Where Only the Salad Is Properly Dressed

IT may be laughable when someone says he gets Penthouse magazine for the articles. It’s no joke when I say I went to the Penthouse Executive Club for the steaks.

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SHE NEEDS A STEAK . . . OR A SWEATER A dancer at the Penthouse Executive Club. More Photos »

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PROPERLY HOT The meat at Robert’s Steakhouse at the Penthouse Executive Club on the Far West Side is aged and carefully broiled. More Photos >

Over the years I’d read reports that this pleasure palace, on a stretch of West 45th Street closer to the edge of Manhattan than most diners venture, peddled more than one kind of seductive flesh. And I felt obliged — honestly, I did — to check it out, knowing that great food often pops up where you least expect it.

You can find bliss in the soulless cradle of a strip mall. Why not the topless clutch of a strip club? And so, early this month, I gathered three friends for an initial trip (dare I call it a maiden voyage?) to the Penthouse club — or, more specifically, to the restaurant, Robert’s Steakhouse, nestled inside it.

We were strangers to such pulchritudinous territory, less susceptible to the scenery than other men might be, more aroused by the side dishes than the sideshow: underdressed, overexposed young women in the vestibule, by the coat check, at the top of the red-carpeted stairs up to the restaurant, on the stage that many of the restaurant’s tables overlook.

“Are you hungry?” one of these women said, making hungry sound like an X-rated word. “Ravenous?”

Speechless was more like it. We sat down in a cocktail lounge at the front of the restaurant. A beautiful woman claimed the plush armchair opposite mine. She introduced herself. I wasn’t sure I’d heard her name correctly.

“Mahogany?” I said.

“Yes,” she purred.

I was getting my bearings. “Mahogany,” I asked, “do you know where you’re going to?”

She didn’t miss a beat, noting the reference, summoning the singer, and moving on to another of the dreamgirl’s hits. “I’m ... coming ... out!” she sang, waving her arms, wiggling her hips. Mahogany and I would get along just fine.

She said she was running low on cabernet. I took the cue and asked if I could buy her a fresh glass. “Yes,” she said. “And you can pour it on my toes.”

EDITOR'S NOTE:

I LOVE MAHOGANY!!! HOW HILARIOUS IS THAT??

Didn’t happen. And when one of her sorority sisters sidled up to us to pose a question not commonly uttered in fine-dining establishments — “Is there anyone I can get naked for?” — the response was silence. On this visit to Robert’s and on subsequent ones, I was derelict in my duty, failing to sample much of what the restaurant had to offer.

But the beef, I devoured — breathlessly, ecstatically. As it happens, Robert’s has some of the very best steaks in New York City.

Okay, Okay, I'm not going to take up any more room on my blog.. so, for the rest of the article, Click the Pic!

Robert Presutti for The New York Times

The portions at Robert's are pretty generous — as they need to be, given how topless some of the prices seem.