The New York Times > Robert's Steak House Restaurant Review > New York City Resta... Page 1 of 4 (Good) Restaurant Details Readers' Reviews N.Y. Times Review Where Only the Salad Is Properly Dressed By FRANK BRUNI Published: February 28, 2007 SIGN IN TO E-MAIL OR SAVE THIS IT may be laughable when someone says he gets Penthouse magazine Today's Headlines Daily E-Mail PRINT for the articles. It’s no joke when I say I went to the Penthouse Sign up for the free Today's Headlines e-mail sent every Executive Club for the steaks. SHARE morning. See Sample | Privacy Policy Enlarge This Image Over the years I’d read reports that this pleasure palace, on a stretch of Ads by Google what's this? West 45th Street closer to the edge of Manhattan than Events in DC, NY & MD most diners venture, peddled more than one kind of Bar Tours, Themed Parties & more! Let Lindy Promo be your seductive flesh. And I felt obliged — honestly, I did — to party guide www.lindypromo.com check it out, knowing that great food often pops up where SUteiShi you least expect it. Sit back, Relax and Enjoy A New Sushi Experience www.SUteiShi.com You can find bliss in the soulless cradle of a strip mall. Brunch Upper East Side NY Why not the topless clutch of a strip club? And so, early Executive Chef Philippe Feret Paris around the corner, 3rd & 80th this month, I gathered three friends for an initial trip (dare www.brasseriejulien.com I call it a maiden voyage?) to the Penthouse club — or, more specifically, to the restaurant, Robert’s Steakhouse, MOST POPULAR SHE NEEDS A STEAK . OR A nestled inside it. SWEATER A dancer at the Penthouse E-MAILED BLOGGED SEARCHED Executive Club. More Photos » We were strangers to such pulchritudinous territory, less 1. Maureen Dowd: Wilting Over Waffles Multimedia susceptible to the scenery than other men might be, more 2. Editorial: The Low Road to Victory aroused by the side dishes than the sideshow: 3. Well: Boy or Girl? The Answer May Depend on Mom’s Eating Habits underdressed, overexposed young women in the vestibule, 4. American Exception: Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs by the coat check, at the top of the red-carpeted stairs up Other Nations’ to the restaurant, on the stage that many of the 5. Well: A Hard Plastic Is Raising Hard Questions restaurant’s tables overlook. 6. Debt Collection Done From India Appeals to U.S. Agencies 7. For Obama, a Struggle to Win Over Key Blocs Two Kinds of Flesh “Are you hungry?” one of these women said, making hungry sound like an X-rated word. “Ravenous?” 8. Op-Ed Contributor: Visible Man 9. Making Money, the How-To Way Speechless was more like it. We sat down in a cocktail 10. A Good Appetite: You Call That Pudding, Grandma? Readers’ Opinions lounge at the front of the restaurant. A beautiful woman Forum: Dining Out Go to Complete List » claimed the plush armchair opposite mine. She introduced Enlarge This Image herself. I wasn’t sure I’d heard her name correctly. “Mahogany?” I said. nytimes.com/tech “Yes,” she purred. I was getting my bearings. “Mahogany,” I asked, “do you know where you’re going to?” Robert Presutti for The New York Times PROPERLY HOT The meat at She didn’t miss a beat, noting the reference, summoning Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC? Robert’s Steakhouse at the Penthouse the singer, and moving on to another of the dreamgirl’s Also in Tech: Executive Club on the Far West Side 10 most popular digital cameras is aged and carefully broiled. More hits. “I’m ... coming ... out!” she sang, waving her arms, 10 most popular cellphones Photos > 10 most popular camcorders wiggling her hips. Mahogany and I would get along just fine. She said she was running low on cabernet. I took the cue and asked if I could buy her a ADVERTISEMENTS fresh glass. “Yes,” she said. “And you can pour it on my toes.” Which movies do the Critics Didn’t happen. And when one of her sorority sisters sidled up to us to pose a question not recommend? commonly uttered in fine-dining establishments — “Is there anyone I can get naked for?” More on food. — the response was silence. On this visit to Robert’s and on subsequent ones, I was 50% off Times delivery. derelict in my duty, failing to sample much of what the restaurant had to offer. In a world of second opinions, get the facts first. But the beef, I devoured — breathlessly, ecstatically. As it happens, Robert’s has some of All the news that's fit to personalize. the very best steaks in New York City. Its atmosphere, granted, isn’t for everyone, and it has other shortcomings as well. The men who actually wait on the tables are less attentive and personable than the women http://events.