Peter Luger Responds to Zero-Star Review: Critics’ ‘Whims Have Changed’

Landmark Williamsburg restaurant Peter Luger has a strong response for Pete Wells’s zero-star review in the New York Times today. “Reviewers and their whims have changed,” general manager David Berson, grandson of founders Sol and Marsha Forman, said in a statement to Eater NY. The restaurateur says that Luger has remained focused on quality and is proud of its product, “the best steak you can eat.”

Wells’s scathing review of the longstanding Williamsburg restaurant set loose a flurry of responses — some from New Yorkers all-too eager to agree that quality has declined, others from die-hard fans rising to the defense of the restaurant.

Berson says that regulars’ “emails of encouragement continue to flood our inbox.” And despite the goose egg, Wells wrote that he understood the historic importance of Peter Luger: “Compared to Peter Luger [other steakhouses] don’t count,” he wrote, and at its best, the steakhouse “felt less like a restaurant than an affirmation of life.”

Here’s Berson’s full statement:

“The NY Times has reviewed Peter Luger numerous times over the years. At times we’ve gotten four stars, other times less. While the reviewers and their whims have changed, Lugers has always focused on doing one thing exceptionally well — serving the highest quality of steak — with a member of our family buying every piece of USDA Prime beef individually, just as we have done for decades.

We know who we are and have always been. The best steak you can eat. Not the latest kale salad.

We’re grateful to our customers who continue to pack our house every single day, and especially to our regulars whose emails of encouragement continue to flood our inbox.

• Peter Luger Used to Sizzle. Now It Sputters. [NYT]
• Eater Critics Debate: Is Peter Luger Still Good? [ENY]