I'll admit it. We didn't go out this past Saturday night, so I found myself watching the Bon Appétit Best American Restaurants special hosted by Alton Brown on the Food Network. The show itself was reasonably entertaining, though no one would call it suspenseful. Brown is perhaps my favorite Food Network personality, but he looked totally bored and disengaged on this particular show. Andrew Knowlton and Barbara Fairchild of Bon Appétit were knowledgeable and credible as the magazine's on-camera experts, but they kept talking about passion without exhibiting very much themselves....
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Porter House New York: A steakhouse with a chef back where he belongs. Photograph courtesy of Jason Perlow Steakhouses don't usually have chefs in charge. For example, who's the chef at Peter Luger? Or Gene and Georgetti in Chicago? Or the Pacific Dining Car in Los Angeles? I don't know, and I am willing to wager a steak dinner at Luger that nobody else does either. That's because steakhouses are traditionally not chef-driven; they're prime, preferably dry-aged meat and perfectly golden hash-brown-potato driven. Although celebrity chefs have gotten into the steakhouse game (because they love red meat and love developing concepts that can be cloned and yield profits with minimal oversight), I can think of only one serious chef...
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Augieland hits the nail on the head most of the time he writes, but his essays on tipping, respecting your server, and not ordering filet mignon in a steakhouse get it especially right. Augs, on behalf of food-service workers everywhere, thank you....
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