Long Day's Journey Into Meat
Quests for the holy grill
This week, we’re on the move for a well-done dinner. We also welcome Guest Gulletier Sean Rameswaram to the table.
My Brooklyn Beef
By Greg
Last week, I had an insatiable craving for cheeseburgers. I met up with my friend and fellow burger king Justin for the highly regarded staple at Allswell. Justin is tough to please, but after demolishing dinner, he agreed it was worth the hype and more: tender meat, savory widmer’s cheese, house-made aioli1, and a doughy sesame seed bun that was crispy around the edges. The next day, I needed more. The Allswell burger had only revved up my hankering. Going to the same place two nights in a row felt gauche, and two burgers in a weekend felt like maybe two too many. I decided to fight against my desire and switch things up with Italian.
It was a beautiful evening, so a long stroll to a restaurant called Spaghetti Cafe seemed like the right move. I walked forty minutes to discover that everyone else had the same thought. The place was splitting at its spaghetti seams with Art Bros2 dining early with their too-cool wives and tablet-toting children, Art Bros imbibing first date drinks, and Art Bros clinking coupe glasses with other Art Bros. A ninety-minute wait paired with this crowd was an instant abort mission. Back to burgers, baby. I checked my starred restaurants in the vicinity, saw The Long Island Bar, and recalled that its incredible upscale version of a Wendy’s Dave's Single® was a sixteen-minute walk away. How could I have forgotten one of my favorite burgers in the city?! The fresh glow of my Allswell meal had overshadowed the glory of burgers past, but now another perfect patty was within reach.
I arrived at The LI Bar to find a line of FiDi Bros in cornflower blue button-downs and heather grey half-zips busting out of the vestibule and snaking around the corner. I slithered past them to investigate the wait and found what looked like a fintech bachelor party raging inside. It was only 5:30 p.m.! I could barely hear the hostess over the back-slapping when she delivered another blow to my dinner dreams: “Add your name to the waitlist, and we’ll see what happens.” Every place in Brooklyn had become Berghain.
I sulked and shuffled across the street to Henry Public, where I met my fate of eating a dry “hamburger sandwich” served alongside a pile of shoestring fries at a table for one in their Curbside Covid Lounge. I had flown too close to the sun the night before, and this was the price of wanting too much of a good thing. My burger bliss had been thwarted by throngs of sneaker-obssessed men planning this year’s trip to the playa. There was simply no escaping them.
As I chewed cud, my thoughts were drowned out by four Real Estate Bros at the next table barking about how a hotshot agent at the Corcoran Group, Dana Power, was stealing their million-dollar listings (get yours, Dana!). Their complaints spiraled into a conversation about how they had terrible relationships with their mothers. Yikes. As I choked down the remaining fries, I stewed on how my first-class flight on Allswell Air had been fully grounded by New York’s crypto calvary. Brooklyn and its best burgers were now part of their portfolio.
The Verdict: Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and where there’s grade-A beef, there be bros.
Name Drops: Allswell, The Long Island Bar, Henry Public
Steak Out
By Sean Rameswaram3
Where’s the beef? Argentina.
Evita. Messi. Beef. Everyone says you have to eat some steak while you’re there. And there we were, my Tenderloin and I.
In our many years of dinners together, we had maybe ordered steak once? We went to Peter Luger Steak House in Williamsburg with friends eager for the novelty of it all, and we played along. We had certainly never bought beef and cooked it ourselves at home. How barbaric!
But now we were in Buenos Aires. The menus weren’t terribly complicated: Steak, steak, steak; and if you were lucky, some salad. The authorities said the best beef was to be found at Don Julio. Eater seemed to swear by the Don. The Times of New York, too. But then there were our friends in the know. They had spent time in Buenos Aires and money on meat. They said locals skipped the lines at Don Julio and opted instead for the lower-key La Cabrera. If you know, you know. ¡Adios, Don!
It’s Sunday night. It’s raining. Surely there won’t be a line at La Cabrera. Let’s sneak in a couple of quick steaks before the Golden Globes. It’s just a few blocks away from the rental, so we hit the streets. There’s only one other couple on the slippery sidewalk. Are they heading there, too? Let’s walk a little faster. I think it’s just one more block? Boom! Here we are. But why does it look like they’re in the middle of a shift change? It’s dinnertime! Wait. There’s another La Cabrera across the street. And that one has a hostess. Let’s go there.
Bad news. There’s a list. And a line. How long’s the wait? An hour. But the Globes?! Will we be cutting it too close? While we deliberate, that couple from the sidewalk walks up. They put their names in without hesitation. Dang. Look at that confidence. They don’t even care about the Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. That could be us. Let’s just do it! We’ll grab some groceries while we wait and it’ll feel like our steaks were waiting for us. Better yet, why don’t you get the groceries and I’ll wait in case they call our names? See you soon, Tenderloin.
Waiting is easy. So many articles to read. But wait. Is there a generational mosquito invasion in Buenos Aires timed to coincide with my waiting in line for steaks at La Cabrera? Yes reader, there is. They’re everywhere. Ow. Ow. Ow. This must be how Macaulay Culkin felt at the end of My Girl. Curse. Curse. Curse. This is biblical and makes me wish I believed in bug spray. An hour goes by. There are little kids running around the perimeter of the restaurant while their parents wait in line and neglect their obligations to Argentine society. The kids have taken to nibbling on the house bread atop the empty outdoor tables that haven’t yet been occupied. They must have been raised in the same barn as the cows we’re about to eat. I sneak a slice when the kids and restaurant staff aren’t looking.
Tenderloin is back and she’s hungry. I tell her about the bread I ate. She’s not entertained. I see a local negotiate her way in. I attempt to emulate. I fail. We are still outside. It is still raining. Unless you want to hang under the tent with the mosquitoes. We do. They feast on us. The Golden Globes are starting soon and I never miss a monologue. There are somehow still ten names ahead of us, and there’s no telling how much longer it will take. The Globes start in thirty. Do we call it and accept our fate? Or do we wait it out with the locals? We give up. We’re going to grab some quick failure food on the way home to see who will win Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series, or a Motion Picture Made for Television. But before we go, let me ask when we should come back. She says Wednesday. Steak on a Wednesday? I guess. We get some pizza. It sucks.
The Globes are fun enough. The monologue is easily the worst part. It’s all a distant memory by the time we go back to La Cabrera for a big steak dinner the following Wednesday. The food is fine, but wildly overpriced. It turns out we’re just not really that into steak. I meet with a local later that week for work. I tell her we went to La Cabrera. She tells me no one goes there anymore.
The Verdict: Waiting in line was a big misteak. Maybe avoid the meat altogether?
Name Drops: La Cabrera
A special thank you to this week’s illustrator, Alexandra Smith4 ! See her work here.
If you’d like to be a Guest Gulletier or illustrator, drop us a note at putitinthegullet@gmail.com
Any house made condiment makes me wet.
The guys reading Gravity’s Rainbow on the subway. The guys posting too many stories from Art Basel Miami. The straight guys that have opinions on Bravo shows.
Sean Rameswaram is the hype man at Today, Explained - the best daily news podcast.
Alexandra Smith is an illustrator who lives in the East Village, NYC. She likes to play with lively characters that defy the ordinary. Her work embraces line and texture, creating images from lino prints, murals, and packaging. Some of her inspirations include 1920's cartoons, Hermanus Bosch, and mid-century vintage advertisements along with Keith Karing and Yoshitomo Nara. She also loves collaborating with small and international businesses.