By Don Rosendale

Photos by Jim Henkens

I had the best steak in years the other night, but it wasn’t from some place in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge served by a waiter wearing a chef’s apron around his midriff. It was at the modest Amenia Steakhouse on Route 44 in Amenia, flanked by a derelict gas station waiting for Bonnie and Clyde on one side, and a duck pond on the other. The building reminds me of the barracks at Fort Dix. 30 years ago it was a gathering point for biker gangs and you didn’t go through the doors without brass knuckles.

Nowadays it’s civilized inside but still low key—mirrors touting Guinness, Stella, and Coors hang on the wall, six-foot televisions over the bar with the season’s ballgames, bare wood tables with ketchup and pepper grinders. The savings grace is a fireplace at one end where on brisk nights, someone comes from the kitchen to stack logs. The staff are cheery women in sneakers rushing beef to tabletops.

But if you want a table on a Friday or Saturday night, you better get there before 6 pm because every table is filled with people dining on filet mignon or New York cut steaks, not worried about their cholesterol or cows causing global warming. The cars in the parking lot are from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.

The Steakhouse built its reputation on how-can-they-sell-it-for-so-little prices: $21 steaks and $10 hamburgers—word-of-mouth, without advertising, consistently rebuffing people (like me) who want to pencil reviews. The local laugh was that it was a tax shelter for Bill Gates. But pandemic and post-pandemic, prices have crept up to the point where a loyal customer, George Murphy, says the steaks are still the best in Dutchess County, but “they aren’t so cheap any more.” Nowadays, a filet mignon is $34.95, a Jameson New York strip $34.95, but the cheeseburger is still a bit of a bargain at $12.95. 

The crowd is eclectic. Last time in, I sat near a Millbrook foxhunt MFH, the wife of a billionaire, a guy whose baseball jacket announced he was the fire department chief, a Vogue model, and the guy who fixed my dishwasher.

If you’re like George Murphy worrying about upward found prices, go there on Thursday for “steak night” where you can have any one of six versions of strip steaks—Au poivre, smothered in onions, smeared with Gorgonzola for $21.95 with veggie and salad.

There are 16 beers on the menu, but no wine list, and if you want wine, stick with the vin du pays, the Millbrook chardonnay, even though white wine doesn’t go with steaks.

4905 Route 44, Armenia, NY