The American Beefsteak: Politics and Excess | Sother Teague

Recorded live at the House of Suze during Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans 2026.

Why This Episode Matters

• Discover how the American beefsteak became a tool for political organizing in New York and New Jersey.
• Learn the feast’s essential rules: endless meat, bread as a plate and no concern for remaining clean.
• Hear how Prohibition and women’s suffrage changed public drinking—and the beefsteak itself.
• Find out how New Jersey preserved the tradition after it faded elsewhere.

The Conversation

Mark Pascal, Francis Schott and Sother Teague take the stage together to explore one of America’s messiest, and most political, dining traditions.

The American beefsteak began as a nineteenth-century feast where politicians served voters and ward leaders all the steak and beer they could handle. Matching aprons erased the appearance of social rank, and the room became a place to reward loyalty, recruit supporters and build political alliances.

The panel lays out the beefsteak’s non-negotiables: slices of beef served continuously on pieces of bread, no forks, no knives and traditionally no napkins. Diners eat the meat, stack the bread and use their aprons to wipe their hands. As Sother puts it, the guiding principle was “opulence over elegance.”

They trace the tradition through Tammany Hall, organized labor and the East Side–West Side beefsteak rivalry. They also examine how Prohibition and women’s suffrage helped transform the formerly all-male event into a more social and mixed-gender gathering.

When beefsteaks began disappearing after World War II, New Jersey butcher Garrett “Hap” Nightingale revived them as fundraisers for fire departments, churches, and community organizations. The conversation also compares the beefsteak with Southern pig pickin’s, crab boils, clambakes and pancake breakfasts.

Along the way, Sother recounts the six-plane journey that brought him to Tales, while Mark and Francis explain how they transported steaks, produce and Himalayan salt bricks from New Jersey to New Orleans.

The evening’s menu includes brisket, roast beef, Wagyu, house-made mozzarella and steaks finished on 500-degree salt bricks. Steak sauce is permitted, although putting it on the Wagyu may cause Francis emotional distress.

Guest Bio

Sother Teague is a bartender, hospitality professional and drinks historian best known for Amor y Amargo and Overthrow Hospitality. He is also a co-host of The Speakeasy and Sauced podcasts.

Timestamps

00:00 Live from the House of Suze at Tales of the Cocktail
02:15 What is an American beefsteak?
05:00 Tammany Hall, political organizing and “opulence over elegance”
10:00 Six planes, ten cooler bags and salt bricks on an airplane
13:00 Excess, Prohibition and the end of the all-male beefsteak
21:00 How New Jersey revived the tradition
23:00 Pig pickings and other regional communal feasts
25:00 Wagyu, salt bricks and the steak-sauce debate

Info

Sother Teague https://www.overthrowhospitality.com/team
Podcasts: The Speakeasy, Sauced

Recorded At
House of Suze
Tales of the Cocktail
New Orleans, Louisiana

Featured Partners
Suze and BCI
Old Forester
Serene Craft Beer Distributors

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https://www.stageleftwineshop.com/

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Stage Left Steak
https://www.stageleft.com/

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https://www.catherinelombardi.com/

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https://www.stageleftwineshop.com/

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Transcript

Beefsteak Mark 0:11

Hello everybody, and welcome. You are here with The Restaurant Guys. I'm Mark Pascal, he's Francis Schott. Together we own Stage Left and Cathal Lombardi restaurants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We're here to bring you the inside track on food, wine, and the finer things in life. Here we are at the House of Suze at Tales of the Cocktail, celebrating the American beefsteak. We'll be celebrating with Serene Craft Beer Distributors, cocktails by Southern and we'll be featuring Old Forester whiskey and, of course, Suze.

Speaker 0:42

Yeah. Cheers. Welcome

Speaker 8 0:48

Well, thank you all for coming to, as I said, the first annual Restaurant Guys Beefsteak at Tales. Uh, being in front of a live audience is great. We are often do our, our podcast not in front of a live audience, but increasingly we've been going around the world and around the country doing these, and we love them. And we wanna thank you for showing up to listen to us for half an hour. thanks for having us. Um,

Beefsteak Mark 1:08

You may regret it 30 minutes from now, but

Speaker 8 1:10

b- the, the beefsteak we will have outside afterwards. What I like to do is, you know, put my money where my mouth is. so after we talk about a beefsteak, and we're just gonna give a little history of the beefsteak, um, uh, we're gonna go out and, and participate in one, and we brought a bunch of food from New Jersey. we brought Chef Ricky Stevens from Stage Left Steak, which is the best damn steakhouse in New Jersey by far. And so we're gonna have a great time afterwards.

