Dinner at Keens Steakhouse

It should come as no surprise to Reggie's readers that he is a steak lover.  Yes, Reggie adores tucking into a juicy, perfectly cooked steak—preferably a thick New York strip cooked medium rare—and he is a happy man, indeed, when the subject of the meal is beef.  For Reggie loves not only steak, but also beef tenderloin, prime rib, pot roast, and a great hamburger, too.  Among these beefy choices, though, it is steak that really gets his juices flowing and his stomach growling.  There have been times in Reggie's life that he would have happily dined on steak (or at least beef) at every dinner of the week.  But he didn't, and he doesn't, for all the reasons that are all too well known by his patient readers for him to (tediously) enumerate here.  No, this post is about the pleasures of eating steak, and not about why one shouldn't make it the centerpiece of one's daily diet.

Keens Chophouse around 1915
Image courtesy of Keens Steakhouse

These days Reggie tries to limit his consumption of beef to no more than once a week.  And that means that when he does eat beef, he is choosey about the quality that he consumes—no measly supermarket-bought, shrink-wrapped, styrofoam-packaged steaks for Reggie.  If he's going to limit his consumption of steak to only a sometime thing, it had better be for one worth waiting for: a thick, butcher-bought, paper-wrapped, dry-aged slab of marbled beef blisteringly seared over a hellishly high heat and then finished roasting to juicy perfection in a furnace-like oven.  That is how the best steakhouses here in New York do it, and how my friend and fellow blogger Lindaraxa instructs her readers to prepare it on her blog.  As far as Reggie is concerned, Lindaraxa nails how to perfectly cook a steak at home.  He encourages you to check out her method for doing so (along with the rest of her blog, which is full of excellent, mouth-watering recipes, among other things).

The main floor dining room at Keens
(Note the pipes hanging from the ceiling)
Image courtesy of same

Over the years Reggie has eaten his way through most of the great—and not so great—steakhouses in New York City.  He's braved the testosterone-fueled brawl at Sparks, where the hideous Gay '90s whorehouse decor and gruff-beyond-belief service is part of the fun.  He's eaten at the bare-bones, charming-as-a-bus-station Smith & Wollensky (also known as Smith & Expensky) and its more refined, uptown sister, the Post House.  He's tried Wolfgang's, the Bull & Bear, Bobby Van's, and many of the more recent additions to the city's steakhouse scene, including Porter House, BLT Steak, and Quality Meats.  The first steakhouse he remembers eating at in New York was the venerable Palm, where his older brother Frecky took him when he first moved to the city in the early 1980s.  There are only a few old-line steakhouses in New York that he hasn't tried over the years, most notably Peter Luger's (which requires a treck to Brooklyn and where the cash only/no reservations policies puts a damper on one's enthusiasm for trying it), Gallagher's, and the Old Homestead.  Those, too, shall come in good time, he suspects.

The upstairs Lambs Room private dining room
(Note the pipes hanging . . . )
Image courtesy of same

But there is one steakhouse that Reggie used to eat in long ago that he has only recently returned to for the first time in many years and where it was such a pleasing rediscovery that he intends to return to it regularly going forward.  For it may have become, after only just one (re)visit, his new favorite steakhouse in all of New York.  It is Keens Steakhouse, just off of Herald Square, around the corner from Macy's immense, and storied, flagship store.

That little fellow on the far right looks suspiciously
like my dear Pompey . . .

Keens is New York's oldest steakhouse, having first opened its doors 125 years ago.  Originally part of the private Lamb's Club, the restaurant opened to the public in 1885 and has been going strong ever since, serving generous portions of chops, seafood, and steaks to its happy patrons, which have included the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Lilly Langtry (who sued the then all-men's restaurant in 1905 to admit women and won), J. P. Morgan, Stanford White, Babe Ruth, Will Rogers, and, more recently, Reggie.

Once known as Keens Chophouse, the restaurant changed its name to Keens Steakhouse in the 1990s in an effort to attract a broader clientele who supposedly didn't know what a chophouse was (!).  Needless to say, Reggie doesn't approve of the name change, but he forgives the restaurant for doing so nonetheless, despite his mild exasperation that they felt compelled to.

Matches from Keens, showing "Miss Keens"
from a painting in the restaurant's bar

Keens has been in the same building on West 36th Street since it first opened, and its rooms are a fantasy of late-nineteenth-century paneling and decorations, with every square inch of its walls covered with paintings, stuffed animal trophies, flags, memorabilia, and bibelot.  But what makes Keens' decor particularly noteworthy is that every inch of its ceilings are covered with rows and rows of old clay churchwarden pipes, hanging on hooks and ready to take down for a smoke.

The type of clay pipe that hangs from Keens' ceilings
Image courtesy of Antiquity Period Designs, Ltd.

Well, once upon a time, that is.  For not only is smoking in restaurants now illegal in New York (and has been since 2002), but the practice of pipe smoking has pretty much gone the way of the Dodo bird.  Keens was once a place where its patrons not only smoked, but were encouraged to.  Customers were able to buy inexpensive, long-stemmed, clay churchwarden (or tavern) pipes at the restaurant, which would then number and register the pipe and log it into a book that listed the customer by name and where their pipe could be found hanging from the ceiling, waiting for them when they returned.  There are over ninety thousand clay pipes hanging today from Keens' ceilings that once belonged to former patrons.  Entering the restaurant one feels as if one is crossing through Alice's looking glass and stepping back into a colorful nineteenth-century ragtime world of robber barons, Boss Tweed politicians, theatrical impresarios, and the likes of Diamond Jim Brady.

