Prime Time: The Best Steak in Town

          Run-amok inflation has driven the Great Steak War into an uneasy truce. Good beef is scarce. Great beef has never cost more. Prime-shell prices have spiraled upward 50 percent in a year. That mythic slab of crusty grilled steer—the celebrated New York sirloin—is $16.50 naked on a plate today. And in some steakhouses the plate is getting smaller. It is the time of the $42 lobster and the $5 tomato.

          Only a year ago the fearless invaders from 18^th Street, Pasquale and Mike Cetta, declared, “High Noon in ‘Steak Country,’” moving Sparks Steak House uptown, attacking the Goliaths of Steak Row with a series of feisty full-page ads. “Do not be shocked, Palm or Christ Cella,” one of them read. (“I write them myself,” Pat Cetta confides, “and my wife spends hours correcting the spelling and grammar.”) “We . . . now challenge your steaks.”

          The Cetta brothers, importers who “got into the restaurant business back-wards,” as Pat puts it, had thrust Sparks into ad-page competition (in 1972) with a $6.95 prime sirloin served with baked potato and a big bowl of salad on the house. In those days, the prime of the prime uptown cost up to $13 with potato and greens. Sparks’s ads denounced “$1.50 extra for a baked potato that cost 8 cents” and a $3.50 for the salad made of 15 cents’ worth of greens. Today the Sparks sirloin is $14.95. Salad and potato are extra. Sparks’s latest ad does not mention its steak prices. The subject is aging.

          It’s an uneasy truce . . . the sniping on Steak Row is still deadly. The Prime Sirloin Establishment rumbles with rumor, suspicion, assassination. Steak Row and Prime outposts are like the Baltic States before World War I. “So-and-so is a ripoff,” a wholesaler broker says,” says Bruno. “If it’s prime, you shouldn’t add grease,” says Jerry Brody, boss of Gallagher’s. “The Palm uses butter. Christ Cella’s uses lemon butter. Sparks’s meat comes in Cryovac, a vacuum-sealed plastic.” Marsha Forman of Peter Luger makes a face, “Cryovac meat looks like liver.” “Sure, so-and-so has a few prime sides to show you,” says Bruno, “but they’re selling choice too.”

          To investigate countless charges that New York’s greatest steakhouses might be stinting by serving choice sirloin instead of prime, I invaded kitchens and coolers without warning and found only Pietro’s using “choice.”

          Alas, there is prime and there is prime. Government grading standards have been relaxed half a dozen times in a decade. At the meat market on Washington Street one morning, dodging the fat hindquarters on the moving track in the icy staging rooms, a wholesaler points to a beautifully marbled loin stamped “Choice,” then to a sparsely marbled loin judged “Prime.” He shrugs. “Sometimes the grader makes a mistake.”

          The best prime is young. Of the restaurateurs whose places are reviewed here, only John Bruno and Marsha Forman still visit the market personally to select their meat. They look for red, porous bones and soft nubbins of fat as a sign of youth. Animals that are bruised or calloused are rejected. Beef cognoscenti seek a “satin finish.” You can feel it—bright-red meat specked with tiny flecks of white, smooth under the finger. A tough vein of white may run through the “eye,” meaning trouble on the plate.

          “With boxed meat you have no quality control,” a meat dealer warns. Cetta, who buys boxed meat from Colorado and Iowa, sneers at the myth of personal marketing. “They don’t go to the market for quality,” he says. “They go for the bargains.”

          Next comes aging. But aging standards are abandoned when stocks run low—sudden customer demand depletes inventory. And the fire . . . it takes intense heat to sear a steak, to cook it without steaming. Gallagher’s cooks sirloin on the bone with charcoal and a hickory log. The U.S Steakhouse, its butcher spirited away from Gallagher’s broils on the bone too. Peter Luger broils its porterhouse for two and then carves it in the kitchen. But can you trust the cook? All of the steaks in this tasting were ordered rare. They were served blue (cool at the core), just barely warm, medium rare . . . once, medium.