Beefsteak Mark 1:34

of you already know

Speaker 8 1:35

Yeah, yeah. Sother Teague needs no introduction, but I'm gonna introduce him anyway. Of course, he is of Amore, Amargo fame. He's a bitter guy. overthrow hospitality. He's often quoted in the Times, in The Wall Street Journal, and every place else that talks about cocktails. He is co-host of the Speakeasy Podcast, which is the, uh, recent best podcaster, uh, award from, or best, uh, broadcast from Tales of the

Speaker 1:58

podcast, broadcast, or online video series from Spirited Awards at Tales of the Cocktail 2023

Speaker 8 2:03

I'm not salty ab- And Mark and I aren't salty about that at all, okay? I just want you to

Speaker 2:09

I've told you a thousand times, you have to nominate yourself

Speaker 8 2:15

Um, and his new project, if you haven't heard it, is Sauced with Tim McCurdy, which is a great podcast I listen to. It's really terrific. So anyway, Southern, welcome.

Speaker 2:22

I'm so psyched to

Speaker 3 2:23

be here

Beefsteak Mark 2:23

Teague, welcome to the show, the second-best podcast in the whole world

Speaker 3 2:29

thanks so much for having me. I'm stoked to be here, and I'm stoked to talk about the beefsteak dinner. Um, who here already kinda knows what a beefsteak is? It's not just, you know, a tomato.

Beefsteak Mark 2:37

Oh, you guys don't know?

Speaker 3 2:38

couple guys know.

Beefsteak Mark 2:39

is much

Speaker 6 2:39

Oh,

Speaker 3 2:40

I th- I was shocked that that many people knew. I figured no one would raise their hand. Um, so these things were super common, some time ago, uh, especially sort of pre-Prohibition, and they were typically a way to ply someone to maybe come over to your side of beliefs, mostly by politicians, right? This is a way to say to your constituency, uh, "I can deliver, and I'm gonna deliver on my promises, and how I'm gonna get you to believe that I can do that is I'm gonna fill you up with some beer and some steak."

Beefsteak Mark 3:04

Kind of the opposite the way it works now, where you give $1,000 to have really shitty food. Okay? They presented you with really good food and beer, and then you got to... Then, then they told you what they were gonna do for you

Speaker 8 3:17

So the beefsteak is traditionally, it is a, it is a New York, New Jersey contribution to American culture. You're welcome. Um, uh, but I think we-- And it's, it's been around for a long time. It's been around since the, the, the mid-1800s. But I think what we wanna do here is we'll d- we'll, we'll define our terms, what you call in the, in the Sauce podcast the non-negotiables, right?

Speaker 3:38

of the beef steak

Speaker 8 3:39

And we're, so we're gonna define it for tonight, and we'll realize that it came from something before it, and it's evolved into other things after it. But what I'm gonna put down as the non-negotiables for the purposes of our discussion is, uh, it's a, it's a, a feast. No forks, no knives, no napkins. Your apron is your bib and your napkin. Usually it, it's a branded for the event 'cause there was a political fundraiser, so then it became for other things. Oh, Sutter's gonna show you. We got you all branded aprons. So on the way out, you all have branded... aprons

Speaker 4:09

Lisa Laird,

Speaker 8 4:10

Laird, everyone. Laird's distillery license number one, Laird's, Laird Company.

Speaker 4:17

Laird's has been around longer than America, certainly longer than the beefsteak dinner

Speaker 8 4:20

Yeah. So, the way this works is it's kind of a messy affair. You literally didn't give out napkins. It was originally kind of a stag manly affair.

Beefsteak Mark 4:27

have napkins

Speaker 8 4:28

uh, but you're, you're supposed to use it as your, you know, wipe your hands on it like, like that, which is why we don't want them back,

Beefsteak Mark 4:35

Which is better than 300 years earlier when they used to use the dog.

Speaker 8 4:38

Uh, more non-negotiable slices of beef served continuously on pieces of bread. Uh, the bread is kind of your plate. The bread is not necessary to be eaten. Uh, and because we're Tales of the Cocktail, we're adding Old Forester, bourbon and some other special bourbons, uh, Suze, and, uh, cocktails from Sother. The most important rule is no one leaves hungry, no one leaves clean, right? Is that fair?

Speaker 4:58

Yeah, you gotta get into it

Speaker 8 5:00

so the, the beefsteak, um, I kinda wanna start in the, near the beginning, but not the beginning. I think when we see a lot of... If you see, if you look up a beefsteak, you'll see a lot of black and white pictures of mostly men wearing aprons, right? With, and it's the commemoration of this or the commemoration of that. It's mostly associated with Tammany Hall, which was the, political headquarters of the, the new Catholic dirty swarthy Irish immigrant, people in, in New York City. And Boss Tweed, uh, who was actually an Ulster Scot, he wasn't really Irish, people didn't know that. they threw these beefsteaks. And think about this, and I wanna, I'll, I'll put out some, some basics of what happened there, and I wanna throw this back to Sother. What he-- You talked about ag- about getting someone to come over to your side. Think about this. F- a typical one would have 300 precinct captains, union leaders, business owners, firefighters, police officers, and neighborhood organizers. Everyone's dressed identical. Those aprons, everyone's dressed the same. There's no assigned seating. Bunch of pitchers of beer, a lot of standing and walking around and talking. So it was political networking, at its best. Um, it was great. So since Sother Teague knows

Beefsteak Mark 6:08

wasn't there. Okay, we're assuming it was

Speaker 6:12

Yeah

Speaker 8 6:12

Uh, you don't know. so Sother Teague, uh, knows more about 19th century drinking than most people who were drinking in the 19th century. So,

Speaker 6:21

here?

