High Steaks

By Plotkin’s recollection, he heard 10 to 15 similar stories the first night alone. The review and his customers’ reactions touched upon an inner anxiousness — “I’m a worrier,” says Plotkin — that is another mark of his character. “I didn’t even know anything had run,” he says. “But then after I got to work, my customers started asking if something had gone wrong with the restaurant. They were asking if I was having — a problem with my meat.” 

He speaks these last words with apparent difficulty, as if he is choking on … well, a miserably tough and fatty strip steak. As it turned out, he spent that first night gnawing on a mystery — had Craig LaBan ordered and eaten what he had written about?

Plotkin drove 22 minutes from Bala Cynwyd to his home in Blue Bell. He picked up the phone and left a voicemail for LaBan. He sent the critic an e-mail. And he got in bed. But he never did get any meaningful rest. “I just couldn’t believe he had my New York strip,” he says, “so that’s kind of what I spent the night thinking about. I don’t think I slept that first couple of nights. I was too upset.”

Sleepless nights? Over steak?

“My New York strip,” says Plotkin. “That’s who I am. It’s my life’s work.”

An existential crisis — Le strip, c’est moi — over meat?

Plotkin doesn’t bat an eye at the ridiculousness of what transpired. “I was questioning myself,” he says. “I wondered if I was serving the meat I thought I was. I wondered if I was as good as I thought I was.”

It was a night without end, and it was just the beginning.

THUS FAR,  THE ineffable mystery of Alex Plotkin’s strip steak has spawned a libel suit, a media maelstrom, a series of, um, “threatening” conversations — and a dispute over LaBan’s self-proclaimed right to remain anonymous. LaBan was so keen to assert this right that he showed up for a recent videotaped legal proceeding — as the defendant in that libel suit — in full costume. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

This drama, like Seinfeld’s comedy, originates with a whole lot of nothing — steak! LaBan had, in fact, not eaten the strip of which Plotkin is so proud. But the seemingly picayune nature of the dispute itself is revelatory, unmasking the new foodie face of Philadelphia. Such great grief over a grilled menu item would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. But today, restaurateurs are the new Philly rock stars. Meat can mean a lawsuit.

The legal filings in Plotkin’s case exhibit the usual exaggerations associated with civil court. In the brief filed on Chops’ behalf, LaBan is a dining devil, prancing cloven-hooved through the city’s streets to drown well-meaning restaurant owners with the Inquirer’s many gallons of flaming ink. In the response filed for LaBan and the Inquirer, the critic is a consumer advocate, blameless in the eyes of the Lord.

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