          These ten restaurants were culled from my own longtime favorites and a cabdriver’s tip. Each was visited two or three times, with friends, for leisurely dining. Then eight were revisited for a fast tasting on Sweepsteaks Day (see below).  All of these steaks were good—only a few were great. Afterward I returned to talk with proprieters, tour aging rooms, and weigh steaks ready to be grilled. Someone had to run to the hardware store to buy a scale for the Palm. Yet it was the only steakhouse where every sirloin was precisely the same weight—a credit to the butcher’s eye.

4 Steers The Palm

          “You’re only human,” the meat wholesaler said when I confessed that I would rank the Palm New York’s best steakhouse . . . for the Palm is where I indulge my carnivorous lust.

          “But I’m not allowed to be human,” I cried. “I’m a restaurant critic.” Well, all right. So I’m human. When I think of steak I think of the Palm. If I have Paul Bocuse and Jean Troisgros in town with their great passion for American beef, I take them to the Palm.

          “I’d rather have my teeth drilled than eat at the Palm,” a friend complains. “I don’t think tension goes with food. That’s why you eat sitting down.” Granted. The Palm is noisy, smoky, crowded, feral. I’m claustrophobic, crushed in the waiting crowd (no, I’ve never been recognized), and resent the ritual of the unwritten menu. The waiter recites what he has, maybe, and never mentions price. But what may look moldering with age to you—the soiled caricatures on the walls—is a link with newspaper legend wantonly lost, to me.

          The sirloin is almost always wonderful. The hashed browns have no equal. Crisp fried onion rings bring a shock of joy every time. And I can’t remember a lobster that wasn’t practically a cream puff. To avoid the savage horde, go early, go late.

          Affection may blur the memory of a less than great steak. Perhaps the sirloin here is less flavorful than it was some years ago. What depresses me is a sense that most steaks in my Sweepsteaks tasting lacked natural flavor. I taste before I salt. And the Palm’s and Pietro’s finishing touch of butter, Christ Cella’s lemon butter, Sparks’s lemon pepper, and Gallagher’s hickory-charcoal scent do help. They say the Palm does beautiful scallops, impeccable fish, even spaghetti. Forgive me—I come here for steak and lobster.

          Suspicious of instant cloning, I’ve always avoided Palm Too, across Second Avenue. One evening when the Palm looked like Times Square six minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, I joined friends storming an equally frenetic Palm Too, and tasted the best steak encountered in this research. Texture, color, character, flavor—it had everything one would ask from a steer. A five-pound lobster ordered “rare” could have been less cooked, but it was tender and buttery, and the claws made a fine lunch for two the next day. It was impossible to stop eating the then, crisp cottage fries. And when a latecomer joining our already crowded table was introduced all around, the waiter introduced himself too and fussed about with concern and an efficiency exceeded only by the din.

          On Sweepsteaks Day, the Palm sirloin (the overzealous waiter charges us $16--$2 extra for splitting) came in a close second because it was swimming in too much melted butter. Onion strings weren’t as crisp as usual, but the cottage fries were crunch-perfect.

The Palm, 837 Second Avenue, near 45^th Street, 687-2953.

***

4 Steers Peter Luger

          If I were Diana Nyad I’d swim on over. If I were Wonder Woman I’d loop my lariat over a cornice of the World Trade Center and swing across. But I’m a parochial citizen of Manhattan and I tend to forget that a swift spin across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn is the favorite steakhouse of my New York adolescence—Peter Luger.

          At first, what a disappointment . . . those old you-can’t-go-home-again blues. How fiercely plain the place is. Too brightly lit. a restless queue of standees. A crowded bar. Why didn’t someone remember to make a reservation? My friends—all first-timers here—barely conceal their disdain at the meager offerings. Shrimp cocktail. Tomatoes and raw onions to start. Baby-blues roll brainward. Eyebrows hit hairlines. Harumphs echo. Hackles rise. “That’s it?” asks the novelist-cum-whisk who is grooming himself to become our century’s Brillat-Savarin. “That’s it.” The waiter smiles. We want steak, of course. Porterhouse. And what else? “Lamb chops,” the waiter offers. “And?” “That’s it.” Ha.

