A version of this post originally appeared in the April 22 Eater Today newsletter. Sign up here to receive articles like this in your inbox.
I recently had a longer-than-usual conversation with an old friend I often run into at a steakhouse. After eating at Musso & Frank Grill (twice), Smoke House, and Little Dom’s (an Italian restaurant that is spiritually adjacent to a steakhouse), a pattern became clear. We both love ribeyes, icy martinis, and restaurants with red leather booths.
“Why do you always go out to the steakhouse dressed like Sharon Stone? casino?” he asked.
That’s a good question. Why am I, an analytical, alternative writer who listens to experimental ambient music and buys organic lettuce at the farmer’s market every weekend, drawn to environments that proudly celebrate power, masculinity, and excess? Why do I sometimes want to pretend that I’m a millionaire (read: white guy with a generous spending account) in 1957, sinking my teeth into bloody ribs with a flaming Kent in my hand, even though the fantasy wasn’t exactly designed for me?
I love steak and potatoes, cold vodka, and an excuse to dress up, but that’s not the only answer. In fact, like many people, I’m longing for something less noticeable. Struggling to maintain morale in an endless sea of doomsday reminders and homesick for a vaguely defined “time that felt simpler,” I find relief in the escape of steakhouses, olives on toothpicks, shrimp cocktails, and rooms that could plausibly exist in 1940 or 1980. Old boy-boy culture. Still, I can’t help but worry that steakhouses that glorify beef and money and evoke nostalgia exude a “Make America Great Again” energy.
I grew up in restaurant booths filled with red meat. My grandfather ran a hofbrau. My father runs an Italian restaurant. Even now, the cavernous, mahogany-paneled, noisy room makes you feel like a kid in a tacky red leather booth. I sat patiently while the big men talked about me, and I watched trays of meat in juice and scalloped potatoes being carried back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room. When I was in sixth grade, I once ate two whole racks of lamb in one sitting. My parents nicknamed me “Carnivore.”
But as we get older, sometimes we really change. When I was 16, depressed and newly obsessed with punk rock and its philosophy, I became a vegetarian out of a deep discomfort with animal suffering and a growing awareness of how power operates between humans and animals, men and women, institutions and individuals. I was influenced by writers like Carol J. Adams, who linked meat consumption to broader systems of domination. For years, I didn’t just avoid meat. I felt actively opposed to what it represented.
At the time, my views didn’t feel radical. Plant-based eating was on the rise, and there was a sense that the future would be greener, kinder, and more equitable. It may be naive, but it can also be tangible. In the early 2010s, I worked at a vegan magazine for a few years. There, we published several stories each week about major meat producers practicing more humane practices and technology companies developing plant-based steaks in the lab. The rights of animals, women, and other marginalized groups appeared to be improving steadily and reliably. I didn’t think there was a need to idealize the past.
That inevitability has been eroded, to put it mildly. I started eating meat again in 2013 (you only live once, I guess), and a few years later, for reasons I’m sure I’m already tired of, the mood in America has changed. An iconic Bay Area vegan restaurant that I admired at the height of millennial optimism is closing this month after 31 years in business. Beyond Meat’s stock price is around 1 penny. Regressive views have spread again, and the idea that progress will move in a straight line now seems almost strange.
Steakhouses are made for people who are selective about transactions, corporate cards, and at best factory farms – people who want to feel. important (Or at least adjacent to someone important). How can it make you feel like a big shot if it’s really for everyone? With their $68 entrees, $22 martinis and tableside theatrics, they have actually become a symbol of a kind of spending power that fewer and fewer people possess, and of a past that was exclusive, unequal and, for some, downright hostile.
Although it is not socially irresponsible to try to restore American society to what it was a few decades ago (Make America Great Again), For whom?), it is financially impossible. The U.S. economy has suffered a dramatic stratification of wealth with a hollowing out middle class, stagnant wages, and rampant post-COVID-19 inflation. And we can’t make everyone recite the Pledge of Allegiance four times a day or do anything to fix that anytime soon.
Despite all this, I still find myself drawn to a night out at a steakhouse. It’s not just because I like food, although I do (usually) like it. It’s not just because I enjoy the aesthetics, but honestly, I really do. (Yes, I love dressing like Sharon Stone. casino.) Because the experience offers something that is increasingly difficult to obtain: the illusion of control. My own political helplessness has left me longing for an environment where I can be shown to a table and receive my martini the way I like it. During a leisurely meal, your world narrows into a series of small, satisfying decisions.
Of course, illusions only work if you don’t look at them too directly. After sipping a dirty martini and having a leisurely, lively table conversation, you really don’t have any illusions. nothing Too direct. There is a certain pleasure in the tension of guilt. Whether you eat red meat or indulge in nostalgia, you know it’s bad for you and choose to do it anyway. It may be perverse to know that a steakhouse is a travesty of hearty power dining and still find it fun and comforting, but it’s certainly not all complicated fun.
Cigarettes are back. Didn’t you hear? I don’t think it’s a coincidence. You won’t find me in the booth where Kent is (even if he asks me again if they’ll make indoor smoking legal again), but at least I can cut a medium-rare filet mignon and embody a liminal, fleeting alternate reality for a few hours. That is, until the bill comes.
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