RESTAURANT REVIEW : Forget Trends and Frills--at Ray’s Porter-House They Show Respect for a Good Slab of Beef

For some reason, possibly winter and cold weather, I’ve been craving steak.

I realize that in this brave new world of duck breasts, low-fat pork, veal chops and complex carbohydrates, a fancy for the most unabashed form of red meat is neither particularly healthy nor fashionable. And it’s expensive--often the most expensive item on a menu. I hear a tone of diminishment, almost apology in the voices of those, including myself, who order it. “Oh,” we say casually, “I think I’ll just have a steak.”

Yet steaks were the celebratory food of my childhood. For special meals involving fewer than five people, it was always steak, potatoes, and iceberg salad with bottled dressing. These days, I’m happy to celebrate with chicken breasts, swordfish, pasta, but there’s still something elemental and straightforward about steak that compels my attention from time to time.

So when a tip came in about a no-frills steak house in Northridge, I asked my carpenter friend Vern to come along. He’s not only one of the few people I know who does work that justifies the protein and calorie content of a steak, he’ll also eat one joyfully and guiltlessly.

Ray’s Porter-House restaurant is right next door to a cheery butcher shop called Ray’s Gourmet Meats. My guess is that Ray grew weary of explaining how to cook meat and decided to open a restaurant where he could demonstrate the proper way to handle a steak.

The warm, wood-paneled room has the kind of decor one finds in non-franchise, Mom and Pop coffee shops across America: flowered wallpaper, hanging artificial ferns, silk flowers on the tables, pine wood booths, well-laundered calico table mats and cloth napkins. Our fellow customers are the kind of casual, jeans-wearing folk who celebrate the end of a day’s work with a steak.

The waitress is so cheerful and friendly that the man in the booth behind us falls for her. After some lively flirtation, we can’t help but hear him ask her out for a drink. At first, she cheerfully demurs.

“Seriously,” he says, “I like you; I want to get to know you.” He promptly recites, in an oddly formal, charming way, his name, place of business and intentions, which seem quite honorable to these eavesdroppers. They are still bantering when our dinner arrives.

Ray’s offers several dinner specials--beef and chicken kebabs, pork chops, ham, and baby back ribs described in parenthesis as superb on the menu. Of course, I get stuck on the steak menu, and for good reason: Ray’s motto, “Our beef is so tender, it’s a wonder the steer could walk,” is to my knowledge the absolute truth, even if it does spark disconcerting images of noodle-legged, elastic cartoon steers.

I also find a good omen in the hand-lettered sign on which Ray refuses responsibility for well-done steaks. This is a stance I like in a cook. It reflects a basic respect for well-fed beef, and Ray’s uses Mannings beef, which is raised without hormones and aged without preservations.

Long ago, after much experimentation, I learned that the best way for me to get the steak I wanted was to order mine “charred rare.” The charring on an extremely hot grill seals in the flavor and leaves the meat wonderfully red and bursting with juice. And I like the crunchy taste of the char mixed with the texture and succulence of rareness.

The outstanding problem I’ve had with charred-rare steak is that I rarely get it done correctly. Often, what arrives is a steak that’s charred medium-well or charred through-and-through, or wobbly rare and not charred at all. I’ve been told by some chefs that their grills don’t get hot enough to effectively char a steak; others say nothing, wing it, and hope their customers don’t notice.

The thing with Ray, though, is that he can char a steak rare.

I almost didn’t order the porterhouse since its parenthetical comment on the menu is (Better be Hungry), and I wasn’t, particularly.

But nothing builds an appetite like good food, and I had no trouble eating a good 80% of one of the best pieces of meat I’ve ever had. Vern ate the remaining 20% after polishing off his own New York steak which, while slightly less juicy and slightly more meaty-tasting than my porterhouse, lives up to its parenthetical subtitle (Seventh Heaven).

Another night, I try a Spencer steak (Eye of the Prime Rib), which the waiter says is the best. It’s another succulent piece of perfectly cooked beef, but I have to say that I’m drawn to the bone-in flavor of the porterhouse. At any rate, the beef is so delicious, it effectively distracts us from the romance in the booth behind us. We never do learn if love failed or flourished.

Ray may cook a steak as well or better than any chef in town, but side dishes are purely American Coffee Shop, a cuisine epitomized, perhaps, by the dyed red crab apple slice garnishing our dinner plates. Our young waiter, when asked about the night’s chicken gumbo soup, hunches his shoulders, squirms. “I really don’t know,” he says, “it tastes homemade . . . to me, at any rate.” We conclude, that at his home, they cook with can openers and Manhandlers.

We also try the sauteed mushrooms appetizer; they’re unequivocally sauteed fresh mushrooms, nothing more--good enough, though we’d rather have them with our steak than as an appetizer.

The salad is iceberg lettuce, a fairly institutional dressing and a few threads of grated Cheddar. Entrees come with potatoes--stuffed, baked, or steak fries--which are fine, but the fresh vegetable is smothered in a hideous cheese sauce. There is no dessert.

We’re getting ready to leave, perusing the cooler (soft drinks and mainstream, inexpensive California wines), when Ray nods at us from the kitchen. He has white hair, wears a long red apron and wields a spatula.

“That’s one of the best-tasting steaks I’ve ever had,” I tell him.

“Thanks,” he says. “The truth is, you just knew how to order it.”

Recommended dishes: Char-broiled Steaks ($10.95 to $15.95)