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| THE LUGER WAY GQ - February, 2001 Buying beef with steak maven Jody Storch | Download PDF version (484K) |
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New York's meatpacking district on a
weekday morning is no time or place
to fall in love. It's a district of blood
and machinery, of big, gruff men and
dead animals. But into this scene walks
30-year-old Jody Storch, with her gold
earrings and frosted hair, her fuzzy
winter boots and her deep Brooklyn
accent. And the roughnecks part before
her, shuffling their feet and murmuring
hellos, because they know they are in
the presence of royalty, that Storch is
the scion of Brooklyn's Peter Luger
Steak House empire. And although she
jokes and teases, she's there on business--namely, picking out huge hunks
of meat to bring back to a restaurant
that routinely trumps Manhattan's
finest French eateries in the Zagat Survey and where Johnny Carson once
famously proclaimed to have had the
best meal of his life. Storch pulls on a white butcher's coat so as not to get "all schmutzed up." In her right hand, she carries a metal stamp bearing her personal logo: two F's and a circled ~. The stamp used to belong to Storch's grandmother, Marsha Forman. When Jody's grandfather, Sol Forman, purchased the now 114-year-old Brooklyn steak house in 1950, he sent Marsha to apprentice with a retired USDA meat grader to learn what to look for in a side of beef. Marsha passed the knowledge down to her daughters, Amy and Marilyn, Storch's mother, and eight years ago Storch took the reins. This morning's stop is one of several she makes twice a week, with her mother and aunt performing the duty on two other days. In all, the Forman women buy some ten tons of beef a week. Since the only cut of steak Peter Luger serves is porterhouse (a portion that comprises the sirloin and the tenderloin), we're looking solely at "hinds," or the steers' backquarters. Specifically, we're inspecting the part of the hind that contains the short loin. (Storch pays nearly $300 for a short loin, enough to serve a dozen people.) With the market's manager tailing her, she makes her way down the rows of carcasses hanging on hooks, casting a critical eye and rejecting hinds. The meat on this one is too dark; it should be rosy pink. This one doesn't have a silky texture. This one's "bloodshot," meaning the meat contains tiny, dark purple dots of blood that reveal the steer panicked before slaughter. Above all, she's looking for meat that is intensely marbled with flecks of fat. "In our business, fat is king," she says. My heart somersaults. Finally, the perfect hind. The flesh is ruby and speckled with fat, like a piece of soprassata. Storch runs her hands along the bone, checking for disqualifying breaks. "Gorgeous," she coos, and whacks the beef with her stamp. "Any more questions?" Storch asks mc. Several leap to mind, but I know that Storch is happily married and even has what may be Luger's next-generation eagle eye in her 9-month-old daughter, Marley. So I ask whether women are better at spotting good meat than men are. Storch smiles slyly "of course," she says. | |
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