Peter Luger has been serving steak under the Williamsburg Bridge since 1887, has been reviewed to death in both directions, and still operates on a set of rules that catch out a large share of the people who show up. Almost none of the disappointment around this restaurant is about the beef. It is about arriving without a plan, without a reservation and without cash.
The cash rule catches out more first-timers than the wait does, and weekend tables go four to six weeks ahead. Ask Karpo whether there is anything bookable in Williamsburg tonight and what the realistic total is once sides and tip are counted.
The payment rule is not a quirk, it is a wall
Peter Luger does not take credit cards. Not at Brooklyn, not at Great Neck. What it accepts is cash, US debit cards, US cheques with identification, and its own house Peter Luger card. That is the entire list. A table of four can walk into a bill north of five hundred dollars and discover at the end that the Visa in their hand is not a form of payment here.
There is an ATM on site and it is used constantly, which tells you how many people learn this at the wrong moment. Bring cash, or bring a debit card and confirm your daily withdrawal ceiling before you sit down. This single piece of admin causes more bad evenings here than the food ever has.
What you are ordering, whether or not you say so
The order is the porterhouse, sold by the number of people rather than by weight — steak for two, for three, for four. The steak for two runs around $148 in Brooklyn, though the number moves with the market and it is worth checking rather than assuming. It arrives already sliced, on a heated platter tilted onto a saucer so the beef fat and juices run to one end, and the waiter serves the first pieces onto plates that have been warmed.
The porterhouse is one bone with two muscles on it: the strip on one side, the fillet on the other. Those two cook differently and taste different, which is the entire reason to order this cut rather than a single steak. The dry-aging is where the flavour comes from — the funk and the mineral edge that people either love immediately or find disconcerting. It is not a subtle steak and it is not a tender-above-all steak.
Order the sizzling thick-cut bacon to start. It is a single enormous slab per portion rather than rashers, and it is the most quietly famous thing in the building after the steak. Creamed spinach and German fried potatoes are the sides; between two people, one of each is enough, and the potatoes are the better of the two.
Lunch is a completely different restaurant
The Luger-Burger is served at lunch only. It is a very good burger made from the trim of the same dry-aged beef, it costs a fraction of the steak, and a large number of New Yorkers who have eaten here many times have never had the porterhouse at all. If the price of the dinner is the obstacle, lunch removes it almost entirely while keeping the room, the service and the beef.
Lunch is also easier to book, which matters. Weekend dinner tables want four to six weeks of notice. A weekday lunch is an ordinary reservation made like any other, and the dining room at midday with light coming through the front windows is more pleasant than the same room at eight on a Saturday.
The room and the service are the point of contention
The dining room is a German beer hall with almost nothing done to it — bare dark wood tables, plain chairs, wainscoting, brass. There is no design language here because nobody has applied one since roughly the Second World War. That reads to some people as authentic and to others as tired, and both readings are defensible.
The service is brusque in a specific, old-New-York way. Waiters have been there for decades, they will tell you what to order, and they are not interested in a long conversation about it. If you want warmth, this is the wrong room. If you want someone who has served this exact steak forty thousand times to handle your table efficiently, it is the right one.
The 2019 zero-star review in the Times permanently changed the conversation about this place, and the honest position is somewhere between that review and the reverence that preceded it. The steak is still very good. The sides are ordinary. The price is high for what surrounds it. Whether that is worth it depends on how much you value the specific thing this restaurant has, which is a hundred and forty years of doing one cut of beef the same way.
Practical notes
178 Broadway in Williamsburg, under the bridge; the J, M and Z stop at Marcy Avenue, a few minutes' walk. No credit cards at either location — cash, US debit, US cheque with ID, or the house card only, and there is an ATM on site. Reservations are needed for lunch and dinner; allow four to six weeks for a weekend evening. Steak for two runs around $148 and moves with the market. The Luger-Burger is lunch only. Order the thick-cut bacon to start and German fried potatoes as the side. Allow about two hours and expect the table back afterwards.
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Ask Karpo first
A steak dinner in Williamsburg is a plan with several failure points — the cash rule, the wait, and what is open afterwards on a block that empties early. Ask Karpo whether anything is bookable near Broadway tonight, what the realistic total looks like once sides and tip land, and where to go for a drink after that is still open when you finish.
