341: Peter Luger

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0:32Yes, while you come in and there's inevitably going to be a high percentage of tourists, there's also a ton of people who have been there like 30, 40 times before, which you just don't get anywhere else. It changes things, and it's one of the only restaurants where most people sit down, like, they don't get a menu. They have a waiter that they know that they come in and they're like, hey, I want to sit with him. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbarg.

0:59Peter Luger is Brooklyn history and one of the most iconic New York City restaurants around. Between hand-selected steaks, a signature bacon and burger service, and a tight-knit family that has run the place since 1950, it's a rich topic to talk about on a show. and talk we did with Daniel Tertel, who works along with his family at the Williamsburg Institution. Daniel is involved in the daily selection of steaks that are served to hungry guests each day, and we talk about the restaurant's legacy, as well as its bright future in, of all places, Las Vegas. We also talk about what it took to come back from a pretty tough New York Times review.

1:36Daniel is a really interesting guy, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

1:49Dan Turtel, welcome to This is Taste. It's great to see you. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. So, like, your name isn't Luger. My name is not Luger. But you're basically, your name could be Luger. It could be. I've thought about it. You've thought about switching it. I'm sure Turtel's pretty cool, but... It'd be less confusing. But you're here. You're technically a vice president at Peter Luger, but you're part of the family. It's a family run operation. So you set off, Mike, it's a gentle family. Tell me a little bit about what is a family gathering of all the shareholders and all the voting shares of Peter Luger?

2:23So we, you know, it's again, it's a very gentle, loving version of succession. But no, we have we have like a great time. And, you know, right now working there is myself, my great aunt Amy, my aunt Jody and my cousin David. and we have, you know, board meetings every day at lunch. And once a week, basically we have Friday night dinners uptown with like the whole family. So it's, uh, that's kind of the extent of it. No, it's, it's, it sounds like you're in it. You're having lunch with your family before going to work. Let's back up a bit though. I want to zoom out in the intro. I'll say a little bit about why I love your restaurant and why it's so important.

3:04But honestly, in your words, Peter Luger, like what, what is this institution? What does it mean to New York? Yeah. So Peter Luger is interesting. It kind of defined the modern American steakhouse. And part of that is that like we've proselytized through all of our waiters who've left us and started their own steakhouses. So that's like Wolfgang's, Ben and Jack's, Benjamin's, Empires. And so we have like a kind of tremendous reach with what our menu has done. But all that started with us. And, you know, we've popularized dry aged beef and, you know, kind of like these very bare bones German beer hall establishments, which is kind of like now people think of it as this is an American steakhouse.

3:45But it wasn't always that way. Yeah. And yeah. And it's cool to be at like where it all started. I mean, truly. Who was Peter Luger? Who was the guy? It's a guy, right? It's not like a amalgam. It's not like a cartoon, right? It's a real guy. Yeah. An old 19th century myth. Yeah, the jelly green giant of beast. No, he's a real guy. He is a real guy. I don't actually know all that much about him. I don't know that anybody does, but he was either a German immigrant himself or the son of German immigrants. And he was living in the very German neighborhood of Williamsburg. And in 1887, he started what was then Carl Luger's Cafe and Billiards with his nephew, Carl.

4:24And Peter owned it and his nephew, Carl, manned the grill. Apparently there were billiard tables in there, but I can't understand how they would have fit. Right. Smaller people back then, maybe? Yeah, that's probably. Just kidding. But it was just that, you know, if you have a sense of the restaurant, it's just that one dining room when you go in and make a right. That was the original place. Oh, no way. So we've grown from one to four dining rooms. It's very like organic expansion. So it was just that one and it was a billiards hall. Yeah, and that was 1887 Williamsburg. A hot place to be. Well, let's fast forward to 1950.

5:00The Foreman family bought the Peter Lugar. And that's where your family enters the mix. And so let's let's find out what was it like in 1950 when it was taken over? And what you know, what is it? What did it become? Yeah. So Saul Foreman, who bought it in 1950, was my great grandfather. And Saul was a really interesting guy. He was the son of penniless Russian immigrants living on the Lower East Side. His mother kind of famously was along in years when she had him and she thought that she had a tumor and then out popped Saul. Wow. And, uh, but very, like very smart, very industrious guy. He dropped out of high school at 17 to light street lamps.

