Traders, You Still Have the $10 Strip-Club LunchIn a move not exactly akin to Frank Bruni visiting Robert’s at the Penthouse Executive Club, Midtown Lunch reluctantly tries out the lunch special at Rick’s Cabaret.
ByDaniel Maurer
The New York Diet
Competitive Eater Crazy Legs Conti Experiences ‘Deja Chew’Crazy Legs Conti, the world’s eleventh-ranked competitive eater and bon vivant about town, describes his diet as “benign gluttony — everything in moderation, including excess.”
NewsFeed
Food Writers Continue to Be Confounded by SteakDetails recently put out a list of “The Best New Steak Houses in America,” and it was not inaccurate. Most of the places across the country that delight enlightened meatheads made the cut: Cut in LA, Michael Mina’s butter-crazed Stripsteak in Vegas, and Robert’s (ill-served by an unrepresentative piece of choice beef in the picture) are indeed among the best going. But writers and diners alike are too happy to be served a big steak to gauge it accurately, which makes all steakhouse features unreliable at best.
Ask a Waiter
Sara of the Penthouse Executive Club Knows Your Children’s NamesTwenty-seven-year-old Sara (who asked that her last name not be used) has been a waitress at the Penthouse Executive Club since it opened in June of 2003 and has been popping Champagne bottles and serving tuna topped with quail egg in the lounge area and private rooms ever since. (The in-house restaurant, Robert’s Steakhouse, employs only male waiters.) The New Orleans native remembers how surprised she was the first time a woman came in alone and talked openly about her husband, but now she doesn’t bat an eye. “I generally know my guests by name,” she says, “and whether they have children.” We asked her to show, er, tell us a little bit more.
User’s Guide
The Go-Go Gourmet
You have to hand it to David Burke. The frequently mulletted meat-and-lobster whiz has done it all: He pulled off an experimental gastronomy restaurant in a neighborhood populated mostly by septuagenarians and rethought the hamburger inside a department store. Now, in his crowning glory, he has created a menu for bikini bar Hawaiian Tropic Zone on Seventh Avenue.
