Peter Luger Steak House

Peter Luger has been serving dry-aged porterhouse at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge since 1887, in a beer-hall of a room — bare wood tables, brass, waiters in white aprons who have seen every kind of celebration. The order barely changes across generations: thick bacon to start, the porterhouse for two or more, creamed spinach, and the burnished German fried potatoes.

It is loud, unsentimental, and completely itself, which is the appeal. Note the house's famously old-fashioned payment rules — the Brooklyn room doesn't take credit cards, only cash, debit, or the house account — and book well ahead. South Williamsburg outside the windows has changed entirely; the steak has not.