Speaker 8 6:22

so t- so g- give us a little more insight on, where you think the beefsteak came from and how it rose to be so important.

Speaker 3 6:28

Well, I think you kind of nailed it right there, right? It was a communal situation where everyone was not necessarily dressed the same. You're wearing whatever you're wearing like you are today, but we're all gonna wear this apron so we all look like we're-- suddenly we're all of the same level of class. you know, and I

Speaker 6 6:39

or lack of class

Speaker 3 6:40

uh, yeah. Uh, and I meant more like station in life, right? You can be hobnobbing elbow to elbow with someone eating meat with your bare hands who's, you know, a billionaire, and then someone who maybe is, uh, you know, the opposite of that, me.

Beefsteak Mark 6:49

none of us are sitting next to somebody who's

Speaker 3 6:52

not at, not at this, not at this party we're not. and the whole point of these things was, like, opulence over elegance. You know what I mean? It was supposed to get a little bit rowdy and dirty, and it was, uh... ours is being fueled today by, you know, the delicious, Old Forester, bourbon and rye and sues and some, uh, Gabriel Boudier liqueurs. Uh, but these were always beer, which was like the drink of the working man. So it was a, a, a real opportunity for people to be shoulder to shoulder with one another in a communal atmosphere that could make them come to agreements about things. And it was certainly swaying, right? Because if you were throwing this thing, you probably had enough money, uh, maybe more than you needed. and, uh, if you were attending this thing, you were, like, grateful for a great meal and a, and a bunch of beer

Speaker 8 7:31

Do you have any insight into the origins of the beefsteak before, like the Tammany Hall era?

Speaker 3 7:35

I don't.

Speaker 8 7:35

Tammany Hall was the place, by the way. When, when I studied politics in school, we talked about Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall. He was only 1863 to 1871, but Tammany Hall ran everything. It was, uh, Frank Hague was in the turn of the century in Jersey City, was Daley in Chicago, and those were the big machines of the country, you know? And they, and they all did a, version of this, but this was a New York, New Jersey thing, uh, overall

Speaker 3 8:00

Yeah. Uh, uh, you mentioned earlier it was, it was also heavily focused around like, uh, laborers who were unionized or beginning to unionize. So like dock workers, butchers, um, the fire department you mentioned as well would be there. The police departments would be there. So it was like, again, it was every day walking around mostly guys at the time. Um, and it was, really charged with... I, I think my, my personal takeaway is if you're throwing a beefsteak, you are trying to get people to back you in some

Beefsteak Mark 8:25

and back in the 1800s it was all men. Okay? That's all that were allowed to go to the beef steaks

Speaker 8 8:31

or

Beefsteak Mark 8:31

now. Uh, let

Speaker 8 8:32

the

Beefsteak Mark 8:32

say that. It's better now

Speaker 8 8:34

uh, he saw someone winding up with a rock in the back row. Uh, no, the, uh, But we have to understand the culture in which this happened, 'cause if you wanted a p- job as a policeman or fireman or garbage man, that wasn't like you took the civil service test and whoever came out on top, right? That was who do you know? My dad j- Came back from World War II later and wanted a job as a, a fireman in Orange, New Jersey, the city where my family lived, and it was kinda run by an Irish machine at that time. And my Aunt Anna O'Neill, talking about powerful women in politics, m- his aunt, so my great Aunt Anna O'Neill, So y- they used to have-- Things were very segregated, and so there was a woman's wing of the Democratic Party, and there was the men's wing. The woman's wing was very important 'cause the men were working in the jobs, and the women did a lot of the organizing. They organized a lot of the dinners. They, uh, did a lot of door-to-door. It was the women who were very important. And so there was a chairman of the Democratic Party for each city, county, and s- and, and the state in general, and a chairwoman. And my Aunt Anna O'Neill, I love her, she was a firecracker. she got elected, and then, like, two months in, the chairman died, so she is the only woman who was both chairman and chairwoman of the Democratic Party of, uh, Orange, New Jersey. And my dad got his job as a fireman. He's like, "You didn't get a job in Orange unless Anna O'Neill said you went, you had to sit with Anna." And even though my dad was her nephew, you had to go sit with her and talk. So these beef steaks were a way to make that thing happen. No media, no cell phones, no...

Speaker 3 9:55

I was about to say that's hugely important, right? We take things for granted, right? There was no TV back then, right? There was no social media. politics was an intensely social machine at that time, and you had to be around each other to have that social

Beefsteak Mark 10:06

Kinda like it is now

Speaker 3 10:07

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're all so happy together. but, you know, and this was a way for, like, the ward bosses and, politicians of all, uh, stripes to, you know, reward loyalty, uh, recruit new voters, get their faces seen, right? We didn't-- They couldn't just snap a picture of themselves and bitch about their plane flight and get 1,000 people to m- comment on it. You know what I mean?

