Peter Luger Steakhouse in Brooklyn New York

Peter Luger Does Not Care What You Think. That Is Part of Why It Works.

No credit cards (at the Brooklyn original). No fancy cocktail menu. No seasonal small plates or clever concepts. The servers have been there for decades and will not take your opinion seriously if you ask for anything other than the porterhouse. The menu is short. The room is German beer hall with dark wood panelling and stained glass. And the steak is, by most assessments, among the best you will eat in New York City.

The place opened in 1887 as Carl Luger’s Café, Billiards and Bowling Alley in what was then a German immigrant neighbourhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Peter Luger himself was German-born and died in 1941, by which point the restaurant was something between a neighbourhood bar and a billiard hall. It might have stayed that way or disappeared entirely if Sol Forman, a local businessman, had not bought it at auction in 1950 for what even then was not much money, and decided to run it as a serious steakhouse. Forman built the reputation for rigorous meat selection: visits to multiple wholesalers every week, enlisting a retired USDA grader to teach his family the criteria for colour, marbling, and texture, choosing by eye and experience before anyone else gets there. Today it is run by Forman’s granddaughter Jodie, whose grandmother Marsha Forman famously walked the male-dominated Meatpacking District in a fur coat and galoshes, pulling on the “meat coat” she kept in her bag to earn the respect of the wholesalers.

That history is not incidental. The quality at Peter Luger is a product of 70 years of obsessive buying.

What to Order

One thing: the porterhouse. It comes for one, two, three, or four people. Order for the number of people at the table and the kitchen will do the arithmetic. The steak is dry-aged on the premises, sliced in the kitchen, and brought out on a sizzling platter in its own butter. It arrives already cut off the bone with the slices fanned back against it, pink through the centre, with a crust that makes a noise. You serve it yourself from the platter.

After that: the Sizzling Luger Bacon (thick, pre-ordered slabs, not decorative strips), the creamed spinach (the version against which all other creamed spinach should be measured), and the German fried potatoes (crisp, oniony, better than they sound). The Tomato and Onion salad with the house sauce is worth ordering if you want something acidic to cut through the fat. The shrimp cocktail is large and comes with house cocktail sauce that has a following.

For dessert: the pecan pie or the chocolate mousse cake. The pecan pie is the one I would choose.

The house steak sauce is available to take home and is sold at many New York grocery stores. It is good on a great many things, none of which is a porterhouse from Peter Luger.

What to Know Before You Go

The Brooklyn location does not accept credit cards. Cash, a Peter Luger card (their own debit card), or a US bank debit card. An ATM sits inside the restaurant for the unprepared.

Reservations are required and difficult. Call 718-387-7400 directly. For parties of more than 10, email. Weekend tables disappear weeks out. Midweek lunch is an underrated option: the room is slightly calmer, the kitchen is focused, and the porterhouse at noon is one of New York’s stranger pleasures.

Service is brusque by design or by tradition, depending on how you look at it. The servers know what they are doing and will tell you what to order if you ask them to. Do ask. They are not unfriendly; they are efficient, and they have had this conversation before.

The address is 178 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11249. Walk from the Metropolitan Avenue or Marcy Avenue subway stops on the J/M/Z lines, both about five minutes. Williamsburg is worth the trip on its own.

Williamsburg While You Are There

The neighbourhood has transformed several times since Peter Luger opened. It is now the kind of place that attracts people specifically for its restaurants and bars, particularly its Italian food. Lilia on Havemeyer Street is one of the most sought-after tables in the city: handmade pasta, wood-fired cooking, a room full of people who planned ahead. Misi, from the same team, is quieter and equally good on the pasta front. Book well in advance for either.

Frankel’s Delicatessen on Greenpoint Avenue is the kind of Jewish deli experience that New York still does well: proper pastrami, bagels, strong coffee. Good for the morning before or after.

Domino Park, on the waterfront at the old Domino Sugar Refinery site, has the best view of the Manhattan skyline from any park in Brooklyn. Free, always open, and the stretch of waterfront from Domino down to the Brooklyn Bridge is a genuinely good walk.

Brooklyn Brewery on North 11th Street is a few blocks from Peter Luger and does tours and tastings. The shop is worth stopping in; the beer is better on draught than in cans.

Bedford Avenue, the main commercial strip, has independent boutiques and vintage shops that predate the neighbourhood’s current moment of fame and will hopefully outlast it. Awoke Vintage has multiple locations now but started here.

Where to Stay

The William Vale is the most visible hotel in Williamsburg, with a rooftop bar (Westlight) that has some of the best panoramic city views available from Brooklyn. Stylish, expensive, and well-located for both the neighbourhood and the J train into Manhattan.

The Hoxton Williamsburg is a more affordable option with good design and a lively ground-floor bar. For a Peter Luger trip specifically, either works: both are walking distance from the restaurant.

If you are visiting Peter Luger as part of a larger New York stay based in Manhattan, the J train from Essex Street or Marcy Avenue gets you to Williamsburg in 15 minutes. You do not need to stay in Brooklyn to make the trip worthwhile.

Practical Note

Peter Luger has opened additional locations: Great Neck on Long Island, and locations in Tokyo, Las Vegas, and other cities. The Brooklyn original is the one with the history, the atmosphere, and the buying programme that built the reputation. The others are fine, from what I understand. The Brooklyn one is the point.