Few weeks ago, I have been lucky to meet with Peter Zwiener, Wolfgang’s Steakhouse President and son of Wolgang Zwiener founder of the group. Of course, I had to ask him how he likes his steak but that’s not the only thing we have been discussing.
Hi Peter! Can you tell me a little more about Wolfgang’s Steakhouse? Wolfgang’s Steakhouse was founded with my father, Wolfgang Zwiener, originated from Germany but who moves to the US when he was 20 years old. Soon after landing, he started to work at Peter Luger, an iconic steakhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklynn, named best Steakhouse in New York City 30 years in a row. My father work at Peter Luger for more than 40 years before deciding to retire in 2003.
On my side, I had many professional lives before Wolgang’s Steakhouse including 16 years in the financial industry. I used to love taking my clients to Peter Luger!
And then, when my father decided to retire in 2003 I realised it was the last opportunity I had to ask him if he wanted to open a restaurant with me. We opened our first location on 4 Park Avenue, then in Tribeca followed by Berverly Hills and Hawaii.
In 2008 we had to slow things down, because of the economic crisis but things kicked-off again full speed in 2013 mainly thanks to the lift of ban on US beef and in 2014 we opened our first steakhouse in Japan.
Today we have 19 restaurants around the world: 9 in the US, 1 in Seoul, 1 in Beijing, 1 in Hong Kong, 1 in Singapore, 2 in Manilla, 4 in Japan and we are looking to have 25 by the end of this year with opening in Cyprus, NYC (will our 6
th restaurant there), Jakarta, Shanghai and a third outlet in Manilla.
Wolfgang’s Steakhouse specialized on serving 28 days dry-aged meat. Can you tell me a little bit more about dry-aging and the reason why you have chosen to serve dry-aged meat? After slaughtering the cow, the meat tends to become tough. There are different ways of tenderizing it and we have decided to go for the most natural one which is dry ageing.
There are actually 2 ways of aging beef: wet-ageing or dry-ageing. Wet-ageing is cheaper, it tenderizes the meat yes but problem is the meat will bleed out during the process resulting in a loss of flavour. So we have decided to go for dry-aging. Dry-ageing is definitely an expensive process first of all because you need a special room for that but also because during the process the beef will shrink and you will lost from 10 to 20% of it. The outside of the beef will also get hard and crusted so this part will have to be removed and by the end you will have lost 30 to 40% of the beef. Yet, the taste is definitely unique!
Where do you source your meat and how is it different? We only use USDA Prime Beef – 100% Black Angus or Angus Beef - no matter the cut when a lot of places would usually use prime beef for certain cuts only. And we never use frozen meat! We source directly from the slaughter-houses and have the meat air flown within 2 days of slaughter.
Dry ageing also has us stand out. All our cuts are dry-aged except the stand-alone filet mignon.
And last but not least, we only source bulls as heifers may vary in taste and texture due to hormonal changes and what we are looking for is consistent quality.
Does your menu vary from one steakhouse to another, from one country to another? Not really. Our All-Day menu (which is also our dinner menu) is very consistent across the globe. Yet, we do have some localized dishes served at lunchtime only such as the mushroom soup in Hong Kong.
What’s your fav cut? The Porterhouse so that I can get both the filet mignon and the sirloin!
How do you like your steak? Blue!
You’ve got some cravings that you would like us to satisfy? Always here to rescue fellow foodies! Drop us a mail at
contact@hongkongmadame.com