Jan. 5 - Walk into the most refined steakhouse in your hometown and you'll feel like you stepped back in time. Look around. Men are everywhere: cutting into bloody steaks with abandon, pouring fruity Cabernets and passing around right triangles of cheesecake. And that's just the waitstaff!

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But the Sexual Revolution is soon coming to your local steakhouse, that meat-filled men's club that has long catered to the male fantasy of thick steaks, generous booze, bawdy table talk, gruff-but-lovable waiters right out of Central Casting, and—most important—no girls allowed.  And the Revolution is coming one waiter at a time. Make that one waitress at a time. And I mean that literally.

You may have missed the news, but just before Christmas, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it had reached a "pre-litigation agreement" with The Palm steakhouse chain, ending "a nationwide investigation focusing on past recruitment and hiring practices." Said investigation, the press release continued, "was based on allegations that The Palm violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to recruit and hire women into service worker positions." It also claimed that "beginning in 2000, the Palm implemented changes in its employment practices, which included providing mandatory training to supervisors concerning the avoidance of discrimination in hiring, and more effective applicant tracking and record-keeping systems." (Insert appropriately snide comment such as "Forget about the applicants, how about a mad-cow tracking and record-keeping system!" here.) The Palm also agreed to put $500,000 in a "class fund." (Insert joke about the time you volunteered to be treasurer for your high school's 20th reunion here.)

Clearly, this press release was hinting at something really sinister, so I called the EEOC to find out more (see what I do for you?) But Los Angeles district director Olophius Perry said he couldn't tell me anything (not even where to get a good steak in LA) because the agreement with The Palm was voluntary. All records, in other words, were sealed.

Perry wouldn't even tell me about why the EEOC initiated its investigation, which I later discovered began in 1999 because then-Commissioner Paul Igasaki ate lunch at a Washington D.C. Palm Steakhouse and noticed that there were no female wait staff. Igasaki also initiated similar "investigations" for alleged violations of the penile (I mean penal) code at Joe's Stone Crab, another totem of testosterone. Igasaki got so drunk on the power to correct decades of sexist practices in the nation's eateries that he stumbled and threw up all over himself (I'm speaking only figuratively, but c'mon, you gotta admit it's a great image). When his agency targeted the Hooters chain for hiring only women, the chain fought back, taking out ads featuring hairy fat men squeezed into the restaurant's popular Hooters Girls’ outfits. Igasaki sobered up immediately.

Perry's silence only made me hungrier for the truth about the current state of American steakhouse desexrigation. As my loyal readers know, that hunger for the truth tends to drive me to the nearest steakhouse anyway, so I headed for New York's Palm Restaurant to get some answers, some bourbon and some dry-aged, butter soft animal flesh. What I found was shocking: On the night I dined at The Palm, there were roughly 20 waiters on duty. Sure, there was only one female waiter, but there was also not a single attractive male waiter. I considered filing my own EEOC complaint on behalf of male models or actors who need service jobs to support themselves. I mean, these 19 men ran the full gamut of male unsightliness: fat guys, near-sighted guys, unkempt guys, guys with bad posture, guys with bad teeth, guys with combovers. The entire staff should be featured on a forthcoming episode of "Queer Eye for the Steakhouse."

But when Bruno, my waiter, came over, he greeted me with a handshake so warm, so beefy that I was suddenly filled with a Bobby Riggsian-level of male chauvinism. Bruno is a true man's man, encouraging me to drink heavily, order my dinner without regard for the exorbitant prices, and banter without sensitivity toward other races, cultures or ethnic groups.

But even all-male, strictly heterosexual camaraderie has its limits. The steak at The Palm was as bland as an Oprah Winfrey book club selection. While the EEOC probably doesn't have jurisdiction over The Palm's over-rated New York Strip, I will soon be petitioning my friends at the Zagat survey to rectify the situation.

The next stop on my fat-finding tour—Peter Luger's Steakhouse in Brooklyn—again confirmed that the EEOC is onto something when it began investigating these secret societies of steak. I didn't see a single female waiter in the entire joint. Of course, I wasn't there long enough for a full investigation; the porterhouse at this place is so sublime that you'll wait an hour for a table (and then be yelled at by the waiter). I wasn't going to wait, so I chatted up a manager (a woman, believe it or not) who told me that women were discouraged from the hard task of steakhouse labor.

"Those platters of meat are really heavy," the manager told me. "Have you ever tried to lift them?" I assured her I had not, but suggested that a nation that put a man on the moon must certainly have invented plenty of labor-saving devices that could facilitate the feminization of the dining room. Perhaps the restaurant could invest in a rolling cart, which was actually invented sometime during the Roman Empire (where the steakhouses were so integrated that they not only had male and female wait staff, but slave waiters, too).

The manager ignored me, so I headed back into Manhattan to Sparks Steakhouse, still hungering for answers and a perfect New York Strip. Again, there was not even one female waitress among the 40-strong parade of deformed manliness working the tables. You really miss the female touch at a place like Sparks. When the waiter poured my beer, for example, he sloshed it all over the tablecloth (would a woman do that? My wife won't even let me wipe my mouth with the end of my sleeve anymore!). And the service was gruff. Not gruff-but-lovable. Just gruff. These guys might as well be women, considering how long they ignored me before saying hello.

This pleased my dining partner, renowned steakhouse expert George Shea, co-founder of the International Federation of Competitive Eating. "The service at a steakhouse has to be gruff," Shea said. "Let's face it, a man's joy tank is pretty much empty by the time he's 40. If the waiter comes over and says, 'Hi! I'm Phil, I'll be your waiter tonight!' it ruins the illusion that everyone is just as angry and bitter and unhappy as you are."

Shea had a point. Men love steakhouses for their clubby gentility, which encourages friendship, but discourages intimacy. Steakhouses are the place where you talk about the day's winning stock trades or losing Yankee trades precisely so you don't have to talk about your feelings. To Shea, the presence of women—even in a service capacity—would ruin everything.

But when the steak came, Shea's theory was shot to hell. This steak was so perfect that as far as I'm concerned, it could've been served by a one-eyed, toothless, blue-skinned metrosexual from Neptune. Nothing would've ruined the enjoyment I received from every bite.
I'd never had such a satisfying climax in a room with so many men.

Gersh Kuntzman is also Brooklyn bureau chief for The New York Post. His website is at http://www.gersh.tv/

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