5:37Um, but always like very entrepreneurial, not educated, but like very, very smart and had a really good sense of business. So, you know, fast forward a little bit. Um, he takes a loan from his older sister's husband to start this metalworking factory. And where are you going to set up a metalworking factory in the manufacturing district of Williamsburg? So it's at Broadway and Driggs, um, which is catacorned across the street from, uh, from Peter Luger. It was an interesting business. He did it with some of his siblings and their spouses. But the old saying was that when business was good, he'd be eating two, three steaks a day.

6:12When the trade shows were in town, he'd be having three steaks a day. So then in 1950, Peter Luger had been dead for a few years. The business was declining. And they put it up for auction rather than find a new business lunch spot. Saul went across the street, bought at an auction. He was the only one there. And then that kind of became the business. So yeah, so that was 1950. How am I related to Saul? Saul's my great grandfather. He had three daughters. All three of his daughters had three children. All nine of them live in New York, except for my mother, who was the black sheep and moved to the Jersey shore.

6:50Oh, she went down. You grew up in Asbury. I grew up in Asbury. Oh, man. So many questions about Saul. I mean, like Saul, I mean, I'm getting like Nucky Thompson energy to reference Boardwalk Empire, one of my favorite shows. It feels like he like was smart and that he was running a business and knew there was a canteen. Let's blend the two together. Let's do business and maybe make money twice off of our customers. Yeah. I think that's knowing Saul, that's probably correct. Like you're like buying the industrial stuff across the street and having a meal across. Yeah. I think that was a lot of it.

7:22And, um, but he also, he, you know, I think a lot of things that now seem kind of obvious, but he was the first one to be like, let's be super ingredient focused, especially for a steakhouse at the time. Right. Um, and his wife also really interesting character, my great grandmother, Marsha, um, who's this like very, I always picture as a very like elegant old Russian lady with like a huge Russian braid down her back. Um, and Saul's first thing at the restaurant, he's like, you are going to learn how to pick meat. and he hired this old USDA inspector who would take Marsha around to the meat markets, which are like super male dominated.

7:56Yeah, these are the ones in the meatpacking district, 1416th Street. Yeah, so like meatpacking district, I mean, at the time that's where they all were. And there's blood on the floor, just like all men, all guys in boots. And my great-grandmother would show up in like a Cadillac with her heels and fur coat. And it would be like, well, we're gonna pick meat. And those guys all loved her. But she had like such an eye for it And she was like willing to, you know, just work so hard. So when I was starting to pick me and go to these places, the guys who were like really, really old timers when I was starting, they remembered her.

8:28They were like 17. And they were like, oh, we love Marsha. And that was a really cool, cool. That's amazing. So, Dan, let's like hear a little bit about your job. So you're saying you learned to pick me. This is like your job. Yeah, this is. You seem like a cool guy. Like you could be like literally like you could be like a professional surfer slash you could be an agency guy. Like you look like a normal guy, but you don't look like a meat picker. Yeah. Well, you've never seen me try to surf. But yeah. But yeah. No. So the meat picking is it's honestly it's like a really cool, fun part of the job.

8:58You just get to meet really neat people. And for us, it's not just like, oh, well, meat's coming to the restaurant. What do we want? What don't we want? Like I've spent a lot of time in the Midwest going to these like slaughterhouses, going to the feedlots, going to the ranches. It's an interesting thing. And we take, you know, we're not winning any awards for like innovation in beef, right? So for us, it's all quality focus. And it's all like, where's the ingredients coming from? How do we source the highest quality beef? And that's like our whole trick. I mean, the innovation in meat is fake meat and that stuff is trash.

9:32So straight up, like you should be doing it like the way they used to do it. Like that's what meat should be. Yeah, that's – you're not going to find any argument here. Yeah, no. But I think it's interesting when you say you're not going to be innovating because like – I mean I had Pat LaFriede in here recently and it's the same way. Like you got to put in the work. You got to know your farmers in the Midwest and you got to like just know how to work with your customers. So you pick meat. You buy the meat direct. Yeah. So you work through a distributor here. But we know the places that they're coming from.

