaginous marrow to be spread on the exceptional house-baked bread, to a mountain of deviled lambs kidneys that would defeat all but the largest lover of “variety meats” as these organ innards are often called.

Image(Quite the pisser, these bad boys were)

“It’s quite a lot of one thing, isn’t it?” our sympathetic waitress observed as she laid the outcropping of offal before us. James Beard once wrote that kidneys derive their appeal from the “faintest tang of urine” left behind as one masticates through the rubbery morsels. Anyone describing the flavor notes on these bad boys as containing “undertones of urethra” though, would be guilty of serious understatement. The uric acid tang was there all right, side-by-side with enough rough-hewn wild gaminess to stop any carnivore in their tracks. And we loved it. Not enough to eat the entire batch, mind you, but sufficient to give us bragging rights in any organ-measuring contest in the future.

Like everywhere we ate in London, service was friendly, informed and fast. I’m at the age where almost all waiters look like teenagers to me, but in every place we tried, from the fancy confines of the Connaught Hotel to an industrial borough like Smithfield, we had nary a complaint to make. Our bill– lunch for two with a couple of glasses of cru Beaujolais — was also the cheapest of the trip: around $150 at the current exchange rate.

Straightforward food, served without adornment, is the mission statement of St. John. It no longer needs to proselytize about whole animal butchery and cookery because the whole world has picked up the chant. Or at least part of it. When lamb kidneys start showing up on American steakhouses, Henderson’s revolution in how we eat animals will be complete…but I wouldn’t hold my breath just yet.

Image(No humbuggery here)

Compared to St. John, Rules is positively antediluvian. Some may call it ossified eating, better suited to Victorian tastes in haunches of venison and fresh-killed birds (which come with a warning to watch for buckshot), but at Christmastime the place is magical. We met Marina and hubby David there, and truth be told, the conversation was so lively we paid scarce attention to the food.

What no one can ignore is the gorgeousness of the place. The walls could double as a mini museum, with portraits, cartoons and articles spanning 200 years of catering to the carriage trade. The wine list isn’t much (“If I’m going to drop 200 quid on wine, it won’t be here”), but the leafy, Victorian second floor bar (you have to be escorted upstairs) is so captivating you’ll be tempted to while away your mealtime sipping on good British gin or a Pimm’s Cup. Resist mightily these imbibing urges, pilgrim! Because a meal at Rules is timeless and one for the ages, and unlike any other in London.

Image(If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!”)

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Consider for a moment that you are eating in the same restaurant where everyone from Winston Churchill to Benjamin Disraeli once sat. Then concentrate on your food more than we did.

What you’ll find is a menu of rib-sticking standards that have withstood the test of time. What we did notice was Marina’s gorgeous Devon smoked eel, and David’s pheasant disappearing quickly, and once we broke through the suet crust on our steak and kidney pudding (above), we discovered the most meltingly toothsome of beef stews, enriched with the flavor of (you guessed it) more kidneys (urine tang not included). This bastion of ancient Englishness has been around since 1798, and how you take to it will depend on your taste for no-nonsense dishes like potted shrimps, Dorset crab salad and whatever game is in season. But no matter what you order, you’ll find a kitchen not resting on its laurels, but deeply-steeped in the classics and doing them proud.

Quote of the evening: “Sancerre is the U2 of white wines.” Yes, we are soooo stealing it, and henceforth, intend to claim proprietary rights to this juicy putdown — humiliating white wine sheeple on both continents with David’s all-too-true bon mot.

Also too true was this sticky toffee pudding — the last word in English desserts:

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Rules is a splurge, but not as dear as you might think. Even with two bottles of wine (one champagne and one Burgundy, natch) coming in at around 300 pounds sterling, the food bill was about the same, meaning we ate like King Henry VIII for under $100/pp American.

Like St. John, Rules is a place I had always wondered about, and longed to try for decades. Would it be as good as its history and hype? Is English food going to be one big blandburger? And what’s the deal with all the meat? And so few sauces? Do they even know what seasoning is, or what a green vegetable looks like?

Seek and you shall find, the saying goes, and what we found was straightforward cooking with little of the cartwheels in the kitchen invoked in American gastronomic restaurants, where the chefs seem duty-bound to strut every trick they’ve ever learned in culinary school (or have seen on Instagram). There was an unapologetic honesty (and a purity of flavors) to the food we encountered that only comes from confidence. Confidence in oneself as a cook, confidence in your ingredients, your culture, and in what the restaurant stands for — be it a small, modern steakhouse in an antiquated setting, or an icon of British gastronomy.  Most of all, these places evinced a trust in their customers to appreciate the labor and the traditions behind the food being served. Aside from Marina and I doing our duty as serial restaurant chroniclers, I didn’t see a single person snapping pictures of their meal in any of them.

Hail, Britannia, indeed.

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This is the first part of a two part article on my recent eating adventures across the pond. Part Two will drop in a week or so.