How Peter Luger Steak House Cooks The Perfect Steak - Exclusive
Peter Luger Steak House is renowned for — what else? — its steaks. The 1887 iconic location was founded in New York City, recently opened a new outpost in Las Vegas, and focuses on serving patrons the highest quality steak possible, with little else on the menu. Your entrée options are a steak for one person or options for group orders up to four people. They also offer a rib steak, plus three non-steak options (fish and lamb, if you're wondering).
How has Peter Luger Steak House developed and maintained a reputation for some of the best steaks in the city? While the process starts with hand-picking steaks daily from the meat market, the restaurant's co-owner and vice president Jody Storch broke down for us, in an exclusive interview, how the steak goes from the market to the restaurant's on-site dry-aging room (an important part of the process, she noted, as "it allows the fibers of the meat to break down ... and affords it a specifically dry-aged flavor, which some describe as a mineral-ly, earthy sort of flavor") to the dining room table.
From meat market to dinner table
Storch and her family select the steaks themselves, at market. A driver picks up the steaks and delivers them to the restaurant, where they go to the dry-aging room. The steaks are kept there until, Storch said, they reach their "full potential." Then, the restaurant butcher cuts the steaks using a bandsaw and sends them to the kitchen.
Peter Luger Steak House uses an extremely hot broiler to cook their steaks, one that achieves temperatures the average home oven cannot. From there, Storch described, "[They] take the steak, they throw kosher salt on it, they throw it on the broiler, and then they take it off. They put it on a platter with some clarified butter on the bottom, and they cook it again. They slice it, and when it's about to come off the broiler, they have the waiter [standing] there ... He goes running with it sputtering to the table."
The process is one that's dramatic and that Storch said had a certain music to it. She said, "When you're sitting in the restaurant, you hear this popping, cracking sound of waiters running by with these sizzling hot platters. It's very dramatic and it's an exciting thing for the customers, because they know they're getting it straight off the broiler."
Peter Luger Steak House runs three unique locations in Brooklyn, New York; Great Neck, Long Island; and inside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Visit the Peter Luger Steak House or Caesars Palace websites for information about reservations.