Secret Ingredients Read Free

slaughterhouses on the East River would sneak choice loin cuts into the kitchens of nearby saloons, grill them over charcoal, and feast on them during their Saturday-night sprees. In any case, the institution was essentially masculine until 1920, when it was debased by the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The Eighteenth Amendment brought about mixed drinking; a year and a half after it went into effect, the salutation “We Greet Our Better Halves” began to appear on the souvenir menus of beefsteaks thrown by bowling, fishing, and chowder clubs and lodges and labor unions. The big, exuberant beefsteaks thrown by Tammany and Republican district clubs always had been strictly stag, but not long after the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the suffrage, politicians decided it would be nice to invite females over twenty-one to clubhouse beefsteaks. “Many a poor woman didn’t know what a beefsteak was until she got the right to vote,” an old chef once said.
    It did not take women long to corrupt the beefsteak. They forced the addition of such things as Manhattan cocktails, fruit cups, and fancy salads to the traditional menu of slices of ripened steak, double lamb chops, kidneys, and beer by the pitcher. They insisted on dance orchestras instead of drunken German bands. The life of the party at a beefsteak used to be the man who let out the most ecstatic grunts, drank the most beer, ate the most steak, and got the most grease on his ears, but women do not esteem a glutton, and at a contemporary beefsteak it is unusual for a man to do away with more than three pounds of meat and twenty-five glasses of beer. Until around 1920, beefsteak etiquette was rigid. Knives, forks, napkins, and tablecloths never had been permitted; a man was supposed to eat with his hands. When beefsteaks became bisexual, the etiquette changed. For generations men had worn their second-best suits because of the inevitability of grease spots; tuxedos and women appeared simultaneously. Most beefsteaks degenerated into polite banquets at which open-face sandwiches of grilled steak happened to be the principal dish. However, despite the frills introduced by women, two schools of traditional steak-dinner devotees still flourish. They may conveniently be called the East Side and West Side schools. They disagree over matters of menu and etiquette, and both claim that their beefsteaks are the more classical or old-fashioned.
             
    The headquarters of the East Side school is the meat market of William Wertheimer & Son, at First Avenue and Nineteenth Street. It is situated in a tenement neighborhood, but that is misleading; scores of epicures regularly order steaks, chops, and capons from Wertheimer’s. The moving spirit of the East Side school is Sidney Wertheimer, the “Son” of the firm. A dozen old, slow-moving, temperamental Germans, each of whom customarily carries his own collection of knives in an oilcloth kit, are the chefs. Mr. Wertheimer is not a chef. He selects, cuts, and sells the meat used at the majority of the old-fashioned beefsteaks thrown in East Side halls, like the Central Opera House, the Grand Street Boys’ clubhouse, the Manhattan Odd Fellows’ Hall, and Webster Hall. The caterers for these halls get an unusual amount of service when they order meat from Mr. Wertheimer. If the caterer wishes, Mr. Wertheimer will engage a couple of the old Germans to go to the hall and broil the meat. He will also engage a crew of experienced beefsteak waiters. He owns a collection of beefsteak-cooking utensils and does not mind lending it out. The chefs and waiters telephone or stop in at Wertheimer’s about once a week and are given assignments. Most of them work in breakfast and luncheon places in the financial district, taking on beefsteaks at night as a sideline. For engaging them, Mr. Wertheimer collects no fee; he just does it to be obliging. In addition, for no charge, he will go to