Peter Luger Comes To Vegas
Whenever a notable New York restaurant opens a location in Las Vegas, the first question that comes to mind is nearly universal: Is it as good as the original? The answer is usually no. Peter Luger is a rare exception.
The new Las Vegas Peter Luger Steak House in Caesars Palace is not only as good as its Brooklyn progenitor, it’s actually better. There. We said it. As a New York-based publication, it pains us to it it, but it had to be said, and the reason is quite simple: the Brooklyn original has been resting on its laurels for entirely too long, whereas the new Vegas outpost puts on a prime performance with something to prove. And the new Luger team is certainly proving it.
It’s almost become a rite of age for New Yorkers to scoff at Vegas versions of iconic restaurants, and rightfully so. Most attempts to recreate the Big Apple’s authenticity outside city limits only result in failure. In the case of Peter Luger, we were expecting another over-themed gimmick for tourists who don’t know any better. What we got instead was attentive service, knowledgeable sommeliers and delicious steaks that outperform the chops up north in every category from taste to tenderness. This was the Luger that we’ve all been missing.
What Happened To Luger?
Looking back, it’s not too surprising that Sin City was able to best the original restaurant, despite its big name in the steakhouse game. Dining institutions that bank on reputation tend to get a little too comfortable and often slip over time, paying less attention to the things that made it great in the first place. Peter Luger is a perfect example.
Located in Brooklyn just over the Williamsburg Bridge, the original restaurant has been in business since 1887 and enjoyed a long era where it was consistently hailed as the best steakhouse not only in New York City, but among the best in the United States. Its reputation for gruff waiters who refuse to kiss your ass and the best porterhouse money could buy drew steak fans from all five of the city’s boroughs, including the hard-to-please Manhattanites, who were rarely compelled to cross the East River, especially for dinner. “Luger’s,” as it’s known by New Yorkers, became the unquestioned gold standard of steakhouses, known for its dry-aged steaks before dry-aging was common. But a reputation can only take you so far.
Like many restaurants relying too heavily on legacy, the gushing acclaim started to change for Peter Luger. In 2019, The New York Times published a brutal take-down of the chophouse, awarding it zero stars. Two years later, Peter Luger was stripped of its Michelin star (which the restaurant had been consistently awarded since 2006). The heavy criticism, which some deemed too severe, was nonetheless indicative of the growing doubts as to whether Luger deserved to be considered in the upper echelons of New York steakhouses, let alone ranking as the very best. In the meantime, steakhouses of high caliber were popping up all over the city, easily matching or even suring Luger with sophisticated aging programs, excellent beef sourcing and superior wine lists. People started to notice Luger’s decline, including the steak-loving staff of this publication.
Given Luger’s fall from critical grace—and the poor track record of New York institutions opening in Las Vegas—we were skeptical about the Luger at Caesars. That skepticism sizzled away as soon as our porterhouses were brought to the table. The first thing that tipped us off was the aroma. These chops were alive with butter and beef fat, emitting the nutty, beefy smell that can only come from a well-sourced steak with proper aging. After the first bite, our hopes of greatness were confirmed, but more on that later.
The Luger Method
The meat at Peter Luger Las Vegas is dry-aged onsite for a minimum of 28 days in the basement of Caesars Palace where racks of beef hibernate in an unbutchered state as they lose their moisture and transform into something concentrated and sublime. The chilled room is controlled for temperature, humidity and airflow to make sure that the enzymatic breakdown during dry-aging occurs at a proper rate, but the process isn’t pretty. A crusty mold forms on the surface of the beef, and that’s a good thing. This helps with the breakdown of the meat’s connective tissue for more tenderness and distinct flavor.
“At any given moment, we keep $750,000 to $1 million in beef in the dry-aging facility at Caesars Palace,” says Daniel Turtel, vice president of Peter Luger Steak House. “We age short loins and rib steaks, butchering them daily for service. Currently, we have 50,000 pounds of beef onsite.”
If you imagine the parts of a steer as real estate, the short loin is the high-end neighborhood with the fancy cars and big lots, the section of the animal that yields the prized porterhouse and T-bone steaks carnivores dream about. A short loin weighs around 22 pounds, and each yields eight or nine porterhouse and T-bone steaks, according to Turtel. The Vegas outpost of Luger butchers an average of 45 short loins per night—about 1,000 pounds of meat—and this doesn’t count the additional ribeyes they go through, which for about 20 percent of the mix. The restaurant averages about 500 covers per night.
Naturally, all the meat is evenly marbled and classified as Prime, which every waiter there will dutifully tell you, “Represents less than two percent of all graded beef.” You simply can’t fake the taste of dry-aged, Prime meat—the fat is nutty, the beefy flavors are intensified (even a touch funky) and the texture is tender. Once the aging process is finished, the butchering and trimming is done in-house and the steaks are sent to the kitchen.
Every chop is liberally covered in salt on one side before it goes into the 1,000-degree broiler to form a salted crust. When the steak is finished, it’s placed salt-side-down on a plate of clarified butter. The intense heat causes the butter to spittle and pop as it combines with the meat’s juices for a symphony of seared lipids and salt that sings on the plate while it travels from kitchen to table.