          Good-natured, efficient, tolerant, the waiter serves thick rounds of tomato and onion with the house sauce—an alchemy of tomato, vinegar, horseradish, and molasses. There are six shrimp to a $5.50 portion—cold, fresh, not much taste—with a tangy sauce. Onion-flecked German fries are better. But the giant platter of meat stills the last querulous peep. What a magnificent seduction—tender and tasty, crimson in a gently charred crust—great steak, as remembered. And sublime double lamb chops.

          Miss Grimble’s pecan pie is sweet and good. Dense, sticky cheesecake actually tastes of cheese rather than an excess of lemon or vanilla. The warmed strudel could be more buttery. But the chocolate mousse cake in its rich cookie crust is splendid. There is no menu—almost no one ever asks to see it.

          There are some who think this is much ado about a bloody hunk of steer. But serious steak lovers—steak mavens, professional and amateur—celebrate Peter Luger’s porterhouse for its remarkable consistency. “Can it really be as good as I think it is? As good as it always was?” a Luger fan asks me. It ought to be. The government’s “prime” standards may have loosened, but Peter Luger’s have not. Marsha Forman is buying the same big, fat, young, silky short loins she started culling from the frosty stockrooms of the Washington Meat Market 28 years ago, when her husband’s family decided to buy the steakhouse he’d been lunching at for 30 years.

          Forman women run Peter Luger. The oldest daughter, Marilyn Spiera, does the managing and spells her mother in the market. The two of them, in quilted down freezer jackets under white butcher coats, trudge forth in waterproof boots. (There is brown butcher paper protecting the floor of the chauffeured Cadillac.) They are welcomed in strictly wholesale showrooms where other restaurateurs do not go. “We pay our bills fast,” Marilyn Spiera explains. The two women go for “very fancy, very wasty” meat. “Nobody is as discriminating as these people,” a meat dealer salutes them.

          The Forman family own their building. “We can afford meat with a lot of waste because of our low overhead,” Marsha Forman says. My husband charges himself $25 a month rent. We don’t pay a buyer. What we save. We give you on a plate.” The meat is aged in the house cold box, where a stylus charts the temperature and humidity and an alarm buzzer sounds upstairs if anything goes wrong. The morning cook’s name is “Baloney.” The house butcher is Selim “Salami.”

Peter Luger Steak House, 178 Broadway, Brooklyn, 387-7400

***

3 Steers Sparks

Well, so the Cettas write great ads. That doesn’t mean they sell great steak. There goes my essential cynicism, setting my teeth on edge even before I explore Sparks Steak House. And everything the Great Steak Establishment has to say about western boxed meat—moist-aged in vacuum-sealed plastic—convinces me I should hate Sparks’s steak. Except I don’t. I love it. And on Sweepsteaks Day, it was clearly the champ. Not the flashiest, not the biggest or the thickest—actually the most unassuming in its moderate mantle of char—but inside was a splendid tenderness, a proper explosion of tastes, integrity of texture . . . A brilliant scarlet, not hot, not cool—just warm. (We’d asked for it rare . . . very rare but not blue.) Brushing my fingers across the steak, I picked up a glaze of lemon or lemon pepper. (Cetta denies it.) It works.

          At $14.95, potatoes and salad not included, Sparks’s sirloin is no longer a bargain to boast of in two-inch type-face. (It cost us $3.95 extra to split the steak.) but it’s a sirloin to savor. Another sirloin, tasted earlier, was it equal. A third, ordered “medium,” was slightly mealy and tough. The filet mignon, a cut I never order, was text-book perfect.

