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The word steak derives from the Old Norse term steikjo — to roast on a spit — a method of cooking that has been around as long as there has been fire, and popular in England for centuries.

The Harleian Manuscripts in the British Library contain a recipe, dating back to about 1430, for broiled venison or beefsteak that wouldn’t look out of place on the modern dinner table.

In the 18th century, most people (even royalty) preferred roasted and boiled meat. Plain food encouraged plain speaking, and our steak cuts are still named after the part of the animal from which they come: fillet, sirloin and rump.

France has made a more elaborate affair of it, dividing the fillet (a long muscle below the bones of the sirloin) into filet mignon, chateaubriand and tournedos, and cutting between the ribs for entrecôte.

However, it is in America that steak cookery has acquired true cult status. In The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson laconically observes that the American tradition of eating large steaks has “associations of virility”.

In the flesh

Given its veneration of steak, America seemed the best place to go in search of the perfect version, so I flew to New York. One evening, as we drove up 11th Avenue, past truck and repair shops and lumber merchants, a vast hoarding caught my eye: “Penthouse Executive Club. New York City’s newest and most upscale gentlemen’s club, featuring penthouse pets.”

“This is the place,” I told the driver, and he pulled up alongside its floodlit facade.

I was here because the club is home to Robert’s Steakhouse, which, according to Vogue’s Jeffrey Steingarten, offers “the best steak dinner in town — the meat could not have been more flavourful, tender or juicy, and grilled to that precise point of perfection between rare and medium-rare — while a beautiful young dancer, just 8ft away, moved with energy and originality”.

Steingarten has plenty of originality himself. He is one of the best and most fastidious food writers in the world, so his views are to be taken seriously. He’s also a bit of a wind-up merchant. Was a strip joint really the best place in the city for steak? The only way to find out was to go there and try it.

Robert’s Steakhouse is on the mezzanine level of the Penthouse Executive Club. On the podiums, two girls in fringed white bikinis, knee-high white boots and lots of diamanté were dancing to a heavily disco-fied version of Silly Love Songs. It was a bizarre experience. The chef, Adam Perry Lang, and I sat down together to eat and discuss one kind of flesh in the most intimate detail — its firmness and taste; its muscle tone and fat — and all the while, another kind of flesh was on intimate display behind our heads, writhing to the music.

It was as much of a pleasure talking to Adam as it was tasting his food; I recognised a fellow obsessive when I met him. His level of devotion has paid off — the steaks were incredible.

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