10:03We've been to those meatpacking plants. We've been to all that stuff. And then as far as the actual distributors here go, there's a few still in meatpacking, but mostly they've moved like the Bronx or Long Island. They're kind of scattered all over the place. There's not really much in meatpacking, but there are. Like Waisel and Jobag are still there. But you also, as us, we pay for the privilege of being able to send meat back, which certainly makes it more expensive because people have got to make two rounds when they come to us. but that's something that we feel is like our identity and that's something that we need to be able to retain.

10:37Yeah and your menu is pretty simple it's pretty simplified it isn't like a Keen's for example I mean it's like steak for one steak for two steak for three steak for 20. Yeah I mean there's other cuts I'm sure but but what is when you say it's steak for one steak for two like what is the cut because you're like deciding really for your diners right? Yeah so you get a short line which is basically like midway you know through the ribs down to the hip and you've got two like super prized pieces of meat there. You've got the sirloin, which is actually the same muscle as the rib. It's just like once it passes that seventh rib, it becomes sirloin.

11:13And then beneath it, you've got the tenderloin, which up by the ribs is basically, it's actually nothing, but it starts to grow. And by the time you get to the way back of the short loin, you've got like a full filet at the biggest it's gonna be. So that's your porterhouse. Like the back two, three cuts of short loin, that's your steak for two. Beyond that, you know, all these different configurations of T-bone where you have some filet, you know, the sirloin basically stays the same size throughout. Those get configured differently for like steak for three, steak for four. And then the steak for one is just like a pure New York strip.

11:49Which is like, I think when you get that, you get the real, you get the blood flavor, you get that like real, like iron flavor. I love that about the strip. It's such a great cut. I totally agree. um yeah people have their preference so like now honestly the reason that we started putting the rib on the menu was because it was so cheap at the time and it was like a great way to balance the cost media took it over yeah and now rib is more expensive than short how many times like have you seen a guy do a rib eye on television it's like it's like the cuts yeah and like you know 50 years ago that was it was like trash meat yeah um so that's pretty interesting but that so that muscle loses fat as you go back right so i don't know my opinion would be that like the rib you're not getting the full meat flavor.

12:28It's like, it's very fatty. It's so fatty. Yeah. And when you go back towards the porterhouse, you're getting less and less fat, but you're getting more of that meat flavor. It's a big muscle, but it's a muscle that's not used so much. And then beneath that, you've got the filet with the tenderloin, which is also a fairly large muscle, but it's basically not used at all. It's not weight bearing. It's nothing in a steer. So even though it has the least amount of fat of any of these things, it's also the tenderest. Yeah. Which gives it flavor and you can cut it with a butter knife. So there's like a certain steak fan who loves it.

13:01I think the rib eye does well because there's a lot of people who don't eat a lot of steak and then when they go out, they want that unctuous fatty cut. But like for a guy like you who knows what good steak is, you'd rather have the flavor. Yeah, also like our method of cooking, you have butter on the plate also. Let's get into that because it was exactly what I wanted to ask you because it seems you've got the cuts, you're picking, but then there is some special sauce. There is some magic that happens when you cook at Peter Luger? What is your style? Because I know you have a unique style. I always think that our magic is like in the selection.

13:31Yeah. There's not a lot of people who know how to pick meat like we do. It's, you know, there's a bunch of criteria that go into it, but any piece that comes into our aging room, it's been really, really kind of like poured over and we're like, this is it, we're sure. And that times, you know, 1600, whatever. So that comes in after the dry aging process, it gets butchered same day. We're butchering twice a day in Brooklyn. then it goes up to the kitchen it just goes on you know the broiler salt on top one side it's like four minutes four or five minutes it's extremely hot broiler extremely hot a thousand degrees and you feel it in there like especially like summer in there it's tough basically four or five minutes each side then it comes off and this is you know now it doesn't seem so innovative but for a long time.