          Sparks’s salad, mostly escarole and romaine with cotton tomatoes, wears a dressing that tastes bottled but is probably just a cloddish home brew. Four shrimp, a bit warm, split to make them seem jumbo, tasted fresh enough, spicy red sauce on the side. The potato was soggy, as if baked in foil. Hashed browns were better. A rather ingenious walnut pie satisfied the craving for a gooey sweet.

          Sparks uptown is a barnlike space. No one can accuse the Cettas of sawdust or asceticism. A real effort has been made—dark wood, floral carpet, etched glass, a few cozy corners and booths, remarkably handsome side-boards with wine on display. But it still looks like an “instant pub.” The wine list is remarkable, the collection of a serious wine lover, with an astonishing range of great California labels you can’t find anywhere in retail . . . here at an amazingly gentle markup. The staff is young and mostly pleasant. Twice I felt sure I was recognized. The service grew too dazzling to be believed. When I spilled a puddle of wine on the table, the waiter rushed over to change the tablecloth.

          Pasquale Cetta is perhaps understandably paranoid, all alone up there in enemy territory. He takes off all his toupee and puts on glasses to check out the competition. He claims no one ages longer then Sparks. When I asked to see Sparks’s “giant inventory” in the aging cooler, he refused. When I suggested he was shy about his boxed, plastic-wrapped sirloin, he relented. “If it’s a question of integrity, okay,” he said. The meat is aged wet, then unwrapped and hung to dry—how long is a secret. The Cettas don’t like criticism. They sued the last restaurant critic who didn’t love them for $2 million, and have spent $4,000 on legal fees so far in the quest for vengeance.

Sparks Steak House, 210 East 46^th Street, 687-4855

***

3 Steers Christ Cella

          Christ Cella remains, for me, chill and forbidding. The barroom is mildly cozy, and it might be a lark to join the regulars at the big round kitchen table, but upstairs . . . it’s like eating in an operating amphitheater. So antiseptic. But Christ Cella is a major-league steakhouse, consistently ranked among the loftiest. When a deft and amiable waiter leaves you graced with a flawless sirloin—seared, not singed, moist and full of flavor—and a giant scarlet cross section of prime rib, slightly tough but wonderfully tasty, the cozy-quotient soars. This is the classic steakhouse form: fish, chops, liver, almost everything is impeccable, straightforward, no thrills. Expensive. Caveat emptor: There is no written menu.

          Is Christ Cella coasting on its past glory? The bread is better than it was. And they no longer drown creatures of the sea in an ooze of cocktail sauce. But the shrimp one evening were totally tasteless; a lobster cocktail had ossified. The kitchen’s version of hashed browns is insipid. Batter-dipped onions are fresh and tender, but unexciting. Someone really fusses over the salad—aristocratic greens in an excellent vinaigrette. And the house takes unrestrained pride in its napoleon.

          On Sweepsteaks Day, something was seriously amiss at Christ Cella. The sirloin was tough, bland, underaged; the bright red puddle on the plate was a dead giveaway. We hadn’t announced we were sharing (Christ Cella won’t split), so the waiter took my “I’ll just have the house salad—and produced a double salad --the best of the day. Even the tomatoes had taste, but crusty mashed potatoes are not my idea of hashed browns.

Christ Cella, 160 East 46^th Street, 697-2479.

***

2 ½ Steers Gallagher’s

          Gallagher’s is hurly-burly—vast, noisy, pugnacious—I always feel as if a bar fight will break out at any moment. The tipplers look like serious drinkers. And serious steak eaters—often men dining alone on serious steaks, thinner than most and bigger, bone in, often deeply charred because Gallagher’s is the only steakhouse that uses charcoal and hickory. Even when the steak lacks flavor, the charcoal smoke fills your mouth with taste.

