All That Glitters is not Feingold

It seemed that meat was beating a steady retreat just a few years ago.

Consumption was down. Vegans were riding high on kale, fiber and venture capital-backed alternatives. Beef was out. Beyond was in.

As carnivores waned, the steakhouse, the most American of restaurant genres, seemed in danger of extinction.

What a difference a few years can make.

These days, meat is manifest destiny. It’s dogma. Thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s obsession with red meat — he recently boasted about eating it twice a day — meat has moved up the food pyramid. According to the Annual Meat Conference’s "Power of Meat" report, U.S. beef sales rose 12% last year, to about $45 billion.

The steakhouse, temple of red meat, has roared back to life in New York City. The question must be asked: Why now?

Why, when the health risks of eating red meat have never been clearer? When the economic outlook vacillates between the “This is Fine” dog and Edvard Munch’s “Scream”? Why, if you don't know where your next paycheck is going to come from, would you possibly drop three figures on a ribeye? Why, when the GINI Index, a measure of economic inequality, is reaching an all-time high and the price of red meat is sky high and only getting higher, are steakhouses flourishing?

One reason is, perhaps, that the steakhouse is a known thing — and known things are, in this world of unknowns, ever more appealing.

“When the economy is tougher, people of all income tiers are less willing to roll the dice on experimental concepts,” says Mike Lee, a food futurist and author of the newsletter The Future Market. “Steakhouses are by and large a known quantity."

Steak is reliable. The city is fuller now than ever before with gilded temples of carnivorous conspicuous consumption.

But these aren’t the steakhouses of yore.

For much of its life, the steakhouse was a boys club. The modern steakhouse grew out of the 19th century beefsteak banquets, stag-only fundraisers held by New York’s elite. According to the New Yorker’s Joseph Mitchell, Gotham’s greatest chronicler, writing in 1939: “The institution was essentially masculine until 1920.”

That’s when, as per Mitchell and thanks to the 19th Amendment, “beefsteaks became bisexual.” He continues, “For generations men had worn their second-best suits because of the inevitability of grease spots; tuxedos and women appeared simultaneously.”

By the 1950s and '60s, beefsteak banquets had given way to the “Mad Men” martini meccas of the mid-century.

From its very origins, the steakhouse has been small-c conservative. In fact, there are few genres as well circumscribed.

Its rituals and rites are canonical, as dependable as spring cherry blossoms or an autumn Mets collapse. There will be trolleys, wheeled around the dining room laden with meat, martinis or desserts. (Not at the same time.) There will be waiters in bow ties. There will be elaborate tableside preparations of little necessity but great joy. Salads will be tossed with great aplomb just inches from one’s face, a thin mist of anchovy resting in the air long after the waiter has departed. Steaks will be sliced and horseradish produced from hidden compartments. Martinis will materialize before your very eyes — very dry or very dirty, as per your predilection.

And, of course, there is the menu itself, a standardized template showcasing, predictably, steaks. Steaks, aged for various lengths, sourced from various ranches, cut into a discreet number of styles: filet, strip, ribeye, T-bone. These will be served in isolation, or near isolation, upon a plate. Sauces — bearnaise, steak sauce, au poivre, etc. — shall be listed separately; add-ons — lobster, crab, truffle — as well. Shrimp will be formed, Bob Fosse-like, into cocktails. Oysters and mussels shall be raw, put on large ice-filled platters and tiered. There will be non-steak entrees — a dover sole, chicken, lamb, duck — but these will be largely ignored.

But refreshingly, and surprisingly, this newest breed of steakhouses is indeed innovative, playing upon steakhouses’ well-known tropes to deliver something new and even daring.

As Eater’s Bettina Makalintal writes, “[T]he steakhouse has emerged as a kind of Trojan horse: a venue in which globalization is championed, where foreign flavors are rendered more familiar, the borders between cuisines become more permeable, and immigrant chefs elevate their cultures to new levels of prestige.”

Nowhere has this neo-steakhouse renaissance been felt more strongly than in New York.

In the last two years alone, Daniel Boulud, high priest of fine dining, has opened a sprawling Gallic steakhouse called La Tête d’Or. Mexican steakhouse Cuerno opened in the Time & Life building in Midtown, ironically the home of “Mad Men’s" Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

A few blocks away, a new contemporary Latin steakhouse called Amasa opened in the Kimpton Hotel. The arrival of Cote, a Korean steakhouse, has been followed by an influx of Korean steakhouses, including Golden Hof, from Sam Yoo of Golden Diner fame, and Sungchul Shim’s fermentation-heavy Gui. This summer, Indian chef Sujan Sarkar will open Elder, an Indian chophouse in the Hudson Yards.

Each, in their own way, exploits and defies expectation.