14:19This was like, this was the new thing. And now it, so it comes off the broiler. Um, it goes into the plate that it's going to be served on, um, with just a little bit of clarified butter gets sliced in the plate and then finished back in the broiler. Yeah. That's the key to finish part. Yeah. And that's pretty special. And then it goes out, you know, on that platter, the platter is searing hot. Um, we've got big signs in the kitchen, which is don't leave the kitchen if the steak isn't sizzling. Right. Right. And, uh, it goes out to the table you're supposed to be able to hear it and um yeah so you're like fuck resting like there's no such thing no no no which which i think go go go it's cool like you know because it's gonna rest because there's gonna be big you know cameras out or iPhones out and yes especially these days it rests a little bit it rests a little bit more with the big the grand moment exactly but what peter luger really means to me it's not just picking the steaks and i love that we started with culinary because really i i respect the most out of restaurants really but no but no it's like about going to Peter Luger with the boys or with your family or for a holiday.

15:19And I just want to ask you, when you think about the dynamic in the dining room, you've got a lot of tourists there too, of course. What makes a time at Peter Luger really special? Yeah. I think Peter Luger is an incredibly unique restaurant in that it gets so many repeat customers. We've got our own house accounts and we've got such an army of regulars that, yes, while you come in and there's inevitably going to be like a high percentage of tourists. But there's also a ton of people who have been there like 30, 40 times before, which you just don't get anywhere else. And whether that's, you know, they have a standing reservation with the boys every, every Friday, you know, first Friday of the month, or they come in with their family once a year, or they're there like for every major event that their family has ever had.

16:03It changes things. And it's one of the only restaurants where most people sit down, like they don't get a menu. They have, they have a waiter that they know that they come and they're like, hey, I want to sit with him. And that changes things. And, you know, it's also, that's true also throughout the waiters. Like most restaurants in New York have huge turnover in the waiters. Our guys have been there for like 30 years, 50 years. Like we've waiters that - Is that because they just do really well? Probably. I mean, it's capitalism and it's foolish. Yeah. But we also, you know, we do a lot of things to keep them taken care of.

16:35And, you know, So every single employee of ours, for instance, gets full health care non-contributory for them and their family. They don't pay a dime towards it. And that's something that we do so that it's not just like, oh, you're going to come in here and it's going to be like a quick turn career while you're trying to do something else. It's like this is a place you could build a career. You could build a family. You could really live off this. I got to imagine you don't have a lot of openings for spots. I feel like you probably have an apprenticeship program where you build yourself up to be a dining room waiter.

17:00Yeah. And actually, that's true of the waiters. It's also true of the kitchen. So like a lot of our, you know, the guys who are the most senior now, the heads of the broilers, everything like that, a lot of them started as dishwashers. A lot of them started, you know, in different positions in the kitchen and they've worked their way up. Because one of the nice things about us is like you don't need a fancy chef who's going to be like, this is how we're doing this. This is how we're doing this. We're calling the shots. You know, who went to CIA and is coming like hot out of school. like it's much more important actually that these guys have a sense of how the kitchen works know the timing of everything the timing is like so key for us um so they've also been there forever so these guys come in and like it like they know everybody like it really is it feels like you're eating at like the Bavarian beer hall behind your house because like you you are like all these guys yeah all these guys have been there forever so you mentioned the uh house accounts and you mentioned And like, do you really have guys who roll up every Friday?

18:00Do you, is that legit? Who are they? Like, not by name, but like, who are these people? Because I love this. They tend to be like these big tables of usually men. It's like eight of them at a time. And they are the guys who have a bacon appetizer, lamb chop appetizer, steak for, you know, four times two, ribeye for two, like three times. Like they just eat a tremendous amount of food. Sometimes these guys are there for lunch every Friday and then like, you know, it's three martinis and back to work. I mean, that's, I understand that. It's like, it's like lunch and you're away from your family and you can do it.

18:35But like the Friday dinner is kind of epic. Like, are they doing biz? Are these guys, are these businessmen? You know, we kind of stay out of hand. I don't know. Wise man, Dan, to kind of let them do their thing. No, it's really fascinating when you talk about regulars. Because New York, we have a culture of being a regular. But with like resi and with like just like places get hot, it's kind of impossible right now. So how do you work the book then for these guys? You just have like literally a standing rest? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, the regulars, there's a lot of like, you know, don't ask, don't tell.