Speaker 6 10:24

Um, I,

Speaker 3 10:25

I don't wanna talk about it

Speaker 6 10:26

I, I, I

Beefsteak Mark 10:28

Oh, hold on. So, Suther, how many planes does it take to get Suther Teague to Tales of the Cocktail?

Speaker 6 10:34

Hmm.

Speaker 3 10:34

This trip, it only took six.

Speaker 6 10:37

Y- can you give us a brief rundown

Speaker 3 10:39

I left my house Saturday morning, intent on getting here Saturday afternoon so that I could have the evening to relax and then enjoy, uh, show and tell on Sunday and then, start work Monday morning. I left my house in the morning on Saturday. I arrived here at 7:00 PM yesterday.

Speaker 8 10:52

Well,

Beefsteak Mark 10:52

But here he

Speaker 3 10:52

briefest rundown. But here I am and I love it, and I'm-- it's my 18th Tails, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't wanna be anywhere else

Speaker 8 10:57

So we also had a bit of a journey getting down here because we do offsite events all the time. We have a lot of time to prepare, but we really wanted to bring New Jersey here. And so we're like

Beefsteak Mark 11:08

and I'll be honest, we do offsite events with cars and trucks and, you know, vehicles

Speaker 8 11:15

yeah. W- or, or we can buy stuff locally, but we wanted to bring our beef 'cause we're a steakhouse and it's a beefsteak. We wanna bring our chef, and we brought a lot of local stuff. And so, um, you may not know this, but there is a weight limit on your checked baggage. There is only a size limit on your carry-on. So if you were to, say, fill your carry-on with salt bricks that weigh 50 pounds, they don't stop you. So we're up there and we're carrying the heaviest carry-ons we have, and

Beefsteak Mark 11:41

cooler bags does it take to get to a beefsteak in New Orleans? The answer is 10, in case you're wondering

Speaker 8 11:46

and Mark t- so I have the salt bricks, which I need help getting on, and, and I like, "Ugh." And the wo- woman's like, "Can I help you?" I'm like, "No, don't touch the bag." Uh, uh, and Mark's got... What'd you have, steaks?

Beefsteak Mark 11:59

I have

Speaker 8 11:59

And Mark's got steaks and he's in the back. And, uh, but, and Mark tells me when we get off the plane, tell him what the, what the woman said to you

Beefsteak Mark 12:05

So literally, I'm taking this thing down, and obviously I'm a pretty big guy and I'm, I'm not weak, but I'm like, "Mm, gr." And she walks past and she just puts her hand on it. She's like, "What do you got in here, bricks?" I'm like, "No, the other guy's got the bricks. I got the

Speaker 12:22

Nice

Speaker 6 12:23

And he left her with a quizzical look on her face and, uh, it was true. It was really true. Believe what we say

Beefsteak Mark 12:28

So salt bricks, you're about to find out. So one of the, the things we do at Stage Left Steak is we heat up our salt bricks to 500 degrees. We bring the salt bricks out on a board, and your steaks are cooked to rare, and then you sear them on the 500-degree Himalayan salt brick. You're never going back to any other way of eating

Speaker 6 12:47

So the piece goes into your mouth warm, and the fat of the steak solves just a little bit of the salt.

Beefsteak Mark 12:52

perfect and warm and delightful, and

Speaker 12:54

They told me years

Beefsteak Mark 12:55

in your

Speaker 12:56

they told me years ago they did this so that they'd, stop having steaks sent back to the kitchen

Speaker 8 12:59

Yeah, it's true. My steak's centered on, "Here's a brick, do it yourself." it's a really cool way to have steak and you're gonna experience it tonight. So the, so the, the beefsteak moves on from, it was really down and dirty politics, Tammany Hall driven, okay? That's where it was all centered. Uh, and other smaller, uh, political organizations in New York and in New Jersey copied that and, and did it. It was a great organizing thing. But it goes on to become, celebrities kinda get involved, like in the 1920s and '30s before prohibition. So it becomes, uh, you know, a, a, a thing, a, a place to be seen, right?

Beefsteak Mark 14:59

it is again now.