          So I’ll keep going to Gallagher’s. It’s theater, and stays open long after most serious steakhouses have shuttered for the night. Too bad it’s so difficult to get a good steak here. Once the steak was simply tough and too streaked with gristle. At a second dinner, three of four items ordered rare came medium . . . all three went back. On a second try, the steak was blue; so were the lamb chops. The chops went back for a third go. This particular debacle took place under the glazed eyes of our host, Jerry Brody. Was it nerves or simply incompetence? I like steak black and blue (seared on the outside, cool at the core), even though when reviewing I order it rare. This one was juicy and tough, with little natural taste.

          Though the chops arrived slightly overdone, they were excellent. And calf’s liver with both onions and bacon was a sublime hodgepodge of tastes and textures. The mystique of Gallagher’s own potatoes escapes me—they are fat sections of fried baked potatoes (boring)—but the onions, thick-battered beauties, are exciting. Almost all desserts are primitive—try the chocolate-mousse cake. Even better, plain vanilla ice cream.

          Brody is a veteran restaurateur. His Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station is one of the great treasures of New York. And he raises Black Angus. His bull, Patriot, was voted grand champion of the North American Livestock Exposition in Kentucky last month. “Prime is not just an ego trip. People expect the taste of prime,” he says.

          The steak ought to be wonderful, and it isn’t sometimes human error is at fault. Several weeks ago a new man went into the cold box and grabbed the nearest sides, breaking the aging order. Customers complained about tough steak all day before Brody himself discovered the problem.

          On Sweepsteaks Day, Gallagher’s produced a large, heavily charred steak with a fine hickory scent, cooked beyond rare, split without protest. There was a proletarian salad, boring potatoes, and superlative fried onions.

Gallagher’s, 228 West 52^nd Street, 245-5336

***

2 ½ Steers Pietro’s

          In the days I wandered New York like Magellan, discovering a thousand new worlds, it was always a thrill to climb the stairs to Pietro’s—painfully crowded and fiercely plain, ostensibly just another Italian bistro—to suffer the shock of the owner’s welcoming kiss, to marvel at the choreography of the crowded little kitchen, to know that in a moment or two, one would confront a superlative prime sirloin. Embryo steak mavens all, we would wade through the chopped salad—for vitamins—and share lyonnaise potatoes or home fries. Did I ever taste the spaghetti? Linguine with clams, I think. But the point for me in this homely little second-story Italian restaurant was always . . .great beef.

          No question, there has been a creep into mediocrity at Pietro’s. Upstairs in a third-floor room that is spare, half empty, and sadly depressing (but quieter than downstairs), our green young waiter was instantly ready to take the steak back to the kitchen. It was tough, unaged, not rare as ordered. Clams breaded and deep-fried were tough, too. Not as tough as the shrimp in their oval gratin dish, dribbled with something that tasted like pickle relish. Cottage fries tasted refried.

          On Sweepsteaks Day there was no greeting at all until a waiter passing by took it upon himself to find us a tiny table. He accepted our order for a steak to share with no complaint. It came striped with char from the grill, bland, with a good texture, properly rare—good, not great. The crisp cubes of hashed browns were sublime, a real triumph. The string-bean salad looked like Christmas—all red and green with pimiento and bell pepper—but the beans had been cooked to sog.

Pietro’s Restaurant, 201 East 45^th Street, 682-9760

***

2 ½ Steers U.S. Steakhouse

          “Where can we go for a good steak?” my friend the Rocky Mountain Sybarite asked the cabdriver.

The cabby snorted. “Where to go? So many. You got so many places in this town.” He shook his head. “The president . . . when he came to New York, he ate at the U.S. Steakhouse. That good enough for you?”

          Yes, I guess it is. For a good steak and sublime homemade potato chips and a superior hot-fudge sundae served by pleasant people in an almost comfortable setting, I’d go to the U.S. Steakhouse again myself. Especially for the buffet lunch at the bar which seems to draw remarkably attractive men.

          It’s no mystery how President Carter got to the U.S. Steakhouse. Proprieter Peter Aschkenasy’s wife, Dorothy, is Gracie Mansion’s official hostess, and even if nepotism were a national hobby, what better magnet for Jimmy Carter than a house dedicated “with unflagging devotion to steak and booze (and Old Glory)”? not to mention peanuts—big copper kettles in the bar—and a wonderfully chauvinistic list of American wines.

