High Steaks

Plotkin doesn’t just buy USDA-certified prime beef, the highest and most expensive grade (not counting specialty meats like wagyu and Kobe). He also purchases meat solely from grain-fed Midwestern steers, which are fatter and more flavorful than their grass-fed, warm-weather counterparts. He reviews his competitors every six months to ensure he underprices them, earning a narrow $7 profit on every strip. He personally inspects every piece of beef he orders. And both Loke and Milstein say it’s common for Plotkin to reject sides that fall outside his specifications.

Focusing on meat is perhaps not what Plotkin had in mind as a kid growing up in Peoria, Illinois, where his mom sold real estate and his father made Caterpillar tractor parts. He was an accomplished athlete, and his first foodie love was wine. Prior to becoming Chops’ managing owner, he’d enjoyed a long, successful run as a sommelier, touring restaurants throughout the country as a traveling wine expert before settling in as a manager at Four Seasons and the Palm.

In 2002, he was approached by Susquehanna Financial Group president Drew Milstein, who offered him the opportunity to become managing owner of a restaurant on the ground floor of an office tower at 401 City Avenue. Plotkin saw the offer as a lucky break, though he understood that the previous tenant, Marabella’s, enjoyed only a brief run of success before closing. When Plotkin walked into the abandoned kitchen for the first time, he saw the last fateful words Marabella’s staff ever wrote still scrawled on the “86” board in chalk: “Where did all the customers go?”

Plotkin admits he experienced a small chill. But mostly, he felt determined. “Athletics taught me a lot,” he says, “about commitment and dedication.”

Football was once Plotkin’s calling card. He played tight end and defensive end in high school, and then on scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh. He later dressed for eight games as a New York Jet, though he never played in one. “Ten years ago,” says Plotkin, “I would have found a way to work that into the conversation. But not anymore. This restaurant is who I am now; this is all I do.”

In a sense, Plotkin hasn’t changed very much. He once identified himself as a former football player. Now he is his New York strip. In both instances, he was looking for some accomplishment to cite as his public face. He wouldn’t be the first. And when you listen to him talk, it’s easy to see why Plotkin over-identifies with his work: In his limited time off, he runs and plays basketball. A relationship with a live-in girlfriend of four years recently ended. If we are what we do on a daily basis, Plotkin is mostly his work — pushing through the tedium of 12- and 14-hour workdays.

He doesn’t expect sympathy. He understands that the public didn’t gather around one night and implore him to take out a second mortgage on his home so he could open a steakhouse. In fact, he seems to pine, a little, for the days when owning and operating a steakhouse was all he did.

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