Speaker 8 15:00

yeah

Speaker 3 15:01

because w-

Beefsteak Mark 15:01

being seen here, we're s- we see you

Speaker 3 15:03

yeah. Well, also because of things like what you guys are doing, like innovation came into the game. It wasn't just, uh, uh, big piles of meat that were brought out. So now you get like charcoal grills, and you can see it, live fire action happening, and you guys are gonna bring it out on salt bricks, and, um, just makes it a little bit more sort of celebratory and fun. in the beginning it was all about delivering typically a political message or, uh, you know, maybe getting, as the guys in the front said, getting you, getting you to join their cult. uh, and now it's turned into a much more social event, and typically the ones that I've been to anyway, and I've been to several, It's more of a sit down affair at these that I've been to, but, uh, every table elects someone at the table to be that table's toastmaster, and that every toastmaster has to stand up, and we go around the room and everyone gives a toast, and then we sort of vote on who gave the best or the worst toast. And

Beefsteak Mark 15:43

just so you guys know, Francis is at your table, he will be the toastmaster. You j- you don't have any-- There's no other, no other way to do it. He

Speaker 6 15:50

I lo- I like toasts. I

Speaker 3 15:51

sp- and speaking of toast, I saw the chef back there was making some really delicious looking, uh, bread. A- and again, beef steaks, it's almost always thinly sliced beef on top of toast points. But what the idea is, as you eat, you just eat the meat, and then the bread stacks up, and then it's al- that's a game. Who's got the stack the highest,

Speaker 6 16:10

Yeah, but this isn't

Speaker 3 16:10

who has the most, who ate the most beef at the beef steak?

Beefsteak Mark 16:13

that's, so literally that would be like a, you'd have a contest to see how many pieces of bread you could stack. So, and you are encouraged to do that, that, stacking if you would like. Me, I'm probably just gonna toss

Speaker 8 16:23

I'm, yeah, I'm gonna toss my bread. It's not, it's not a sit down. We won't know anyway. I wanna jump ahead. There was, uh, we'll get into how, what happened to the beefsteak during World War II and after, uh, and then we'll go eat some beef. But I, but there was a very famous article, written by, um, Joseph Mitchell in The New Yorker in 1939, and, uh, the title of the article was All You Can Hold For Five Bucks. And he wrote, "At a contemporary beefsteak, it is not unusual for a man to do away with, more than three pounds of meat and 25 glasses of beer

Beefsteak Mark 16:50

Hold on

Speaker 8 16:51

we didn't bring that much. Yeah, so it, it's definitely b- uh, kind of a gluttonous affair too, you know? And it was a, sort of a manly thing. In the, in the era when celebrities got involved, there was kind of an argument. It was always, though, centered in New York, right? It was always a Northeast thing. It didn't, you didn't see a lot of them in Chicago or San Francisco or on the West Coast. there was a division there for a while. There were the East Side beef steaks and there were the West Side beef steaks. So the East Side beef steaks were very purist. It was just beef. It was, a rough and tumble immigrant working class. And the West Side beef steaks, they, they toasted the bread, right? I mean, they did the crazy- they allowed forks occasionally. They would have crab meat and shrimp and lamb chops and, uh, it became a real kind of a row.

Beefsteak Mark 17:33

meat, shrimp, and lamb chops

Speaker 17:34

Yeah

Speaker 8 17:35

anybody wanna take a guess as to what ended the argument of the East Side versus the West Side, beef steak? Anyone from the audience, someone wanna tell me what ended the 1920s argument about

Beefsteak Mark 17:44

bet Robert Simonson knows

Speaker 8 17:46

Yeah. No, the murder and mayhem is what fueled it, but Prohibition is what ended it, right? So the great failed experiment. but it kinda didn't end it, it just changed it, but it was no longer the East Side/West Side thing because there were two amendments that sailed through Congress and the states almost in lockstep just a year apart. Anyone know what the other amendment that passed within a year of Prohibition was?

Speaker 18:10

You're stumping me, yeah.

Speaker 8 18:11

women's

Speaker 18:12

There we go, yeah

Speaker 8 18:13

And you know how you get invited to a beefsteak? Have the right to vote, and all of a sudden you're welcome at the damn

Beefsteak Mark 18:20

that was the end of the all-male beefsteak.

Speaker 8 18:23

women. No, you can v- come on in. We want all the women. so, prohibition, we, we

Beefsteak Mark 18:28

That's real, by the way. That's, uh, that's the truth

Speaker 8 18:30

Well, and we can't talk about, the beefsteak without talking about prohibition because, I mean, so tell me what your, your impression is. From all my reading of history, it seems to me that nothing did more to make mixed gender drinking in public, uh, a thing than prohibition

Speaker 3 18:47

I 100% agree with that. Uh, you know, there's a saying out there I didn't create, but I'm gonna probably butcher it. Uh, you wanna make something delicious, prohibit it,

Speaker 6 18:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 18:56

right? So, uh, I think as soon as prohibition came along, um, even people who weren't maybe drinkers before it came along were drawn to it. and then that's of course where we started, you know, mixing drinks because we were dealing a lot of times with lesser quality booze or things that had been tainted by literally the government. The government was, uh, out there l- murdering people. Um, and, and yeah, it became a much more acceptably social, position for men and women to be in the same room and having alcohol together

Speaker 8 19:21

was also the birth of the home cocktail party. You know, like middle class people didn't have cocktail parties in the 1920s. You know? It, it just wasn't a thing, and it was a very mixed gender thing. There's, um, a little plug for the Restaurant Guys. So we started the Restaurant Guys-

