New York Steak House

New York Steak House

Starting in the fall of 2009 I would drive by a restaurant not far from the Bowling Green national guard armory, which was proclaimed as a "New York" steak house. There was a sign that read that this eatery, close to the middle of no where, I guess in Caroline County, Virginia, had this juicy entrée to offer. Or at least that was their go-to specialty advertised from off the road. Central rural Virginia had a touch of the good life from the urbane capital of the world. Could it be true?

Maybe I did not think much about it for months and then years, sometimes passing in later months through all times of the year, without thinking much about it, as I was en route to my professional obligations. I left the country for a while in 2012; then I was back seeing it in 2013. Maybe things in America struck me differently after being overseas a while. I returned to the same old roads and byways as the years before.

Very rural Virginia again: "New York Steak House", the sign still proclaims, only now more beckoningly. Was it there? What was there?

I had no chances to go see, because I was working, always hurrying past. Month after month, year after year. It started to grow on me. Would I come down here on my own time, and possibly with my family, to partake of this New York sirloin or whatever they featured?

But once, after many more years, (maybe 4 or 5) I was ordered to go down that distant road in my own vehicle; that provided me a little more time and freedom to make a side stop on the way back home. I had a side passenger with me, and I asked him if (or informed him, rather) we were stopping at this built-up-in-my-mind sweet eatery of bovine delights.

 

I pulled over in front of the restaurant, a place that may or may not of had lights on for the years that I observed it. In daylight hours this feature would have been less noticeable, most of the times in the distinct climate seasons when we passed it, while the few times driving by in the evenings I could not recall if I ever saw lights.

I parked my car in front of this rural restaurant, the ones that I somewhat fantasized about, and noticed a few tell tale signs of disrepair. A "closed" sign posted on the door. I peered in. Empty floors and gutted walls, lack of any decor. This place was done. Was it ever alive?

Had it sat dormant for all those years? Maybe 9-10  years, month after month that I had seen it and wondered how a steak would taste there, if were worth the time and payment spent there?

What happened to this day dream and longing for a place never found?

It had pushed its place and hope into me, and I think the warming notion of it left in me a nostalgia greater than the actual taste.

I did not truly taste it, or "love" it directly, but it had caused me an amount of joy and pleasure in the mere wonder and bemusement, the mere thought of a New York steak .

 

And, as we say, truly it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

 

I did love that New York Stake house in the middle of nowhere, rural Virginia!

 

I am glad that it was there; I am also glad it was not. You were not there, but I am with you there now, as you read this and think about all those passes. You have shared some of those lonely, now less lonely, times there with me.

Thank you!

Another part of my life recorded, and perhaps not sated, but fully realized.

Thanks for sharing those times and seasons with me, through the heat and cold, the wet and dry, the dead blowing leaves and the flower filled-springs of Caroline county.