High Steaks

All we know for sure is that after Plotkin’s sleepless night, LaBan called him back. As it turned out, LaBan had reviewed Chops’ lunch, ordering the steak frites, prepared with a cut of beef the menu doesn’t specify. Readers should have noticed that LaBan’s references to the “sunny room” and “power-lunch crowd” in the first sentence meant that he had eaten a midday meal, not dinner. But Plotkin says neither he nor the customers he spoke to caught the distinction — and further notes that LaBan wrote he had a New York strip, which only appears on the menu by name at dinner.

The meat Plotkin serves as a luncheon steak frites for $15 — whether culled from a strip or a rib eye — is far less impressive than and prepared differently from the New York strip he serves for dinner, priced over $30. In a July visit to Chops, I ordered both. The lunch steak was tougher and fattier, and appeared to have been flattened by a steamroller. The dinner steak was leaner and more tender, and appeared to have been inflated by a tire pump.  

Chops, like other high-end steakhouses, carves its own beef — reserving less savory portions for lunch. In Plotkin’s conception of Chops, the two-inch-plus-thick New York strip served at dinner is his signature dish, like the filet mignon at Ruth’s Chris or the porterhouse at Peter Luger. “When we finally talked,” says Plotkin, “I told him, ‘Craig, you made me feel so much better! You didn’t eat the New York strip!’”

In hindsight, perhaps there was some ground here for a resolution that would have prevented Plotkin’s later legal action. A clarification of 20 words — “In his February 4th ‘Or Try These’ on Chops, Inquirer food critic Craig LaBan ate the steak frites for lunch” — might have offset Plotkin’s angst over the earlier 44 words. But LaBan, who declined to be interviewed for this article, probably never made such calculations. And why would he?

Suits over restaurant reviews are traditionally pronounced dead on arrival, since such reviews are protected as opinion under the First Amendment. In the defense’s response, LaBan contends that the waiter told him the steak frites was a strip steak. To take a brief dip into the insanity of the case, the waiter, Angelo Becker, contends he declared the frites meat a “chef’s choice” between a strip and a rib eye. Both Becker and Plotkin say a rib eye is what LaBan ultimately got.

But even if LaBan made a small mis-steak, who cares? Maybe Plotkin should serve better cuts of beef for lunch. More than likely, a lawsuit never entered LaBan’s mind — though it did enter Plotkin’s. “I’m a steakhouse,” says Plotkin. “My New York strip — that’s what I hang my hat on!”

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