Beefsteak Mark 19:35

whole day is a plug for the

Speaker 8 19:37

it is. It is. It really

Beefsteak Mark 19:38

chip on your chair. Start downloading as soon as you, uh, get up

Speaker 8 19:41

So, so we think we, we may have been the first food and wine podcast, the first restaurant and wine podcast ever, because in 2005 we, uh, were building our second restaurant and a local radio station asked us to host a show five days a week. Um, and we were like, "That was stupid." And, and so we, we started the radio show on WCTC AM, a little 5,000-watt station in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and, we had brought in a lot of staff to migrate into our new place, so we had a little time on our hands, and we fell in love with the idea of doing a show. Call up anybody we want. We c-

Beefsteak Mark 20:14

world was different then, right? So i- if you wanted Thomas Keller on your show, you called The French Laundry, they sent you back to the kitchen line and said, "Hey, Thomas, you got 45 minutes to be on our show tomorrow?" And Thomas would say, "Yeah, why not? Okay. You guys are before lunch? Great. Yeah, okay, terrific."

Speaker 8 20:30

so anyway, so that, so that's how the show began, and we did it for eight years. We said we were gonna do it for a couple months. But that was February of '05. In May of '05, Steve Jobs allows non-native content on the, on the iTunes, iTunes Store for the first time. That's the birth of podcasting. And we had a young person that worked for us who said, "You got all this recorded. Let me just pop it up as a podcast." So literally, within 10 days of podcasts existing, there were a dozen episodes of The Restaurant Guys up there. We did it for eight years. We took a break. We came back about two years ago, and so now every Tuesday we have a new show, uh, and every Thursday we have a, a show that we, that Jennifer re-edits from our archives that we think is still relevant. And Thursday's show is actually relevant to this. It's with a guy named Daniel Okrent, and, um, he wrote a book called Last Call: The Rise and Fall and Prohi- of Prohibition. So just tune in on Thur- or check the download on Thursday. I think it...

Beefsteak Mark 21:20

All right. Anybody else in the room know what Daniel O. Krent invented?

Speaker 8 21:24

Besides books on cocktails and

Beefsteak Mark 21:26

Rotisserie baseball. He is the inventor of rotisserie baseball as well as

Speaker 21:32

don't know what rotisserie baseball is.

Beefsteak Mark 21:33

Really? Fantasy baseball. But it

Speaker 6 21:35

what they called it back

Beefsteak Mark 21:36

called rotisserie then because they had rotisserie chicken was the meal that they had when they did their draft

Speaker 3 21:42

Copy. Uh, that's amazing. I didn't realize that "The Restaurant Guys Podcast," or well, radio show, began in 2005, making you certainly maybe one of the first, yeah? Uh, but then you took that break in the middle, which means that "The Speakeasy" is the longest-running one.

Speaker 6 21:55

Oh.

Speaker 8 21:59

It's

Speaker 3 21:59

Cause you started in, you started in 2005, and we started in 2011, and we're still going

Speaker 8 22:04

All right, rock on. And I w- I hope we all

Beefsteak Mark 22:06

now you know we are all gluttons for punishment

Speaker 8 22:09

Yeah, I know. Let's talk about what happened when the ladies joined the beef steaks. Nothing good, ladies. Nothing good. No, it just got f- it, it got fancier, they got napkins. Yeah. Yeah, you had to wipe your hands. You had to wipe your hands. Um

Beefsteak Mark 22:25

the way, you know why men wear trousers? So we can wipe our hands on the inside of our pockets, okay? That's why we wear trousers.

Speaker 8 22:32

all men, everybody. I just want you to know that. Uh, but dance band salads, they started... That political fundraiser became more toward what, what you see today. So it was less that down and dirty beefsteak thing. And then, by the end of World War II, they kind of had fallen away. They weren't a thing anymore in New York. It was just, it wasn't practical, it wasn't how things worked. Do you know who came to the rescue? great state of New Jersey, everybody. The great state of New Jersey. Thank you. Thank you very much

Speaker 4 22:56

it

Speaker 8 22:57

Uh, Garrett "Hap" Nightingale, a Clifton butcher, not a politician, he starts the thing again he kinda resurrects it, and he's kind of im- important in that he formalized all the rules that we have today, all the rules that I talked about. He, what he picked and chose, you now see everyone do, because he was a butcher. And so he's like, "Need a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department? Why not have a beefsteak? The Rosary Society of the Catholic Church needs a fundraiser? Why not have a beefsteak? The motorcycle club? Why not have a beefsteak?"

Beefsteak Mark 23:26

rosary society of the Catholic Church?

