As a holiday thank you to my good friend Ariel for all his help with my auditions, I figured I’d do the guy’s thing and take him out for a steak dinner. To which Ariel, right on brand, graciously refused. But then he said I should take him to Beefsteak Charlie’s. It was the most New York text ever sent.
Beefsteak Charlie’s was a chain that offered tiny, lousy $9 steaks, “all the shrimp you can eat,” and generous pours of sangria. You can imagine the consequences. We went there once as a family when I was in ninth grade. On the bathroom floor, someone had vomited up all the shrimp he could eat.
They ran commercials nonstop on local New York TV channels, featuring a rotund Charlie character and his nebbish of a nephew, and had a nice run until we New Yorkers came to our collective senses and 60 locations went belly up. E.coli-filled-belly up.
That said, I will now figure out a classier, non-refundable way to thank Ariel. Perhaps the Ground Round.