Doing Luger Right
If you’re expecting the dining room in Vegas to be an exact replica of Peter Luger in Brooklyn, that was never the intention. The original’s German beer-hall aesthetic and series of disted rooms have a time-worn patina that would not only be impossible to replicate, but probably wouldn’t appeal to a typical casino crowd. Besides the sign above the door and the brick-face façade, the Vegas “Luger’s” neither looks nor feels much like the original. Wooden floors and a high vaulted ceiling in the spacious main dining room evoke more of a generic, polished idea of Olde New York rather than Olde New York itself. The space is fairly new, open for a little more than a year now, and it feels like it, but the concept was far from rushed. Luger Las Vegas was a long time in the making.
“In the 1990s, Gary Selesner, the former regional president of Caesars Entertainment, ed the owners in New York to ask if they were interested in opening a location in Las Vegas,” Turtel explains. “He was quickly hung up on. But he continued visiting Peter Luger in New York to pursue a business opportunity and develop a great relationship with the family. After decades, Gary got the owners to agree and Caesars Palace successfully opened the first Peter Luger Steak House in Las Vegas.”
Turtel says that Peter Luger Las Vegas works closely with the family in New York to ensure the restaurant is as accurate as possible to the original experience and that the family was very involved with the details—everything from the dry-aging facility and beef selection to training team .
Even if you’re a seasoned steakhouse veteran, there’s a way to do this restaurant properly. Don’t usually like raw onions? Put that notion aside. The appetizer of sliced raw onion and thick tomato is Luger’s 101. The onions are surprisingly sweet and the app is served with a side of Luger’s steak sauce. And don’t even think about skipping the strips of extra-thick bacon, as these are essential to the Luger experience. You can’t get the lamb chops as an app like you can at the original, but there’s a new shellfish tower only offered at Caesars.
As for the meat, you could order one of their rib steaks, but you’d give yourself away as an amateur because the real magic of Peter Luger has always been in the porterhouse for two. Or three. Or four. Whichever size you choose, the porterhouse affords both the filet on one side of the bone and a strip on the other. Plus, these well-marbled chops occupy the plate with an imposing presence the other cuts simply don’t command.
Every hot platter is placed on the table at a slight angle, allowing the butter to pool on one side. This is a classic Luger ritual. Waiters then continue to baste the meat in its butter before placing a few pieces on your dish. They’ll decide which pieces to give you and how many, and you will let them. These servers have been trained to go through a precise set of steps so that you get the most out of your meal. Once the waiter leaves, you can reach for more.
For dessert, skip the cheesecake and get the apple strudel instead. It speaks to the German roots of the restaurant and is the perfect vehicle for Luger’s signature schlag, a house-made crème that’s neither too sweet nor too sour.
More Luger Than Luger
On our last visit, our porterhouses were a perfect medium rare—ruby-red in the center with a pink halo that radiated to the edge. The first bite said everything, and it was more than just the satisfying confluence of beef, butter and aging. It was more than velvety fat and the concentrated nuttiness that sets good steaks apart from great ones. That first bite reminded us of how, with the right team and proper motivation, a bygone level of service and execution can be brought back, or at least recreated. This steakhouse is a convincing period piece of sorts. A successful restoration project relocated to the middle of the Nevada desert. You may never make it to the original Brooklyn location, but thanks to the focus of the team here at Caesars, you don’t have to.
There’s no smoking at Peter Luger, just like there’s no smoking inside any of Sin City’s restaurants, but Caesars Palace happens to have two great cigar bars on premises: Casa Fuente and Montecristo Cigar Bar. If you’re a die-hard Fuente fan, it’s worth the walk across the property to the Forum Shops, where you’ll find one of the most comprehensive collections of Fuente-made products on the planet, including special editions of the Fuente Fuente OpusX and the entire line of Casa Fuente cigars made just for this shop. In the very likely event that you eat one apple strudel too many, the Montecristo Cigar Bar is much closer and offers a world-class variety of cigars ranging from the namesake brand to other high-end, smokes such as Padrón, Oliva, Rocky Patel and My Father Cigars.
No matter which you choose, you’ll be sure to other Vegas versions of New York City originals on your way—Carmine’s, The Palm, Nobu, Stanton Social Prime—all promising a small bite of The Big Apple. Old Homestead Steakhouse, a New York classic that claims to be even older than Peter Luger, came to Caesars in 2011 and closed last year. Even Luger itself was built atop the ruins of RAO’s, the Harlem “wise guy” hangout that proved impossible for Caesars to duplicate convincingly. It stuck around for 15 years. Can Luger last that long? Or will it just be another restaurant that cycles through as steakhouses in Vegas continue to outdo each other? Turtel doesn’t seem too worried.
“Las Vegas is one of the best culinary destinations in the country, if not the world and that’s due to the quality of the hospitality teams,” he says. “Sure, we could open in a lot of major cities, but there’s not a lot where you can staff a 300-seat restaurant on day one with experience at every position. Most importantly, we found the right partner with Caesars. We don’t worry too much about the competition.”