Speaker 8 23:28

You're a bad Catholic. I'm gonna tell you that right now. You are a bad Catholic. Um, so, so what this guy's interest in, it was very interesting, and he really, took it out of the realm of politics, 'cause he, he got paid, right? He was the butcher. And so he's like, "Would you like to buy 100 pounds of beef?" You know, and that was sort of how that all happened. And that's why in New Jersey, and where we're talking about New Jersey, same county that Mark and I were both, both born in, that is the, where the beefsteak started and spread throughout the state. It's big down in the Pine Barrens, big down in South Jersey. But fundraisers still happen for all different sorts of things, and that's, now it's seeing a renaissance in restaurants in New York I

Speaker 24:05

yeah, it really is. I've been to a couple, um, actually I was at one with Phil. Phil was the toastmaster at the table I was at, so I knew I was, uh, I was gonna lose.

Beefsteak Mark 24:12

Philip Duff was not in the room earlier when I said everybody in this room, Francis will be the toastmaster if he's at your table.

Speaker 3 24:18

Phil

Beefsteak Mark 24:19

Unless Philip Duff is at your table

Speaker 3 24:21

Phil, Phil

Speaker 6 24:21

I'm second best. I'm second best

Speaker 3 24:24

a- and it's really-- It does shock me that this, um, sort of event hasn't migrated all over the country. It really

Speaker 6 24:29

I'm

Speaker 3 24:30

in, it does stay in the Northeast. But we do have something... I'm from the Deep South. I used to live here in this town, uh, three years, so they tell me. Um, in the South, we do pig pickins, which is you roast an entire pig. Pig pickin', pickin', P-I-C-K-I-N, pig,

Speaker 6 24:43

from a pig

Speaker 3 24:44

because you just go up and you pick at it.

Speaker 6 24:46

Oh

Speaker 3 24:47

It's a pig pickin'. Uh, and they are They're not necessarily politically driven, but they're typically community driven. We're gonna raise money for something or the Little League team or things like that. But, uh, I don't know of any other thing like a beefsteak dinner that, that anywhere outside of New York and New Jersey

Speaker 6 25:00

All right, so have we... Uh, isn't that crazy that, I mean, after all this history, it's still in American Jersey?

Beefsteak Mark 25:05

you go to this, you're gonna be like, "People should have

Speaker 8 25:08

state you live in, you're gonna throw

Speaker 25:10

I, I think you should throw one at, at your house. Invite your friends over, tell them they don't get to have a, a, a fork and knife or a napkin, and go at it

Speaker 8 25:16

so couple of final words on the beefsteak, and then I wanna ask you some questions and let you ask us some questions. So Souther, do you have any final thoughts that we have not covered?

Speaker 25:24

think we touched on most of it. Uh, and I'm, I, I do have one question for the audience real fast though. Who here's been to one? All right. Oh, uh, that's a lot more than I

Beefsteak Mark 25:32

It's the latecomers have all been to one 'cause they didn't come for the podcast, they came for the, for the meat.

Speaker 8 25:38

get to eat anyway. All right,

Speaker 25:40

Awesome. I'm excited for the ones who haven't had one. I'm also equally excited for the ones who have

Speaker 8 25:44

All right, so I wanna open, open this question, but before that, I have a question for you guys as well. So there's

Speaker 25:49

Pig pickin'.

Speaker 8 25:50

pig pick or the pig pickin', there's the beefsteak. Is there another, any other kind of thing from another part of the country that we don't know about that somebody wants to volunteer? What do you have?

Speaker 6 25:59

Oyster pan roast. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan. Who

Beefsteak Mark 26:02

guess the crab boil is one too. Lobster bakes.

Speaker 26:05

But, but are any of those typically associated with fundraising?

Speaker 6 26:09

Robert Simonson.

Speaker 26:10

Oh, there we go

Speaker 8 26:12

right, so,

Speaker 26:13

true. Good one, Robert

Speaker 8 26:14

questions for us. Anybody have any questions for us?

Beefsteak Mark 26:17

Uh, so different things will be seasoned differently. So the brisket will be, is, is pretty heavily seasoned. The, uh, roast beef is pretty heavily seasoned, but the 20-day Angus, strip steak is cooked on the bone and salt and pepper. the, Wagyu, rib eye from Australia will just have salt and pepper on it, and be super simple, and you'll finish it on a salt brick. And that Wagyu comes from a farm called Sankyo. It's a nine-plus Wagyu that you're gonna have tonight. It's one of the greatest steaks I've ever had in my life, if not the greatest steak of my life.

Speaker 26:50

My mouth is

Speaker 6 26:50

okay, I know nobody's been to a beefsteak before. Let's put it this way. Happ wasn't bringing the Sankyo Wagyu to the beefsteak.

Speaker 26:57

I, I, I would

Speaker 6 26:57

and,

Speaker 26:58

I would also throw in that you asked what, what, what was seasoned, that he told you what's their seasoning tonight. Back then, likely nothing.

Beefsteak Mark 27:05

Right.

Speaker 6 27:06

Salt and pepper if you're lucky. Yeah, indeed. Other questions?

