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| The walls in the entranceway of Great Uncle Peter's Steakhouse in Newton Township are a plaque and picture frame jammed tribute to the career of the restaurant's owner and head chef, Robert Dickert.
Front and center, you'll find Mr. Dickert posing in the pages of New York magazine. Slightly to the left is a 1987 New York Times review of Abel Conklin's, the first eatery Mr. Dickert opened, and a Five Star Diamond Award from the American Academy of Hospitality Services, which he received during his stint at Bobby Van's Steakhouse in midtown Manhattan.
Impressive, sure. But it gets even better.
Turn the corner into the bar (a bar with alcohol accessories yet no actual alcohol - Great Uncle Peter's is a BYOB establishment), where some photos dating to the early 20th century make for an eye-catching display.
Among the black-and-whites is a shot of a burly German man. That would be Great Uncle Peter - more specifically, Peter Luger, who in 1887 opened a beer garden in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, N.Y., that started off selling sandwiches and steak tidbits before graduating to full-fledged steak dinners.
WORLD-RENOWNED
Today, the Peter Luger Steak House is among the most famous of its kind in the world, renown for its Spartan decor, intentionally rude all-male wait staff, nocredit-card policy and, of course, ridiculously sumptuous cuts of flame-broiled heaven on a plate.
The place has been written up in countless periodicals, in addition to being profiled on Food Network and A&E. It frequently ranks as New York's top steak house in the diners' bible, Zagat's. Donald Trump is among its many celebrity regulars.
Who would pass up the chance to play up that kind of pedigree?
Not Mr. Dickert, whose grandmother, Anna Luger Dickert, was the daughter of Peter Luger's brother, Carl Luger. (That would actually make Peter Luger Mr. Dickert's great-great-uncle, but that wouldn't flow as nicely off the tongue.)
"I wanted to ride on the shirttails of Luger's, but not calling it Luger's," said Mr. Dickert, 48, who also considered calling the restaurant "Von Luger's" ("Von" meaning "From" in German) and "Carl Henry's," in honor of his father, Carl Dickert, and grandfather, Henry Dickert.
Mr. Dickert isn't the only one playing off his connection to Luger's. Andre's in Naples, Fla., and Wolfgang's in Manhattan are just a couple of the many steak houses opened in recent years by former Luger employees.
KNOWS NOTHING BUT STEAK
Great Uncle Peter's opened September 2003 and is just the latest in a long line of steak-house ventures for Mr. Dickert. For his entire professional life, he's known nothing but steak houses - exactly what you'd expect from someone who was "brought up at Luger's on a milk crate."
While the Luger's sold their stake in the business to the Forman family in 1948, the family continued working at the steak house. Mr. Dickert's father, Carl, worked there for 52 years, first at the Brooklyn restaurant, then at the second Peter Luger's that opened in Great Neck, Long Island, in 1960.
While his dad was busy managing "in the front," Mr. Dickert spent much of his youth hanging out in the kitchen of the Great Neck Luger's, watching intently as the German cook made sauerbraten and headcheese and cut thick slabs of meat with a saw.
Mr. Dickert returned to Luger's after receiving his associate's degree in restaurant management from the State University of New York at Cobleskill. He literally started from the bottom, as one of his early duties included cleaning the basement when the butchers finished making a mess of it. From there, he moved on to salad dressing duty. Finally, he got his shot at manning the broiler.
Eleven years into his Luger's stint, he left to open Abel Conklin's, an upscale steak house on Long Island. When things didn't pan out with his partners, he became a hired gun, running the kitchens at a succession of New York steak houses, including Bobby Van's, Bryant & Cooper and Rothmann's.
MOVED TO LAKE ARIEL
Looking to escape the hustle and bustle and exorbitant cost of living associated with the New York metropolitan area, Mr. Dickert, his wife, Margaret, and their four children - Karen, Cyndi, Patricia and BobbiAnn - moved to Lake Ariel eight years ago. Until opening Great Uncle Peter's, Mr. Dickert was commuting between here and his restaurant jobs in the Big Apple.
"I was making a New, York salary and living here very nicely," he said.
That said, the commute and the confining nature of working for others eventually took their toll on Mr. Dickert. He wanted to be his own boss. And, after six years of searching, he succeeded with the purchase of an old Colonial style home at 1580 Newton Ransom Blvd. that had housed several other businesses over the years.
"I fell in love with it," he said.
Steak houses are a dime a dozen in New York, where the Lugers of the world are constantly grappling for diners' sentiments with an ever-expanding roster of chain establishments - Morton's of Chicago, Smith and Wollensky, Ruth Chris'.
Around these parts, however, steak houses are a virtual non-entity. In fact, Mr. Dickert can't think of any local eating establishment he'd consider a traditional 'steak house'.
"We've gone to every restaurant you can think of around here," Mrs. Dickert said. "He wanted to open a place just like this."
In the 10 months since its opening, business at Great Uncle Peter's has slowly gained momentum. Mostly through word-of-mouth - Mr. Dickert has only recently started advertising - the restaurant has established a core group of regulars. For some, the name reels them in.