          Is Aschkenasy as ingenuous as he seems? When I told him the cabdriver story, he dimpled. That ad in Taxi Driver News really paid off,” he confided. “We’re doing 100 percent more dinners a night since the President’s visit.” Aschkenasy is a friend, so I happen to know his unabashedly innocent philosophy: If you want it to be good, it will be good. If only…

          Some of the U.S. Steakhouse touches are wonderful: the chips, Orwasher’s bread, fried potato skins, prime meat . . . carting fresh vegetables in from country farm stands. Some whimsies don’t always work: The bean soup of the day isn’t always wonderful. The stuffed vegetables of the day often resembles a new bride’s improvisation—sort of good, but not exactly. There is no iceburg lettuce in the salad. Aschkenasy is proud of that. And no cherry with No. 2 food dye on the hot-fudge sundae—“I’m very fussy about hot-fudge sundaes.”

          Some of the house’s early mistakes have been corrected. The stark Gwathmey-Siegel interior has been warmed and softened, though the red banners overhead remind me of Madison Square Garden. But what you want in a steakhouse is good meat and potatoes. At that, the kitchen does respectably well. The sirloin on the bone arrives rare, not too charred, not too tough, not mealy, rather tasteless. At lunch the sixteen-ounce hamburger tastes pre-cooked, with a hint of over-aged meat. At dinner the same burger, with a core of too-sweet béarnaise, is fresher, moist . . . good with the house’s rather pleasant steak sauce. Hashed brown potatoes don’t really need apple bits (though my companion loved them).

          A rancid nut always seems to creep into the six-nut pies. Recently the kitchen was ordered to bake the pies every other day instead of once a week. I’m not sure the strawberry shortcake is worth doing out of the berry season. And the whipped cream is so light that it doesn’t taste real. But that hot-fudge sundae is a gem.

U.S. Steakhouse, 120 West 51^st Street, 757-8800

***

2 ½ Steers Pen & Pencil

          On my first visit to Pen & Pencil years ago, my friend the Wall Street Voluptuary promised me the best steak of my life. He instructed the captain: “I want the best steak you have in the house.” He repeated it, twice. There are steakhouses in New York where he would have suffered for such aggressiveness. But Pen & Pencil is the gentleman’s steakhouse. It feels like a proper men’s club with its green leather banquettes and dark paneled walls and waiters dressed as stewards. Two of our steak were excellent. One was mediocre. “Impossible,” said the captain. “We took them all from the same shell.” It was the dawn of my disillusionment. Yes, you can get an indifferent steak in a great New York steakhouse.

          John Bruno is the third-generation Bruno in the business and one of the few restaurateurs still going to the market in person to select and stamp the prime loins for aging. But considering the tradition of Pen & Pencil, some luster is missing. At dinner one night recently even the carnations dropped. The sirloin was tender and rare, but tasteless; the filet had a butter aftertaste. The best choice was lamb—triple chops, seared around a blushing rose heart. Soggy salad, insipid hashed browns, spinach salad with tough spinach spines, and fried onion strings that fought back added to a sense of dreariness that lifted a bit with dessert—dense chocolate-mousse cake in a cookie crust.

          Sweepsteaks Day the sirloin—served for two without complaint or extra charge—was small, very rare, and tender, with no flavor at all. The mashed potatoes were a disgrace. We asked for beans and got plastic peas.

Pen & Pencil, 205 East 45^th Street, 682-8660

***

2 ½ Steers Broadway Joe

          There was a forlorn air about Broadway Joe—historically among the city’s steakhouse mighty. Perhaps it is the location—a few hundred feet beyond the obligatory sleaze surrounding Eighth Avenue. Perhaps we’d just missed the pre-theater carnivores. Soon we were alone with the Muzak in a corner of the back room—tripcked up in what third-rate decorators like to call “Mediterranean.” A few nights later, traffic had picked up a bit. Everyone was eating steak and baked potato. The hashed browns were definitely a $3.50 misunderstanding—acrid with the taste of stale paprika. And the cottage fries were inedible.