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/dining/reviews/28rest.html?ref=dining&pagewanted... 4/24/2008 The New York Times > Robert's Steak House Restaurant Review > New York City Resta... Page 2 of 4 who hover around them (and, it should be noted, vanish quickly if shooed away). The prices of some dishes, pumped up to reflect the entertainment on hand, might also be called topless. But no matter what your appetite for the saucy spectacle accessorizing these steaks, you’ll be turned on by the quality of the plated meat. That has been noted or at least hinted at before, in publications as varied as The New Yorker, Saveur and Men’s Fitness. (Robert’s gets around.) But I had my doubts until I tasted the steaks myself and compared them, in a condensed period, with their most fabled peers around town. I made my way back to Sparks, where the plump shell steak had the discernibly rich taste of prime beef and yielded to a knife that seemed better suited to butter. I traveled anew to Peter Luger, where the flavor of the porterhouse had real depth, along with the muskiness and mineral quality that often come with dry aging, but on this occasion the meat lacked its usual char. At Robert’s Steakhouse I got char, richness, depth and a more pronounced degree of aging, an unmistakable tanginess that accentuated and stretched out the beef’s flavor. I got it in the bone-in strip steak ($53), the rib-eye for two ($104) and the porterhouse for two ($106). All of these had spent at least 6 and as many as 10 weeks in a special vault where their custodian, Adam Perry Lang, rigorously controls the humidity and the air flow. Mr. Lang, the restaurant’s executive chef since it opened in 2003, is a serious carnivore. He divides his time between Robert’s and Daisy May’s barbecue, which is nearby and which he co-owns. His résumé includes Guy Savoy in Paris and Daniel on the Upper East Side. What’s he doing with lap dancers? Let me rephrase that: what’s he doing in the same theater as lap dancers? He said in a recent phone conversation that he’s getting more control over the food than he might at another restaurant. He not only ages but also cooks the steaks as he sees fit: in a broiler with two decks, each a different temperature, allowing the kitchen staff to move the steaks around and to make sure their exteriors are seared just right. The steaks are brushed with canola oil before they go into the broiler and with olive oil after they come out. Little more than salt and pepper is added to that. Mr. Lang also struts his stuff with a handful of surprising successes on an uneven menu that, for the most part, treads the usual turf: Caesar salad, creamed spinach, shrimp cocktail, crab cake, rack of lamb. Two of the best appetizers, a seafood salad and a tuna tartare, are enticingly seasoned with bonito flakes, nori, sesame seeds and sriracha, a Thai chili paste. A third standout, dominoes of uncooked hamachi, comes with slivers of jalapeño and splashes of dashi and mirin. The onion rings are fat and crunchy, and cream and bacon turn a side of brussels sprouts into something naughty, though not as naughty as the most unusual dessert. It’s called a buttery nipple, and it involves one of the women straddling your lap, tilting your head back, pouring a combination of Baileys Irish Cream and butterscotch schnapps down your throat, and squirting Reddi-wip into your mouth. It costs $20 in cash. Note to the newspaper’s expense auditors: I don’t have a receipt. In the end, though, the steaks are the thing. The steaks and the conversation. Meet Foxy. When I visited Robert’s on Valentine’s Day in a mixed-gender group (not all that unusual at the restaurant), she approached our table to hawk neck and shoulder massages, also $20 apiece. “Foxy,” I began, then stopped myself, wondering if I was being too familiar. “Are you and I on a first-name basis, or should I address you as Ms. Foxy?” “You can call me Dr. Foxy,” she said. “Is that an M.D. or a Ph.D.?” http://events.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/dining/reviews/28rest.html?ref=dining&pagewanted... 4/24/2008 The New York Times > Robert's Steak House Restaurant Review > New York City Resta... Page 3 of 4 “Yes,” she answered. The doctor coated her hands with moisturizer and, less seductively, antibacterial gel.