"I'm shocked by the number of people who know about Peter Luger's," Mr. Dickert said. There's Phil Rosenstein, of Clarks Summit, for one. He's been making semi-regular trips to Peter Luger's for years. To him, the quality of a Great Uncle Peter's steak is "about equal" to one from the mother ship.
"It's the place to go if you want something a little above and beyond as far as steak goes," Mr. Rosenstein said.
They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, and Mr. Dickert admittedly is mimicking Luger's success in many ways. But, in some ways he's doing his own thing.
For instance, credit cards are gladly accepted at Great Uncle Peter's, while the wait staff, which only includes two males, is polite and eager to please.
"We crumb the tables. We change the silverware after every course," he said.
Luger's is legendary for its bare bones (some might say nonexistent) atmosphere. The Dickerts didn't want that. With Great Uncle Peter's, the couple was aiming for a rustic, cozy ambiance, achieved through the restaurant's muted green and burgundy walls, floral-print curtains, hardwood floors and refinished wooden tables. Heck, even the doggie bags come in the form of fancy paper bags with the restaurant's logo.
"People come in and say how homey it is," Mrs. Dickert said.
"I didn't want it to be a manly steak house," Mr. Dickert said.
Alas, Mr. Dickert said, the customer "can't eat the decor, so put the product on the plate." That he does in abundance, from the 16-ounce filets to the 28-ounce prime ribs.
Dinner at Great Uncle Peter's doesn't come cheap, but with good reason. Mr. Dickert purchases nothing but USDA prime beef, courtesy of corn and grain-fed cows from the Midwest. His well-marbled slabs are taken from the short loin, the wondrous section of the cow that produces sirloins, tenderloins and porterhouses. From there, they're dry-aged 21 days.
"I want to provide something that the area doesn't have," he said. "You're going to get quality - the best money can buy."
Mr. Dickert's signature dish? As at Luger's, it's the porterhouse, the Cadillac of steaks: part sirloin, part tenderloin. "It's the best of both worlds," said Mr. Dickert, who serves his porterhouse in three sizes - 42 ounces for two people, 63 ounces for three and 84 ounces for four.
NO MARINADES
Mr. Dickert keeps preparations to a minimum. His steaks include no marinades and no additional ingredients aside from kosher salt and a drizzling of clarified butter when they come off the grill.
Speaking of the broiler, that's where you'll find Mr. Dickert seven nights a week, preparing every last steak. While his right-hand man, sous chef Donaldo Antonio Ruiz, followed him all the way from Long Island, he's still looking for a suitable "broiler man."
"Trying to find a broiler man up here? There's no such animal," he said.
At his New York restaurants, Mr. Dickert typically paid his broiler men $23 an hour. A good one is worth every penny, considering the quality of the product.
"I don't want someone who keeps ruining fillets at $18 per pound," he said.
A good broiler man can grill a steak with his eyes closed. He doesn't rely on fancy meat thermometers to judge a steak's doneness. His fingers will suffice.
"It's all by touch. My hands are burnt to a crisp," Mr. Dickert said. "Basically, it's just knowing what you're doing."
At Luger's, you'll break the broiler man's heart by ordering your steak well done. Same goes for Mr. Dickert. To get maximum flavor, he said, a steak is meant to be eaten rare or medium rare. One recent visitor to Great Uncle Peter's ordered his steak "black and blue," meaning crispy on the outside and virtually raw on the inside. Made Mr. Dickert's day.
"Turned out to be a butcher," Mr. Dickert said. "He just wanted to see the quality of the product."
Typical of any good steak house worth its salt, Great Uncle Peter's menu includes a plethora of immense side dishes, from creamed spinach to stuffed baked potatoes to hash browns. Other specialties include a 23-ounce milk fed veal chop, daily fish specials, rack of lamb and the quintessential steak house salad of beefsteak tomatoes and onions ("I make my onions sweet, but I'm not going to tell you how I do it") topped with Mr. Dickert's homemade steak sauce.
INTERESTING STORY
Turns out the sauce has an interesting story of its own. It was created one night in the early 1950s when former Peter Luger waiter Willie Wolfe threw together Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, ketchup and various other condiments to produce a zesty alternative to the old oil and vinegar standby.
"They sell $8 (million), $9 million worth of this stuff a year," Mr. Dickert said, plopping down the Peter Luger brand next to a bottle of his stuff, which he bottles and sells to customers at $4 a pop.
Mr. Dickert himself has no intention of becoming an internationally known phenomenon. "My goal is to make a comfortable living," he said. "I don't need to get rich."
Assuming Great Uncle Peter's takes off he'd eventually like to open a second restaurant in downtown Scranton. This one would specialize in seafood, another culinary area he believes the area is lacking. In the meantime, he'll keep manning that broiler with the same fervor his forefathers brought to it.
"I'm here to stay," he said. "I'm here to make a name for myself."
Great Uncle Peter would be proud.
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