The menu reads like a Pinter play. Full of answers that provoke unanswerable questions. “Why $5 for tomatoes?” “Tomatoes for two,” the waiter says, smiling brightly. We question $20 for steak tartare when steak itself is only $16. “Well, that pays for the spices,” he ventures. Cheerfully he divides the pâté maison—a spicy rectangle of something close to liverwurst—and a middlebrow Caesar salad, soggy of crouton and not properly drained.

          The steak is close to medium-rare, not rare as requested. And the scampi might have been cooked in a dehydrator—not a drop of moisture survived the fire. Giant lamb chops, cool at the heart, are a complete success.

          On Sweepsteaks Day, the steak was nicely seared, minimally charred, shy of flavor, and closer to medium than to rare. The waiter doing a two-spoons-in-one-hand serving stunt dropped the potatoes on the cloth. No loss. Nervously we demolished the batter-fried onions—greasy but good. The salad—a pleasant blend of iceberg and other greens, with a scattering of arugula—was skillfully dressed. On the dark-paneled meat cooler there is a painted legend: “We must serve the best to prosper. And we must prosper to serve the best.” Enough said

Broadway Joe Steak House, 315 West 46^th Street, 246-6513

***

          There is no Smith and there is no Wollensky, but the name—Smith & Wollensky—has an old-time ring that fits the nostalgic feel of the steakhouse installed in the vast barn that used to be Manny Wolf’s. The architects have skillfully broken up that space, creating a measure of intimacy—especially in the wooden booths on the platform overlooking the dining room. Giant lobsters and mammoth pumpkins and beautiful fruit are heaped about—a handsome welcome. There are also bronze bears and female Graces, giant clocks, marble moldings—real relics, not the mock folk art ordered by the pound from restaurant supply houses.

          The steaks are prime (heifer, not steer). The lobsters are as big as wire-haired terriers. The waiters in the classic steakhouse aprons are mostly jaunty and unjaded, rolling trolleys to and fro, smashing crustacean carcasses and slicing steaks with reasonable finesse. There is a written menu—simple, unexciting—plus daily specials listed on the blackboard. The house is often crowded. The faces are young and seem happy. The intentions here are admirable. But the performance is weak.

          The bread in its wicker-and-linen snuggery is excellent—I’ve never tasted a better salt stick that this one. The house terrine is a homey meat loaf, served with tiny gherkins and a dollop of sweet cranberry sauce. An excellent vinaigrette dresses very tough greens and the season’s cellulose tomatoes on a handsome glass plate—still hot from the dishwasher. In a fit of advanced gourmandism one evening, we ordered a giant lobster to share and a steak to share. The arrived together, surf and turf—a totally uncivilized coupling to me. The steak went back to the kitchen, making room for a full attack on the lobster, overcooked and underbuttered. The steak returned, moist enough and rare, tender but tasteless.

          Another evening, a second steak was rare, as ordered, but tough with veins of gristle. and steak Wollensky—good but not great sirloin—might appeal to the onion fetishists with its bed of onions sautéed with mushrooms and its mantle of fried onions. The beef stew features lots of meat in a humble sauce and overcooked vegetables cooked separately. The creamy cheesecake is so big, does anyone care that the pastry tastes raw? And once you can work your spoon into the frozen coffee mousse you may not mind the refrigerator taste. The chocolate cake is big, moist, filled with fresh coconut. But the house apple pie is just silly.

          Sweepsteaks Day the steak was thick and narrow, tender, rare, moist, leaner than great prime. Thick cottage fries were hot and fresh, and the onions were decent enough, but the batter kept crumbling.

Smith & Wollensky, 201 East 49^th Street, 753-1530