A guest blogs today about the smallest, most preposterous private club in New York.  Some 15 people - all politically correct men -- visiting as many second-rate restaurants as possible in the few blighted years left to them.  These restaurants must be anywhere in the City outside the Borough of New York, that is, Manhattan.  Such is the mission and the law of the OBDS, the Outer Borough Dining Society.

Once a year, towards Christmas we search out a restaurant offering dishes listed in alphabets we can read.  Something not trimmed from an unwilling marsupial in the "stans."  Not too many syllables.  Steak, for example. 

This year's choice was DeStefano's Steakhouse.  89 Conselyea Street, in Williamsburg (Graham Avenue subway).  www.deesteakhouse.com

Here's the review by Tom Parrett, a self-described New York writer, grub, hack, ghost and poison penster.


The evening began all too typically:  Members fumbling around a strange neighborhood, trying to find an address provided by our esteemed founder, Admiral Pettus.

The street sounded as if it had been misspelt even though it hadn't, but number 9 put us under the BQE.  Plug in an 8 before it and the neighborhood changed wondrously.  Just a dropped digit, after all -- an easy goof when you've got seven wasted decades behind you.  Urging the Admiral  never to forget "89" again, the menu priced everything XX then 89 cents -- big initial X. To wit the aged porterhouse, which was well into its eighties (dollars, not years).

Within an hour all eleven finally arrived -- our largest gathering in some time and convivial it was, if pricey: $130 for the oenophiles, $80 for unimbibers, a smattering of desserts included.

DeStefano's is a warm, welcoming, unfussy place, walls chockablock with photos of celebs, soap stars, and family members as far back as World War 11 and posters of Brooklyn-themed flicks.  New York Steak Joints have a longish tradition borne of the Del-Monico brothers, Giovanni and Pietro, in 1827.  They started on William, later on Beaver; Broadway & Chambers (in the old Moses Grinnell mansion); on Fifth & 14th, and ultimately on 26th.  Only the Beaver Street establishment survives.  A haunch of meat, communal potatoes, cream spinach, and robust red wine piped to the table by gilded hose -- that was the tradition.  Our menu was larded with a few more choices, and around the table were gnawers of rib eye, filet mignon, veal chop, hanger steak, and surely other items -- I can't report what the nether end of the table ordered. The protein came in preposterous sizes that suggested monuments, Volkswagens, or brontosaurus flesh and was, it can be fairly said, satisfactory to excellent, the Admiral being particularly enamored of his by no means baby veal to the point of unmanly cooing. My neighbor's potato fries were swarmed over, and no wonder -- the crisp, crunchy exterior yielded ecstatically to a creamy, succulent, earthy paste, almost a pâte tendre, that would soften an IRA killer's obsidian heart. The refrigerated cheese cake and an orphan tiramisu were passable.

Verdict: A grand evening in a neighborhood prize blessedly free of Peter Luger's frenzy, rush-hour crowding, and hauteur, yet more generous of portion -- if not perhaps quite the equal of the mecca's cellar-aged beef
flavor. And it's just three stops and a short walk into said borough. Waitress Rating, if I may be so crass: 96 with 100s for pulchritude, alacrity, shapeliness, and tolerance for a night of boisterous, youth-starved, loutish mauling for which she was surely underpaid.