Inside one of Long Island's most exclusive clubs where members spend up to $4,000 ... for meat

All eyes were on Ned and Tina Hickok. The couple had been quietly sipping their drinks at the bar of Bistro Eté in Water Mill when a huge wooden cutting board was set in front of them and then a 17-pound prime strip loin was set upon the board. Now the restaurant’s chef, Arie Pavlou, extravagantly braceleted and fedora-ed, emerged from the kitchen bearing two red-hot branding irons that had been sitting directly in the flame of a burner. Ned did the honors, first pressing the letter "W" and then "B" into the fatty mantle of the beef. Hissing! Smoking! A jolt of beefy aroma filled the air. All the while, Pavlou clanged a brass Alpine cowbell and shouted "Welcome to the club!"

The club they were inducted into is one of the Hamptons’ most exclusive. "Chef Arie’s Steak Club" has about 150 members, each of whom has purchased a subprimal cut of beef — a strip loin (whence come New York strip steaks), a short loin (porterhouses) or a rack (that will yield rib steaks and tomahawks). They spend $1,000 to $4,000 for a 17- to 35-pound hunk of raw beef that will be branded, tagged and kept in the glass-fronted meat lockers that line one wall of the restaurant’s vestibule.

Most members come in for their first steak when it has been aging for 30 days and then, periodically, to assay its progress every few weeks until it’s gone. About a third of them re-up for another tour.

As beef ages, it loses moisture which concentrates the taste, much as a sauce becomes more intense as you reduce it in the pan. But enzymes in the meat also work to break down the muscle fibers which makes it more tender and lends a distinctive complex flavor that can range, depending on how long you age it, from mineral-y to nutty to funky. Pavlou's own sweet spot is 90 days but he has kept steaks going for six months.

"I’m like a steak museum guide," Pavlou said. "I am giving my customers the opportunity to experience a steak throughout the aging process, hearing them say, ‘Wow, it tastes so different tonight than it tasted two weeks ago.’ That’s what I love."

A 'hot potato' on the bar

Pavlou and his wife, Liz, opened Bistro Eté in 2016. The chef, whose prior East End eateries included Coeur des Vignes in Southold (1998 to 2006), Comtesse Therese in Aquebogue (2010 to 2014) and the Bridgehampton Inn (2014 to 2016), had been aging beef "on the top shelf of my walk-in for 30 years."

"I always wanted to put a little, dorm-room sized dry ager in the restaurant with one or two steaks inside but Liz said, ‘that’s gross. Who wants to see that?’ "

Then, on a 2023 trip to Florence, Liz noticed that every restaurant in the land of la bistecca alla Fiorentina had an aging case and, without telling her husband (but running the idea by the restaurant’s designer), she purchased a full-sized one for $13,000 and had it installed.

That New Year’s, they filled it with Champagne and Pavlou set about finding a butcher whose steaks could do justice to their new home. He settled on Bronx-based Master Purveyors. "When I found out they sell meat to Wolfgang’s [the much-lauded Manhattan steakhouse], that sealed the deal."

Soon after the meat was loaded into that first fridge (there are now four of them), he got a special request from one of his best customers, Andrew Pollak, a Long Island potato farmer who became an agriculture magnate, made a special request: "Can you get Wagyu? I want a rib-eye, I like it aged."

Pavlou dutifully purchased a hunk of Wagyu. "It was like five, six grand. I put a tag on it — Andy wanted it to say ‘Hot Potato,’ the name of his boat — and I put it in the fridge. Well, everyone saw it and people started asking me, ‘How do I get a steak with my name on it in that fridge?’ " (While some tags bear aliases, most of them, including Jimmy Fallon’s, do not.)

Pollak died in December. In his honor, there is always a potato resting on the bar.

What makes a meat club?

The Steak Club offers USDA prime, Certified Black Angus and, though the restaurant is emphatically not, kosher beef. Pavlou finds the ultra-fatty Wagyu too rich to eat in large (steak-sized) quantities and also too pricey. "We are a bistro — I don’t want dinner to cost $400, $500 a head."

There’s certainly plenty of extravagance at Bistro Eté. Trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, after which he was apprenticed to chef Philippe Da Silva at the Michelin-starred Gorges de Pennafort in Provence, he has a fondness for classic French luxury items such as caviar and foie gras (which gild the beef’s lily in a starter of aged steak tartar wrapped in a king oyster mushroom and topped with pan-seared foie gras and caviar) as well as truffles, which get shaved over everything from grilled cheese to house-made pappardelle.

But there’s an aspect to the steak club that, it can be argued, also makes good financial sense.

Jason and Jaymie Lo Presto, of East Hampton, are charter members, joining in January 2024 when Jason "saw that first steak in the cooler." He’s now on his fourth rack of rib-eyes and has enjoyed them at every stage in their journey. "For me, it’s the older the better," he said. "At close to six months, it’s just deeper, denser and richer."

His wife, Jaymie, considers herself "the numbers person."

That first piece cost $1,600 but, when you divide it up, it actually makes sense. And when you come in for a special occasion, it’s already paid for — and it comes with potatoes and vegetables to make a whole meal.

— Member Jaymie Lo Presto, of East Hampton

The price also has intangible benefits. "It’s so cool," she noted, "our teenage boys are happy to hang out with us."

One problem the Lo Prestos encountered early on was that their prepaid steak was preventing them from ordering other items on the menu, so Jaymie came up with a strategy. "Let’s say we’re here with a party of six, we’ll order one steak as a starter that we all share, then we can order whatever else we want."

Sean Blank, who has a new second home in Water Mill, spent exactly nothing on his strip loin. "I took some friends on a trip to the Bahamas," he said. "They knew I was moving here so, to say thank you, they bought me a membership. It’s the best gift I ever got — unique, up my alley and it keeps on giving."

Indeed there are a number of customers who use their personal stash of meat as a gift for friends. "They’ll send a friend or a client here," Pavlou said. "And instead of sending a bottle of wine, they’ll send a steak."

The newbie Hickoks foresee even more benefits of membership. "It’s entertainment," Tina said. "And it’s not just the steak, it’s the people you meet, you become a part of this society." Certainly they struck up friendships with their fellow bar diners who were curious why they chose "WB" as their brand. It turns out that Ned had learned that he is a distant cousin of the legendary frontier gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok, and wanted to solidify the family connection by using his initials.

"It seemed like something Wild Bill would have liked," he quipped.

Bistro Eté, 760 Montauk Hwy., Water Mill, 631-500-9085, bistroete.com