Peter Luger's - no corkage and bad reviews

Don’t know if anyone saw the article by Pete Wells slamming the place, but I was PO’d when they wouldn’t let me bring some wine for a special occasion and they made us buy wine from them and use their Libby industrial glassware. Not that I’m that geeky about glasses, but even Olive Garden has better glasses. Or had - I haven’t been there for a while.

And it’s not that hard to have a good wine list if you’re a steak house.

Victor beat you to it

I haven’t been to PL for a long time but, from what i recall, Olive Garden’s wine list might be better, too.

When we were there they had some Ridge on what they call a list. So I guess we got lucky but their list does indeed suck.

Even back in the day, pretty much everything sucked except the beef and the potatoes

They have Bedrock and a few other decent wines on the list. Certainly not extensive. It’d be better if you could BYO.

The bacon!

This. And schlag with dessert.

I always just buy a Ridge and call it a day. Just don’t let the servers rush you, or you are out in 75 minutes. We manage the time.

Although its been a long time since I’ve been there, I thought it was a basically a fraud the two times I tried it.

I doubt the negative review will hurt them one bit – it’s like the Mr. Chow of steakhouses.

The real question is whether the quality of the meat has declined as that was the main reason to go. I haven’t been in well over a decade (too much of a schlep) so I have no idea on whether I would agree with that assessment.

That restaurant has long relied on Wall Street clientele.
On my last visit, Wall Street firms were still on Wall Street, and a veritable all-male sea of blue suits, white shirts, and yellow “power” ties.
Since then, Wall Street firms have evolved adaptively or disappeared forcibly, but Peter Luger’s has neither. Let us see if Pete Wells leads to either.

I would imagine the quality of the meat has gone down even though probably not lugers fault. Prime steak is now a hot commodity across the entire USA so the days of them getting the pick of the litter probably is much harder.

That might help explain the adverse diner and critic reviews. A good restaurant would compete accordingly to maintain quality, if charging high prices.

I don’t think it has dropped at all, at least in the ~20 or so years I’ve been going there. One of the reasons I like it is because of the lack of change. It’d certainly be a different restaurant if they took credit cards and had a more diverse menu and wine list, with likely a different clientele; imo it’d likely be a negative. BYO would be nice, though.

I think it has changed a little. The last time I was there, the steak was solid rather than spectacular, and given the high expectations from our previous visits, it was a tad disappointing. The bacon was better than usual.

I think I will probably give it another chance, as my son loves the place, but given the above and the hassle of getting there from Westchester, it had better be back to where it was.

No, it would be an improvement. I always cringe at requests to go to Luger because it’s a pain to get to and it’s more of an “experience” for out of towners than an actual dining destination. In a city where steakhouses abound (and where omakase has for many years replaced them as a premier meal anyway), it’s mostly a sideshow. You can get better steak with far less hassle in almost every other part of Manhattan, with better wine, desserts and other food for people who may not be interested in steak. The only times to go anymore are when junior people at work want to go because “they’ve never been”. The request is almost never repeated after they go.

Interesting; I’d be far less interested in going if it were more homogeneous with other NY steak houses.

Yes, but it gets back to whether Luger is now a charming anachronism rather than a great restaurant. I think Wells got it right, the formula is fading a little.


I like restaurants with chefs doing interesting things which I can’t do at home. Do I need to spend a fortune and a lot of time for essentially a hunk of good meat and little else (apart from the bacon) to recommend it.

Haha this is me 10 years ago as an impressionable new analyst in New York. Even then I thought it was a marginal value, though it was entertaining enough. I certainly have no intention of returning

Exactly! Our summer associates want to go, and no one is overly excited to take them given the massive schlep to Brooklyn. It’s just a thing to cross off the list.