Review: Peter Luger in Great Neck

Peter Luger is a time machine where you leave your car with a present-day valet and step inside the Great Neck steakhouse where nothing has changed since it opened in 1960. That was 10 years after longtime customer Sol Forman bought the original Brooklyn restaurant that had been established, in 1887, as Carl Luger’s Cafe, Billiards and Bowling Alley. (Carl ran the kitchen for his uncle, Peter, who owned the place.)

Both locations share the same menu, vaguely Medieval banqueting-hall décor, hotter-than-blazes grills and professional, no-nonsense service. The Forman family is still in charge and personally selects the primal cuts of prime beef that are dry-aged in house.

When you’re dealing with top-of-the-line beef, there is going to be variation from steer to steer, from porterhouse to porterhouse, but the bottom line is, you stand a better chance of getting an extraordinary steak at Luger’s than anywhere else. And porterhouse is the steak to order — the only question is for two, three or four. Your steak will arrive, hissing and sizzling, on a screaming-hot plate. The kitchen has already anointed it with clarified butter and sliced it; your server will dip each slice into the accumulated fat, making it even more deliciously succulent.

The menu here is short; the list of items that the vast majority of diners order is even shorter: Start with sliced tomatoes and onions and slather them with Luger’s steak sauce. Get a couple fat slices of bacon or, if that seems too baldly carnivorous, order the wedge salad — half a head of iceberg lettuce smothered with bacon and blue cheese. If you don’t want steak, you could order the excellent lamb chops but, if you don’t want steak ... why are you here? Creamed spinach is excellent and you can feel confident about all the potato sides, though German fried potatoes (like home fries) are first among equals. For dessert: apple strudel with schlag.

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