Ava Bomarito, granddaughter of Pete & Sam’s founder, the late Sam Bomarito, serves a New York strip and a beef tender at the popular Memphis restaurant. Photo by Michael Donahue.
Back in the 1960s, my mom routinely brought home part of her New York strip sirloin after she and my dad went out to eat with their friends at Pete & Sam’s. I was the lucky one who got to eat the rest of her steak while I was watching a movie or The Tonight Show.
Well, Pete & Sam’s, which opened in 1948, continues to serve that same great steak. I’ve eaten countless numbers of them. In addition to the New York strip, you also can get T-bones, rib-eyes, filets, and beef tender broiled in burgundy wine and mushroom sauce.
For years I exclusively ate steak at Pete & Sam’s, which is an Italian restaurant. I didn’t order spaghetti, ravioli, or their thin-crust pizzas. It had to be steak.
Ditto for Charlie Robertson, the owner of Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q. I recently ran into Robertson, who was eating at Pete & Sam’s the night I was there. He told me he ordered his first steak — a New York strip — that night. He always gets Italian food. His neighbor told him he needed to try a steak.
He loved it.
The menu reads, “All of our steaks are carved in-house using the finest USDA choice meat.”
So, what makes these steaks so good? I asked Michael Bomarito, one of the owners.
The grill is one reason. “The grill is the original grill,” he says. “It’s the only grill we’ve ever had. It’s World War II army surplus. I think my dad said he paid $10 for it, God knows when. A flat-top grill. It’s been seasoned 100,000 times over. That’s how you get those good sears on those steaks.”
They don’t do anything fancy as far as preparing the steak for cooking. “We put salt, granulated garlic, and black pepper. We season it pretty heavily but that’s it. There’s nothing to it. A little salt, pepper, garlic. Put it down on that grill, let it sear, flip it once, and onto the plate it goes.”
Is that the way they’ve always done their steaks?
“I’ve been here 30 years and this is the only way I’ve ever seen a steak cooked. We don’t drizzle it in butter. It goes on the grill and that’s it. It’s not a complicated process.”
And, he says, “We’re not marinating. We’re not doing anything special. It’s a quality piece of meat seasoned properly and that’s it. You don’t have to make it any more complicated than it should be.”
I tried the beef tender for the first time the other night. It was the proverbial “cut it with a feather” tender. “It’s been here forever,” Bomarito says. “Our Uncle Paul — it was his recipe for that sauce. Look at the oldest menu on the wall.”And, like the restaurant’s popular Beacon Salad, that beef tender isn’t something you’re going to get anyplace else.
“We put our meat sauce in it,” Bomarito says. “You can’t make that anywhere else but Pete & Sam’s.”
Pete & Sam’s, 3886 Park Avenue, 901-458-0694
