One snowy night about two decades ago, when I lived in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, I passed by Peter Luger Steak House. I was fairly new to New York then and did not know the provenance of this particular restaurant, only that it was very old (est. 1887, to be exact). I didn’t know then the culture or the etiquette one observes in dining here: cash only, you leave your steak in the hands of the servers (stern, gruff, bowtied), you consume schlag as if your life depended on it.
From the outside looking in, the whole enterprise looked too intimidating, and I walked right by and found my way back to Bedford Avenue. It would be months before I ventured out again, this time for lunch, where I took the baby step of getting a Luger Burger, a decadent half-pound ground chuck with dry-aged sirloin and tenderloin trimmings.
