You're the chef

A steak to remember

Author: By David M. Shribman, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, December 27, 1998

Page: M1

Section: Travel

It's not on the way to anything. It's not particularly near anything, either.

There are only two commercial buildings in town. One is the Post Office. The other isn't.

The building that isn't the Post Office is Rube's Steakhouse.

There's no ambience. No decent tablecloths. No fancy wine list. No trendy appetizers.

One more thing: no chef, either.

There is, however, a huge meat locker. And three indoor grills. Loads of charcoal. A few water sprays in case the flames get too high. Or in case your dining partners say something stupid.

Here's what you do at my favorite restaurant in the United States:

You walk in the door.

You go to the giant meat locker.

You choose your meal, maybe the 20-ounce Kansas City Strip ($17.95) or the 32-ounce ham steak ($14.95) or, my recommendation, the 26-ounce T-bone ($18.95).

Then you walk into the next room. You slap the steak on the grill.

You pick up a piece of white bread (and admit it: You don't get white bread nearly as often as you'd like anymore). You slather it with butter (no dainty tastes-like-butter substitute that doesn't taste at all like butter). You drop the bread on the grill, too.

You poke the steak. You stuff your bread in your mouth. You turn the steak over a couple of times.

Then you eat it.

Think of this as dinner without the middleman (the waitstaff).

Think of it as home cooking (if you were at home, after all, you'd do the cooking yourself).

Think of it as an opportunity to spend some quality time with the chef. (That would be you).

Think of it as the best steak you had in years. (It's done the way you like it because you did it yourself. And, of course, if you don't like the way your steak is done, you know exactly whom to blame.)

You don't have to have the T-bone or the ham steak or the Kansas City Strip. It's not as if there are no choices at Rube's.

You could have the 20-ounce ribeye. That would be respectable. Also, reasonable at $17.95.

You could have the beef kabob. It seems to weigh about 75 pounds, and there are even a couple of vegetables tucked in there, unobtrusively, so as not to affront your expectations. Maybe your best buy at $17.95.

You could order the chicken kabob. Or the chicken breast.

The pork chops are good. You would figure that, this being Iowa.

You could even order just the salad bar. But ordering the salad bar at Rube's is about as rare as impeaching the president in Washington. Once every 130 or so years, somebody comes in and does it.

They have doggie bags. Most people bring home enough to feed a brontosaurus.

You can also bring home extra steaks. The meat locker for the take-home steaks is right there at the reception desk. They have a sense of style here.

You can also order by phone (800-84-RUBES). The other day the meat manager told me that someone ordered 200 steaks. I believe him. Maybe that person ate them all at a single sitting. When you look around the dining room here and see how the people shove it in, you'll think that maybe 200 steaks isn't out of the question.

The place has been around for a quarter-century. Since before they tried to impeach Nixon. It's really crowded at the holidays and after Iowa football games. Also during hunting season. But you guessed that.

Lisa Blocker, the manager, orders 70 twenty-pound bags of charcoal a week. Running out of charcoal at Rube's is like running out of tartar sauce at Woodman's fried-clam window. Can't have that.

The meat comes from all over Iowa. Now that you mention it, so do the diners, by and large. (Mostly large. They leave a little larger than they came in.)

Mark Shide, the meat manager, is a talkative fellow, but there's no way you can get him to tell you where the meat comes from. Believe me, I tried. (I'm a trained interviewer. In my day I once got Bob Dole to give me a complete sentence.) Old Mark's terrified that competitors will find out. Not that there's a competitor within, say, 35 miles.

Won't tell you how many heads of cattle go through the joint, either.

But he gave me one of the best quotes I've had in nearly 30 years of newspapering. It's one for the ages: ``We don't take a whole carcass. We take only the best part -- the loins and the ribs. That's only 20 percent of the weight of the beef carcass.'' Thank you for sharing, Mark. Carcass is not a word a political writer uses every day. Good to remember that it takes more than one ``s.''

Rube's Steakhouse is at 501 Elm St., Montour, IA 50173. Phone 800-84-RUBES.