Beefsteak Mark 27:11

salt bricks, you're about to find out. we saw people doing like cold sushi and things like that on, salt bricks. And we were like, "Let's have some steak on here." We started about 18 years ago, and it's one of those things that, uh, finally another restaurant has copied. when you eat off of the salt brick that you're about to do, uh, uh, everybody who's a restaurant owner in, in this room who sells steaks should copy us.

Speaker 8 27:36

I'm gonna throw one more thing out there. If you're a restaurant owner or you're at home and you wanna use these bricks, they're very dangerous. They will ruin your furniture. They will burn you. Uh, but there are, there are... We have best practices for how to handle them, and if you, you need to put them on certain kinds of boards, and we have all, we have earned all of that information. If you wanna know how to use them in our tips, you can email us, the guys at RestaurantGuysPodcast.com. You can find it through the chip, and we'll tell you where to get them and how to use them,

Beefsteak Mark 28:01

One little, more little warning. Occasionally, a salt brick will have a, a little fissure in it that you can't see, and when you put it in your oven and you heat it to 500 degrees, it will explode in your oven, and then you really want somebody else to clean your oven.

Speaker 8 28:16

Uh, other questions? Anybody?

Beefsteak Mark 28:19

There will be steak sauce here today.

Speaker 8 28:21

Uh, my personal view of steak sauce is I own a steakhouse. We own a steakhouse. Some people like to eat their meat with steak sauce, so we made the best damn steak... Ricky makes our steak sauce. It's the best damn steak sauce you can have. If you use a steak sauce on the Ponderosa steak or the Outback, that's okay because that is mostly just flavorless texture anyway, so it's something. But, and, and, you know, steaks, it's like, you know, a ch- a dip or something. But if you put it on my wagyu, I'm gonna cry. I'm gonna, I'm gonna cry.

Speaker 28:50

Sensitive. He's very

Speaker 8 28:51

I am sensitive guy. Chimichurri

Beefsteak Mark 28:53

chimichurri will also be a sauce here today.

Speaker 8 28:56

and chimichurri, I

Speaker 6 28:57

think you can taste the beef through it

Beefsteak Mark 28:58

And just in case anybody's wondering, the parsley was cut yesterday at my house in New Jersey and brought with us on the airplane as well. Much of the product that you've had today, uh, or will be having, is from New Jersey. All those salamis were made in New Jersey. Uh, the fresh mozzarella Ricky made five minutes before you ate it. Uh, that arugula came from New Jersey. So there's a lot... We, we literally hand carried as much as we could here. There's also some Louis- Louisiana products. The, obviously the alligator challah was a Louisiana product, not a New Jersey product. By the way, the bread came from a company that T. Martin recommended. Thank you very much, Commander's Palace, T. Martin

Speaker 8 29:37

so if you are at home thinking or listening to us driving down the road in your car and thinking, "How do I get invited to a ridiculous party like that?" Well, you should become a subscriber to The Restaurant Guys. And, you know, if you became a paid subscriber, that would help a little bit. We are not unbiased, I'll be honest with you. Think of us as a beefsteak where we wanna get you on our side. And we have, some listeners today who did indeed write in our little contest and got invited to this swell party. All of the rest of you got invited just 'cause you're cool and, and somebody knew you, um, like us or our

Beefsteak Mark 30:06

that the guy who got invited to Listener isn't cool

Speaker 8 30:08

But we don't know yet. We're gonna find out later. He, he's cool enough to listen to The Restaurant Guys. we need to thank a few people, and I wanna thank Southern Teague. Uh, you're the best.

Speaker 30:15

Thanks guys.

Speaker 8 30:18

Um, we, we need to, to thank, um, uh, Jean-Francois Bonnetti of BCI Imports. We are at

Speaker 5 30:25

Engine

Speaker 8 30:25

his house

Beefsteak Mark 30:29

right.

Speaker 8 30:29

you're in the house of Suze, but BCI brings in a lot of stuff besides Suze, and everything they bring in is super top quality. Old Forester Bourbon is here from the

Beefsteak Mark 30:37

Cooper has joined us in the back

Speaker 30:38

there. Thank you, Tim

Speaker 4 30:43

He's just here for the steak

Speaker 8 30:45

I, I think that when you're, you're making cocktails of this era especially, their 1920s Prohibition Bourbon, which we have, is just, there's n- nothing

Beefsteak Mark 30:51

In its price category, I think it's unprecedented

Speaker 8 30:54

and we have Serene Craft Beer Distributors, which operates down here as well. They got a bunch of great craft beers. you have a cool party coming up. You've got some aprons to put on. Uh, remember, nobody leaves here hungry, nobody leaves here clean. I am Francis Schatz.

Beefsteak Mark 31:09

I'm Mark Pascal

Speaker 8 31:11

We are the Restaurant Guys, and you can always find out more about us, and we hope you do. Please follow at restaurantguyspodcast.com. Thank you.

Speaker 31:19

Yeah. Cheers, guys.

Beefsteak Mark 31:21

Thank you, guys All right, we're gonna continue this discussion outside

Speaker 7 31:28

issues in this discussion outside