So I'm not a small fella. Not a whale, mind you, but I'm not exactly at my fighting weight. Around two months ago or something,
cmdrtaco hemos and
I were in New York for a corporate P.R. training thingy. Now I didn't know
thefez that well, but the four of us and some other folks whose names embarrassingly escape me, all got together at his place with the weird basement where you expect there to be a pit and shittons of moths flying around like
silence of the lambs. Not that thefez is either
homocidal or unduly effeminate, but still, that basement wasn't really my thing.
To continue, we snagged a reservation at Peter Luger Steak House in Williamsburg, about 1 mile from thefez's place through some pretty shitty neighborhoodage. And, as is typical of Peter Lugar, we ordered steak for five, potatoes, asparagus and, my favorite, creamed spinach. Now steak for 2 serves 3, steak for 4 serves 5.5 and steak for 5 serves something like 20 or something, even though it is a linear relationship for size, something happens on the way that defys all laws of conservation of beef and human scaling.
Before I continue about thefez eating more steak than there are cows, I should point out that Peter Lugar really really knows how to make a steak. They have this 800 degree (farenheit, my metric friends) oven in which they , after frying the steak to get the outside perfect, toss into said oven to bring to the proper temperature that was ordered. This is the right way to do it, and most restaurants don't have ovens that can even go that high, and for that matter the shit they call steak is generally soon to be recalled conagra hepatitus A and E-coli laced shit stained meat presented for your dining pleasure. But not at Peter Lugars. They care about you, they care about beef, and they only take cash or the Peter Lugar credit card. It is, simply, the best place to have a steak in North America.
But back to the story. So maybe I would have eaten more steak, but I sort of filled up on creamed spinach and potatoes as they are as good as the steak is. So I only have 4 slices of the steak. A slice is about 1.5 to 2.5 inches wide, and about 3/4 inch thick. Peter Lugar has shown me that this is the only way to serve Porterhouse. And, well, Porterhouse is what they serve, so you people who think Filet Mignon is the way, the truth and the light, I'd recommend making a reservation at Peter Lugar and get educated on the subject before you embarass yourself on a date or something with a true, beef appreciating, man or woman.
Anyhow, so the four non-thefez of us are settling back into our chairs contemplating the desserts that may or may not be in our future, and thefez is just going after the meat. I mean, he's eating every scrap, gnawing on the bones, popping in the perfect red goodness, which sounds dirty but it's all very good. I have never experienced such a combination of awe and shock at a restaurant. It was fascinating. I don't want to imply horror or that I was looking down on his ability, I wasn't, it was amazing. It was Andres Segovia with a guitar, or John Belushi with some coke, at least.
It's not as if he didn't do himself proud with the dessert either. thefez made us all proud that day, and maybe, just a little, yearning for a time when we could do that without falling into a protein haze that would take electroshock, smelling salts and being slapped about the head and shoulders to shake it off.