I had heard about Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse probably a good decade before ever knowingly setting foot on the Lower East Side, albeit for one of the most ignominious of reasons.
You see, as a Manhattan brat growing up on the Upper East Side in the mid-to-late `70s, we had cable television. As such, when word spread like wildfire around my grade school that there was gratuitous nakedness to be seen on the cable-access channels if you quietly stayed up late enough, my friends and I took very serious note. If you managed the trick of not waking your parents, you could treat yourself to the prurient idiocy of a legendary New York City cable-access program called “Midnight Blue,” the brainchild of iconic “Screw”-magazine founder/publisher, Al Goldstein. While essentially just a half-hour of grainy raunch interspersed with potty-mouth rants from Goldstein himself and loads of commercials for escort services and the burgeoning phenomenon of phone sex, watching “Midnight Blue” felt like the most legitimately taboo activity imaginable, and most of my classmates and I were furtively regular viewers.
How does Sammy’s enter into all of this, you ask? Well, amidst all that low-resolution sleazery, Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse distinguished itself by having the solitary non-smut-related advertisement on the program. In between fleeting segments of porn stars Marilyn Chambers and John Holmes flailing their genitalia around, lurid tirades about bad customer service from Al Goldstein and ads informing you that “the extra E is for extra….” (don’t Google it), you’d see footage of giddy, `70’s-era patrons partaking of steaks with schmaltz in the low-ceilinged confines of Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse on Chrystie Street. One imagined that after a wild night of unfettered carnality at the oft-cited Plato’s Retreat, the swinger set would put their pants on and go enjoy a fine meal at Sammy’s (this may well have happened, but Plato’s was on the Upper West Side, while Sammy’s was Lower East, so it’s logistically flawed). I can still vividly hear the background music used in that stupid ad.
Years and years later, some friends and I went to Sammy’s and partook of its fine fare — which is strikingly different from anything you’d find in a more conventional steak place, all served with schmaltz — liquified chicken fat that comes in a bottle that you’re supposed to pour over your steaks. It looks disarmingly like orange juice. While we didn’t spot any porn stars, let alone Al Goldstein, we did have the pleasure of sharing the space with none other than David Lee Roth, who was entertaining guests at a neighboring table. For a friend of mine’s bachelor party in the late `90s, five of us had a rousing dinner at Sammy’s that culminated with our waitress emphatically giving us the finger, for some long-forgotten reason.
I had a cherished black Sammy’s shirt (“Schmaltz It Up”) that I wore religiously for decades, usually with a pair of tattered camoflauge cargo shorts.
Today, my comrade Elie from Bowery Boogie reported that, like countless other favorites in recent months, Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse is no more.
Pour one out with extra schmaltz. New York City is being disemboweled.
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