Peter Luger Steak House

The Restaurant

Peter Luger occupies the same red-brick building at 178 Broadway in Williamsburg it has held since 1887, on the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge, a block south of the bridge's eastern footings. The room - wood-panelled, fluorescent-lit, plain wooden tables, brusquely competent career servers - has been called the most Brooklyn-feeling restaurant in Brooklyn for the better part of a century, and the room's deliberate refusal to update is a great deal of the point. The Forman family has operated the restaurant since 1950, when Sol Forman bought it from the estate of the original Peter Luger. The room was named a James Beard America's Classic in 2002.

The menu has barely changed in seventy years and runs to perhaps a dozen items, all of which are served extremely well. The Porterhouse - dry-aged on-premise for the better part of a month, broiled at high heat, finished with browned butter, sliced tableside - is ordered by every table and is the single most influential steak preparation in American restaurant history. The Luger's Special German Fried Potatoes (cubed, twice-cooked, served family-style) and the creamed spinach (loose, rich, with a touch of nutmeg) are the obligatory sides. A tomato-and-onion appetiser with Luger's house-made steakhouse sauce opens almost every order. The Luger Burger at lunch - dry-aged trim, served with onion, on a sesame bun - is the city's most argued-about lunch sandwich. Dessert is a chocolate mousse with house schlag (whipped cream) that has been on the menu since the 1950s.

The wine list is shorter and more serious than the room's plainness suggests - about a hundred and fifty references with surprising depth in Bordeaux, Napa cabernet, and Barolo, sensibly priced for the level of the meat. Beer is a primary order: a German lager on tap is the room's most natural pairing with the porterhouse. The bar handles cocktails simply and unfussily. Service is famously brusque - the career captains are direct, generous with recommendation, and entirely unsentimental - and many guests come specifically for the unmediated, no-pageantry energy of the room. The cash-and-debit-only policy persists; bring a Luger card on file, debit, cash, or a US bank check with ID. For a Brooklyn dinner that wants the borough's most American tradition, this is the only address.