Keens patrons smoking pipes, ca. 1924
Image courtesy of Keens Steakhouse

I first went to Keens in the mid 1980s when I attended bachelor parties and "smokers" there.  For those of my readers who are not familiar with the term "smoker," it refers to the pastime, now largely extinct, of men getting together for a stag evening of drinking, victuals, and smokes (be they cigars, cigarettes, or pipes), and, in the case of the ones Reggie attended, a capella singing.  For Reggie was for several years of his early tenure in New York a member of the University Glee Club, America's oldest all-male post-collegiate glee club.  Reggie would join friends and comrades of the Glee Club in Keens' private dining rooms, often in black tie, where we would wile away the evening singing Glee Club favorites, smoking, drinking, horsing around, and eating ridiculous amounts of the restaurant's signature beef.  It was a lot of fun, and I have many fond memories of it.

A beefsteak banquet held in the Lambs Room at Keens in 1938
Image courtesy of same

But once I left the Glee Club I no longer had much reason to go to Keens anymore, except for an occasional bachelor party or an evening spent dining there with friends in the restaurant's public rooms.   Not long ago, though, I decided to give Keens a try once again, since I figured it would likely be a worthy subject of a Reggie Review of the type of authentic, old-line restaurants that I have written about previously on this blog, including the '21' Club, Jack's Oyster House, and the Pine Club.  So I called up my friend Magnus and arranged for Boy and me to meet him and his partner Michael there one night.

We all loved our dinner at Keens!

A postcard of the upstairs Lincoln Room at Keens
This is where we ate during our visit
(Note the pipes . . . )

The restaurant attracts a more varied crowd than I remember or am accustomed to seeing in other steakhouses around town.  Of course there were the expected tables of six or more men gleefully digging into plates piled high with beef and all the trimmings that one sees in every expense account steakhouse in the city.  But there were also plenty of tables of couples out for the evening, and I'd say that around at least thirty to forty percent of the restaurant's patrons the night we were there were women, which is pretty high as far as these types of places go.  Also, Keens has a fairly high quotient of female waiters on staff, at least relatively speaking.  So, for the beef-lovin' ladies among my readers who haven't been to Keens yet, head on down, as you'll feel more than welcome and at home there, unlike in some of the more aggressively manly joints in this town.

The upstairs Moose Room private dining room at Keens
Reggie attended numerous "smokers" and bachelor parties in this room
(Note the . . . )
Image courtesy of same

We started our dinner with a round of delicious, icy cold Martinis (well, Boy and I did; Magnus and Michael were more restrained) while tucking into the house's signature (and complimentary) old-fashioned relish plate and basket of hot rolls.  I ordered a plate of shucked oysters (perfect) for a first course, followed by a sixteen-ounce New York strip steak, and we had sides of french fries, roasted brussels sprouts, and escarole for the table.  My steak was one of the best that I can remember eating in New York in recent years: thick, juicy, flavorful, and cooked to perfection.  Try as I might, I couldn't finish it, as I am not accustomed to eating so much beef in one sitting.  At least it wasn't the usual grotesquely large, twenty-something-plus-ounce rib eye that one sees on most steakhouse menus in these parts.  Boy was able to polish off his more appropriately sized eight-ounce filet mignon.  In other words, while the portions are generous at Keens, they are not absurdly so.  We finished our dinner by sharing an order of tiramisu, which was the only disappointment of the evening, but not so much of one that we didn't finish it, nor did it diminish our pleasure in the meal.  However, I should have known better than to suggest ordering this dessert at Keens, which is not the sort of place that comes to mind when daydreaming of Italian cuisine—by a long shot.  No, I should have ordered something more expected for such an establishment as Keens, where I would be confident that the house would excel in it, such as cheesecake.  I'll remember that for the next time I go there.

The lovely "Miss Keens" hanging in the bar
Image courtesy of same

All in all, the four of us were very happy with our dinner at Keens, and each of us agreed as we got our coats and prepared to leave that we had a great time there and looked forward to returning again soon.  Even though dinner at Keens is on the expensive side (count on spending at least one hundred dollars a head), it is well worth it.

Mints are thoughtfully
provided as one leaves Keens

Reggie recommends that you try Keens Steakhouse when you are in New York and hungering for a memorable steak dinner.  Not only is it a terrific destination for such a meal, but Reggie understands that it is also a popular place to go for dinner before attending a game or an event at nearby Madison Square Garden.  While you are unlikely to ever see Reggie darken the doors of that particular venue (with the exception, perhaps, for the Westminster Kennel Club dog show), you are more than likely to find him again at Keens one night soon, delightedly tucking into a steak dinner.

Tell me, what is your favorite steakhouse?

Keens Steakhouse
72 West 36th Street
New York, New York 10018
(212) 947-3636
www.keens.com

Please note, Reggie has not received anything in return for this review, nor does he expect to.  He is writing it solely for the pleasure and edification of his readers.