The steakhouse, that most American of restaurant genres, has in recent years been co-opted by foreign interests. To be a steakhouse with an unstamped passport will simply no longer do. There are Korean steakhouses, Japanese steakhouses, Thai steakhouses, and Spanish steakhouses; there’s an English steakhouse and un steakhouse Lyonnais.
The city’s newest steakhouse, however, is a domestic visitor. Golden Steer (no the), recently driven in from Las Vegas, where the original iteration has stood off the strip for 68 years, is all-American to the marrow. The cowboy-and-galloping-steed paintings in the front dining room are stroke-by-stroke re-creations of their Nevadan predecessors, and round these parts, a New York strip is known as a “shorthorn.” A cigar-shop Doc Holliday slot machine stands in a corner, and a roulette wheel is set into one wall, though the game remains, for now, illegal in New York.
This town is hardly immune to the charms of a loving homage: Balthazar, the ultimate ersatz brasserie, has become such an authentic inauthenticity that Parisians come here to visit it. Even so, I was surprised to find that crowds turned up for the promise of a Disneyfied Vegas. A hungry, mostly male clientele in quarter-zips clearly relishes the prospect of dining in a road-show version of the restaurant where the Rat Pack and plenty of mafiosi once ate. Ol’ Blue Eyes makes up much of the soundtrack at the new restaurant, just as he does out West. “In Vegas,” ventured our waiter, who did a tour of duty there, “it’s all Sinatra.” Back in the ’80s, a Steer maitre d’ sniffed when a prying reporter asked about his city’s criminal ties (“I wouldn’t have any thoughts on that,” he replied), but now, for your next private event, you can book the Mob Room, which “honors the unmistakable thread between both cities, two power centers bound by ambition, influence, and impeccable taste.” Bada boom!
Well, so what? If the steak is good, the shtick is harmless. Yet Golden Steer is not so much “good” as “good enough.” The ambition is to channel Las Vegas in the ’60s; I caught a headier whiff of Atlantic City in the ’80s. The Vegas mythology has crystallized here, as it has everywhere else, into something shellacked — a Madame Tussauds–style mummification. The beef, thankfully, is a good bit more tender.
This Steer offers a full slate of steaks, all the hits. While steakhouses around town are experimenting with picanhas, rib caps, and alternative cuts, here the classicists will find filet, rib eye, two cuts of prime rib, and that shorthorn (apparently Frank’s favorite) with sauces and the usual sides. The gluey creamed spinach tasted like steakhouse heresy, but creamed corn was better and “Vegas’ Largest Baked Potato,” fully loaded with sour cream, green onions, cheese, and bacon, has to be seen to be believed: The specimen that arrived at our table was the size of a full-grown guinea pig. Hidden among these stalwarts are a few more culinarian dishes, like a fat link of beef sausage served with lentils and braised octopus nicely enlivened by chorizo.
Inside a famous address, Golden Steer serves steaks, seafood, and what is accurately billed as “Vegas’ largest baked potato.” Hugo Yu.
Inside a famous address, Golden Steer serves steaks, seafood, and what is accurately billed as “Vegas’ largest baked potato.” Hugo Yu.
Several of the cuts can be ordered as surf and turf — I watched a couple at a nearby table delightedly suck crab butter off their fingers — but the oversize, family-style steaks are the better way to splurge. The à la carte options I sampled (a wet-aged rib eye and a brawnier dry-aged Kansas City strip) seemed a little meager for a properly over-the-top steakhouse experience, something I can’t say about 50 ounces of dry-aged porterhouse. Nicely prepared to a respectable medium rare, it was a fine bit of gluttony, even if it didn’t evince the deep bleu-cheese funk of the best dry-aged meat.
That steak was served, like all the restaurant’s most theatrical dishes, on its own trolley. A number of gueridons roam the floor, and they make up a good deal of the evening’s entertainment. I wouldn’t insist on the tableside tossed Caesar, which is heavy on the garlic, though I wasn’t surprised to hear one ends up in almost every order. But don’t pass on the dessert cart for the appropriately crackling spectacle of bananas Foster or cherries jubilee flambéed in front of you, into whose roaring pan a server will shake cinnamon to send up a shower of sparks.
That’s what we’re here for, in any case. Have a few house Gibsons, their onions skewered with craps-dice–topped toothpicks, or do like the Chairman of the Board, and ask for three fingers of Jack with two ice cubes. A rheumy glow improves the experience. Will spectral Sinatra charm the city, which has, after all, its own phantoms in residence? He’ll be rubbing elbows uneasily with old regulars like Paul Lynde and John Belushi. You know how the song goes. If Golden Steer can make it here, they’ll make it anywhere. But that’s up to you, New York, New York.
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