Eric Wareheim wants to feed you steak

For three years, Eric Wareheim ate a lot of steak.

We’re talking three steakhouse meals a day, complete with sides and sauces. Towers of onion rings smothered in toppings, bone-in rib-eyes, bubbling bowls of lobster mac and cheese, fries and meats drenched in au pouvre. Part of his mission in crossing the country was to define the “quintessentially American” institution at the center of his new cookbook, “Steakhouse: People, Places, Recipes.”

Comedian and director who made his name with the TV series “Tim and Eric Great Show, Great Job!” In recent years, Las Jaras has ventured into the wine business as a co-founder and started a plant art business. But of all his ventures and hobbies, the “steakhouse” proved to be the most demanding—and one of the most profitable.

“I went deep and I don’t regret it,” he said from a red leather boot at a smokehouse in Burbank.

Eric Wareheim’s new cookbook, “Steakhouse,” is surrounded by classic spreads from the smokehouse.

(Gabriella Angotti Jones/For The Times)

Wareheim, co-author Gabe Ulla and photographer Marcus Nelson originally set out to document the country’s 10 “best” steakhouses, but ended up visiting more than 70 restaurants — and went so far over budget that Wareheim began funding their research himself. It has been a long time, he said, since he felt a deep passion and belief in a project.

“I can honestly say that this project was more work and longer than any project I’ve done, any movie or TV show I’ve written,” Wareheim said. “Because I really care about people, it was bigger than just vanity. It was important that I did it right.”

Building a Stack Maven

Through Wareheim’s travels in entertainment, wine and food, he has dined at some of the world’s finest restaurants. But he never forgot the steakhouse of his childhood, which was not so much a classic interpretation but a place called Safe Food Shanty, located in the largest mall in Pennsylvania. He loved big shoes, AC turned up high, seafood and steak.

While Wareheim loves a martini (a gin, garnished with blue cheese olives, ideally), “Steakhouse” devotes a chapter to pairing wine with steak. His winery, Las Jaras, released a Steakhouse Cabernet Sauvignon just for the occasion.

(Gabriella Angotti Jones/For The Times)

Later, he learned his way around rib-eye eating in a tuxedo as co-host of the long-running Beefsteak — an annual steak-focused fundraiser at Neil Fraser’s Vibiana in the spirit of the 1930s-era pot-less meat fair described in Joseph Mitchell’s classic story.

But it’s not just steak that Wareheim likes. The comfort and charm of carpeted, worn dining rooms and menus that rarely change are also essential to seafood shanties and steakhouses across the country.

“I think that’s the big story of this book: the joy that these places do,” he said. “It’s their job. It’s not their job to get a Michelin star. It’s not their job to get on the blog or make some new dish to hit some hipster. It’s to make the same food for someone who’s been coming here for 50 years.”

And at a time when the country feels more fragmented than ever, Wareheim sees it as a kind of connective tissue. “Everybody,” he said, “loves a steakhouse.”

The son of a German immigrant, Wehrheim began to understand the web of cultural influences that contribute to the modern American steakhouse: There are places in Majordomo’s David Chang’s interpretation of LA, where flatbread—or bang—replaces traditional bread rolls and prime rib features a shio koji rub. Was there a full Vietnamese version of Steakhouse? What about Mexican repeats?

“There are parts of this country that still feel like the Wild West,” Wareheim said. “You can experiment, you can be anybody and open a steakhouse. You can just do your thing.”

He believes Los Angeles and Las Vegas steakhouses harken back to the Rat Pack era of red leather shoes and large cocktails. But there’s no need for a steakhouse to follow that path, or any other.

Prime Cut

“Steakhouse” is a 200-page, and rapidly disappearing piece of American history.

The locations “literally, the week after we were there, were either bought by restaurant groups,” Wareheim said. By the time he arrived at Cattleman’s in Dallas, half of it had already been demolished to make way for more modern renovations. “Steakhouse” arrived just in time to capture some of the nation’s best mom-and-pop operations.

He was looking for inspiration, not sure how to follow up his 2021 best-selling book “Foodheim”.

While shooting a commercial with his longtime creative partner Tim Heidecker, surrounded by large corporate chains in North Carolina, Wareheim turned to researching nearby restaurants: on the road for every gig.

“It’s all important,” he said. “Work doesn’t matter, it’s like, where are we going to eat?”

Wareheim’s restaurant curator’s reputation was on the line: Beef N’ Bottle, which he found on Google, was an hour from their hotel and he was the only one willing to drive.

“We’re getting there, and it’s just perfection,” he said. “It was like a William Eggleston picture. And then we met Jerome [Williams]and welcomed us with open arms and said, ‘You’re having a good time tonight, I’m your server and your bartender, what kind of martini would you like?’ And those three things? I’m just telling you I have goosebumps.

Williams and other faces and roles that provide steakhouse charm and hospitality are featured throughout, adding context and personality to a tome that provides recipes and history as well as a behind-the-scenes look. Here’s a pretty cool “cell rat” that’s been working in Tampa for over three decades. There’s Chicago’s Durpetti family, which serves Italian and steakhouse classics and employs a valet who will even offer you a cigarette from his stash. At Portland’s famous strip club-cum-steakhouse, Acropolis, there is “Legend” Katrina, a dancer and bartender.

“It’s been a joy to meet the people who run these places, and they’re just as passionate as I am,” Wareheim said.

Wareheim’s new cookbook, “Steak House,” dives deeper than recipes, with portraits and profiles of the chefs, servers and cleaning staff who run the steakhouse.

(Gabriella Angotti Jones/For The Times)

To find these places and people, Wareheim researched restaurants online and asked chef and entertainer friends for their personal favorites. (Wonderful winner? The Golden Star in Las Vegas.)

He received rare, full access to Peter Luger in New York City and recipe guidance from Shawn Brooke, Jon Shook, Vinny Dottolo and Fraser. When restaurants can’t reveal their secret recipes, some efforts require complete reverse-engineering to reveal them — a specialty of LA-based recipe creator and food stylist Jasmine Crawford. Many of their recipes are chosen from starters, Wareheim said.

He and his team collected so much material that they had to cut dozens of profiles and textures from the final product, a process Wehrheim calls fun.

“It was brutal,” he said. “It was harder than any film I’ve made, any video, any writing.”

What remained of the “steakhouse” was the original Wareheim kit. T-Pain reveals his favorite spot in Atlanta. In LA, at Taylor’s, Wareheim sits down with Bob Odenkirk, Heidecker and John C. Reilly, and they discuss their past jobs working in restaurants. (Notably omitted from the book is the fact that, as a teenager, Wareheim would flip burgers and make six for himself, then eat them while hiding in the bathroom; a co-worker was working and he was fired.)

Wareheim is as interested in rumination as composition.

What makes a steakhouse? Does it require attention to marbling and dry aging? Should it be served with creamed spinach? Could it be a seafood shanty, tucked away in a sprawling mall in southeastern Pennsylvania? The train of thought derails when the server at the smokehouse presents a large silver tray, layered with slices of cake and garnished with ice cream.

an enthusiast “Oh wow!” Wareham’s lips parted before he ordered the coconut cake. Why bother categorizing a steakhouse at all when you can simply be blown away by it?