For instance, at Cuerno, a taquero chops skirt steak with bone marrow and tucks it into a taco before your eyes. At Amasa, normie shrimp cocktail becomes a spicy vibrant shrimp aguachile and steaks are topped with salsa morita. At Gui, the galbi (short ribs) are marinated in soy and pear, the carrots served with jochung and tangerine, and bearnaise made with makgeolli.

It is precisely the solidity of the steakhouse format that gives each the freedom to riff. And that is, partially, the point.

According to Cuerno's Alberto Martinez, “We could have called it a norteño-style Mexican restaurant, which it is, but would you know what that means? With a steakhouse, people know what to expect.”

Or as Lee, the food futurist puts it, “It’s like going to see the nineteenth 'Avengers' movie. You know it’s going to be different, but it’s also got the characters you love.”

And just like the audience at any blockbuster, today’s steakhouses are perhaps the last bastions of comity.

MAHA acolytes can break bread (or Parker House rolls) with foodie adventurists. Your Costco parents can meet your Trader Joe friends over mac and queso fundido. Everyone feels like themselves, but better and fuller versions.

Of course, none of this is to say the classic steakhouse — or homages to it — isn't flourishing as well and expanding its reach from their traditional Midtown perch. Steak Row est mort; vive le Steak Row.

The West Village has welcomed 4 Charles Prime Rib and The 86, at 86 Bedford St., former home of Chumley’s, the steakhouse that survived a near century. Two Las Vegas steakhouses — Carversteak and Golden Steer — have expanded from the Strip to New York City.

This month, Booth’s Extra Fine, a self-proclaimed vintage-inspired steakhouse, opens in Williamsburg, in the shadow of actual vintage steakhouse, Peter Luger. As the world promises to get ever more unsettled you can bet those who can will have their steak and eat it too.

Good Monday morning in New York City, where kids just want to read whole books.

Here's what else is happening:

• Kids also want to experience the joy of writing in cursive.
• No one has managed to gentrify Times Square's Hotel Carter.
• Private bus operators including Peter Pan and Hampton Jitney are suing New York City over its idling enforcement laws that allow civilians to report — and get a cut of the fine — any time a private bus idles while it waits to board passengers.
• Herald Square got a Primark.
• The Upper West Side is getting a Radio Bakery.
• Look that these beautiful old movie theaters that were turned into grocery or drug stores.
• Affordability is alive in Wichita. 
• "Basically every single person I know is on spironolactone."
• And finally, the real deal:

When “Girl, Interrupted” first hit theaters in 1999, its raw, gritty portrayal of women’s mental health struggles and breakout performances from Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder cemented its status as a cult classic.

Two decades later, the musical adaptation of “Girl, Interrupted” will make its world premiere at the Public Theater later this month, translating a familiar story into an entirely new medium for an audience that may not have been around the first time to see it.

Both the film — and this latest musical adaptation — pull from the same source material: Susanna Kaysen’s bestselling memoir detailing her time in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s.

The memoir, originally released in 1993, shocked audiences with an uncensored recounting of a fraught period in which female patients, including Kaysen and her fellow companions at the hospital, were routinely subjected to abuse disguised as treatment, fueled in part by antiquated ideas around gender and sexuality.

This latest iteration is years in the making, with Grammy award-winning songwriter Aimee Mann having discussed her involvement in the musical adaption as far back as 2018 in an interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Kaysen as well as Pulitzer-winning playwright Martyna Majok and Tony Award nominee Jo Bonney are also part of the team helping to bring the story back to life.

Mikaela Straus, the musician known professionally as King Princess, will take the helm as Lisa Rowe, a patient whose intimate relationship with Kaysen has often been discussed for its queer subtext. Jolie’s performance as Rowe in the film adaptation won her an Oscar.

“I feel privileged to get to really lean into that as a gay person,” Straus told Gothamist. “It feels cathartic for me as a gay kid who was a cinephile to take that character and embody it with my queer, gay-ass body, y’know?”

It’ll mark the theatrical debut for the singer-songwriter, who said she saw parallels between the story’s subject matter and what it means to exist as “young, non-male people in this country.”

“There are so many reasons why this is relevant,” Straus said. “It’s also a story about community and friendship and finding people in a place of chaos and a place of pain and wanting to cling onto each other and find friendship. I love this story.”

Straus is not the only member of the musical’s cast who said they felt a personal connection to the story’s characters, despite the tale being set decades before some of the actors were born.

Katherine Reis, who will play Daisy Randone, a character originally portrayed by the late Brittany Murphy in the 1999 film, described herself as a longtime fan of the tale.

“I think we all experience shame and loneliness, and this desire for community and wanting to be seen and chosen. I certainly can relate to that and I think a lot of other people can,” she said.

"Girl, Interrupted" will run at the Public Theater’s Martinson Hall, in NoHo, from May 3 to June 28, with an official opening on June 4.