NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Peter Luger Steak House was on the receiving end of brutal zero-star review in The New York Times Tuesday but the iconic restaurant's owner could care less.
"We know who we are and have always been. -- the best steak you can eat, not the latest kale salad," Peter Luger co-owner Jody Storch said of the review, which ran with the headline "Peter Luger Used to Sizzle. Now It Sputters." The review began trending nationally on Twitter Tuesday morning.
Storch added, "The NY Times has reviewed Peter Luger numerous times over the years. At times we’ve gotten four stars, other times less. While the reviewers and their whims have changed, Lugers has always focused on doing one thing exceptionally well -- serving the highest quality of steak - with a member of our family buying every piece of USDA Prime beef individually, just as we have done for decades.
Of the Williamsburg restaurant, reviewer Pete Wells, writes, "And after I’ve paid, there is the unshakable sense that I’ve been scammed."
Wells explains, "The management seems to go out of its way to make things inconvenient. Customers at the bar have to order drinks from the bartender and food from an overworked server on the other side of the bar, and then pay two separate checks and leave two separate tips. And they can’t order lunch after 2:30 p.m., even though the bar and the kitchen remain open."
Wells wasn't a fan from the moment he entered the restaurant. "Diners who walk in the door eager to hand over literal piles of money aren’t greeted; they’re processed," he writes. "A host with a clipboard looks for the name, or writes it down and quotes a waiting time."
Another gem from Wells? "The servers, who once were charmingly brusque, now give the strong impression that these endless demands for food and drink are all that’s standing between them and a hard-earned nap."
Another one: "The shrimp cocktail has always tasted like cold latex dipped in ketchup and horseradish," he writes. "The steak sauce has always tasted like the same ketchup and horseradish fortified by corn syrup .... Although the fries are reasonably crisp, their insides are mealy and bland in a way that fresh-cut potatoes almost certainly would not be."
He continues, "Was the Caesar salad always so drippy, the croutons always straight out of a bag, the grated cheese always so white and rubbery?"