History
The Brooklyn location was established in 1887 as "Carl Luger's Café, Billiards and Bowling Alley" in the then-predominantly German neighborhood which would shortly thereafter be in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. German-born Peter Luger (1866–1941) was the owner and nephew Carl was the chef; when Peter died the restaurant declined.
In 1950, Peter Luger's son shut the restaurant and put it up for auction; Sol Forman, who owned a metal giftware factory across the street, bought it for "a whimsically low bid." According to one history, "the neighborhood was declining, filling up with Hasidic Jews, whose kosher rules forbade the eating of Luger’s hindquarters (not to mention its über alles German-ness)... Forman had been eating at Luger for twenty-five years, and he needed a place to take his clients. He was the only bidder when the restaurant was auctioned off. A rave from über-critic Craig Claiborne in the New York Times was proof that Forman had kept the Luger faith - and the four-star review generated a new legion of the faithful."
Forman opened a Great Neck, New York location, which was closed in 1984 after a fire severely damaged the restaurant, reopening in a year and a half later in 1986.
Forman died in 2001 at the age of 98. His granddaughter, Jody Storch, now has the job of buying the meat for the restaurant.
Among the current owners of the restaurant is Amy Rubenstein, wife of Howard Rubenstein, the legendary PR man whose clients have included George Steinbrenner, Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump. Famous guests have included James Cagney, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert De Niro, Henry Kissinger, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Gleason, Chuck Schumer, Johnny Carson, and Jerry Seinfeld. Tennis Champion Pete Sampras also liked to celebrate wins at the U.S. Open by feasting at Peter Luger's.
In July 2009, while having dinner at Peter Luger, New York Governor David Paterson secretly had Richard Ravitch sworn in as Lieutenant Governor to oversee the stalemate-stricken State Senate.
Read more about this topic: Peter Luger Steak House
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“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)