19:11But they come in, they see the hosts, like they end up getting tables. We definitely like, you know, hold a few aside for people. But that's based on like we know that a certain amount of people are going to come in. And it's also more that like, you know, they text three days in advance, like, hey, they all have all of the waiters numbers. They all have our host numbers. They're like, hey, I'm coming in with eight people. Can you make it work? And we'll squeeze tables and we'll do what we can do. You can definitely have a few standing tables for those guys. Yeah, exactly. So do you actually do you take credit cards?

19:40I always wonder about this. No. No. We so we take cash, obviously. We do take checks, which like no one ever pays with a check, but we do take checks. We take U.S. debit cards now, which seems like the hot new thing for us, and gift certificates and Peter Luger account. The account. So how do you get an account? What goes into that? Sounds cool. The accounts are cool. And again, a lot of the things that I'm talking about as innovations, like the business started in 1887, and then Saul bought it in 1950. So now I think we're really used to like you go shopping and they're like, well, do you want an account card with us?

20:21and you know a lot of people have these no one really had that back then and saul you know in his kind of very simple but intuitive way was like what's going to make somebody come back to peter luger time and time again and it's like well they're going to open their wallet they're going to see peter luger card there in gold so it's something that like catches their eye they're gonna be like oh i haven't been there in a while i should go yeah um and it was like it was it was a great call it's really simple but it was a great call and now we're up to like almost 100 ,000 of these cards. Um, and just kind of crazy when you think about it.

20:52And they also provide like some of my favorite moments in, in working at Peter Luger. Um, at least once a month, someone comes in, usually like two or three people come in with a card. They say, Hey, um, my father just passed away and his card number is 1402. I'm one of three siblings and we want to split this up. We want us to keep going. So we want it to be 1402 A, B, and C and we do it. And then, you know, they're like thrilled. That's cool. It's a way to like keep these things going, which is, it's pretty magical. It's a unique thing to be able to do. That's really special. And I think it just shows the hospitality that you present.

21:30What is your day-to-day like? What do you personally, what are you, when you're saying you're having lunch with your co-workers every day, what are you doing in the restaurant? So, you know, the past couple of years, I've really focused on expansion, modernizing back and stuff. it's like like it's it's an old place um there yeah the one in brooklyn for sure yeah um but also like you know the back end was very old um so when i when i started out our all of our counting was done on these like gigantic printed custom ledgers which is like an excel sheet with you know like 50 columns if you print it out so that's what like a through like yeah you know whatever a a x and um and bound in leather and that's like how we did all of our stuff so they were adding machines.

22:15Wait, this is like in 1995? This is in like 2013. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah, it was pretty wild. And no computer, not a single computer in the office. That was something that like that could change. And now we're, you know, very modern in the back end. And a lot of the trick has been like, how do we maintain the feeling and the sentiment and the aesthetic of an 1887 establishment on the ground, but then make some things easier for ourselves in the back end and make sure that like things are working. We're collecting the data that we need to collect. And it's not that simple. No. So that's a lot of what I do.

22:53And then I've been working a lot with the expansion stuff. So let's talk about that. I was out to dinner last night with a friend and he was like, I told him I was talking to you and he's like, man, the Great Neck location is better. It's like the best one. Hot take. Hot take, right. Not sure if you agree. But you're also in Las Vegas. Yeah. You recently opened there. and like that's a whole scene. Yeah, so we were kind of on the 60-year plan. It was like 1887. And then Great Neck opened in 1960. And then Peter Luger Tokyo opened in October 2021. Oh, right. And then Vegas opened last week. Right.

23:28Last week. Yeah. Wait, have you been to the Sphere? I've been to the Sphere. What do you think? It's okay. Yeah. It's just like a thing. It's a Sphere. It's a screen. All right. Back to you. What's the crowd like at Peter Luger Vegas? I mean, what a restaurant town. I was there this past May. Yeah. I mean, holy cow, people love to go to restaurants there. It's pretty incredible. The demand there, especially for like steakhouses, is pretty wild. It was a very like natural place to go because of that. But it's really cool. Caesars, which is where we are. Oh, cool. So we took over the old Rayo space, which is this like - Yeah.