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Grub Street

Edited by Josh Ozersky with Daniel Maurer

 

Back of the House 

12/18/07

11:37 AM

Morton’s Arrives in Brooklyn, We Mourn the Future

Morton's

Morton's in Brooklyn: There goes the borough?Photo: Robert K. Chin

Now that Morton’s has announced that it’s opening a steakhouse in Brooklyn, the borough has lost any claim to having a culinary soul. Morton’s — a chain steakhouse that presents meat to diners under a cover of plastic — is the epitome of the generic, corporate restaurants that have taken over Manhattan, the culinary equivalent of the banks and drug stores that have pushed out mom-and-pop businesses all over town.

We aren’t the biggest Peter Luger fans in the world, and if the truth be known, we weren’t that high on the late Gage and Tollner, either. But the one thing you could always say for Brooklyn’s steakhouses was that they were their own, forged of the borough’s weird character and fractious personalities. But soon that will disappear too, chased away by Morton’s, Houston’s, and all the other trans-Hudson chains that have colonized New York. Will a Chipotle someday run the Red Hook ball fields? It’s all too depressing to think about.

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