At the Okeechobee Steakhouse, food is a family affair
By J. Gwendolynne Berry | Dining | October 03, 2011
Curtis Lewis, center, owner of the steakhouse, stands in the main dining room with his grandchildren, Rachel Armstead, daytime manager, and Corey Griffis, waiter. (J. Gwendolynne Berry/The Palm Beach Post)
Curtis Lewis was just 2 years old in 1947 when his parents opened the Okeechobee Drive-In at the intersection of Okeechobee Boulevard and Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard.
"Back then, Okeechobee was just a narrow, two-laned road out to Military Trail, then it became a dirt road," Lewis remembers. "All around was cow pasture and swamp."
He grew up in the restaurant, learning from his dad, Ralph, how to
spot a quality piece of beef and from his mother, Norma, how to make
guests feel like family members.
Quality, service and family. These are the keys to success and longevity, according to Curtis Lewis.
He absorbed these lessons from his parents over a lifetime at their business and now his, the venerable Okeechobee Steakhouse. About to celebrate its 64th year, the steakhouse is a reminder of Old Florida values like simple, good food and the Southern hospitality of his mother.
Until the mid-1960s, the steakhouse was named Okeechobee Drive-in. Later, a second dining room and full bar were added.
"To meet her once was like you knew her all your life. You felt like family. She made you feel like you belonged," says Lewis. "We still try to work every day to improve. Everybody can sell a steak. We go out of our way to give you a 'wow' experience, and that's why we've been around for 64 years."
About that steak, Lewis says he strives for the best quality beef available, certified Angus beef, which he ages 21 to 30 days before hand-cutting into steaks, just like his father did.
"I learned from him how to cut meat. He was strictly business. He showed you the right way and expected you to get it," Lewis says.
The right way is what he calls a "super-trim" steak, referring to the care he takes to remove excess fat and leave just the best meat. His 8- and 12-ounce filet mignons are just the center cut meat, no side muscle.
The 24-ounce porterhouse steak is served with salad and potato for $45.99. Prosciutto-wrapped asparagus can be added for an extra charge. (J. Gwendolynne Berry/The Palm Beach Post)
Even the hamburger patties are ground daily from the trimmings of prime steaks like filet, New York strip and rib-eye.
Lewis was 16 years old when his father died of a heart attack in 1962, and he stepped into this father's role at the steakhouse.
In the years that followed, he and his mother renovated and expanded the business, adding a second dining room and a full bar, getting rid of the drive-in service and changing the name to Okeechobee Steakhouse.
"Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard was steak alley in the 1970s, and we were the grandfather," he remembers, rattling off more than a dozen restaurants that have come and gone along the strip. With the closing of Raindancer Steak House last month, he's now the only one of the Old Guard remaining.
"It's a tough economy, and I hate to see anybody go out," says Lewis. "Here we've kept close tabs on expenses but we haven't cut quality."
Lewis also credits his loyal staffers, many of whom have been with him 10 years or more, for providing the same level of service his mother once did.
His mother's role at the front of the house has since passed on to Lewis' second wife, Jean, then on to her two daughters, Pam Griffis and Cindy Raniere, niece Judy Kartiganer, and now granddaughter Rachel Armstead.
Curtis Lewis and mother Norma sitting at the bar in the late 1950's.
Armstead remembers sleeping in the restaurant booths while her mother tended bar. Grandson Corey Griffis remembers coming in for a steak with his dad when he was a child, then bringing dates to the restaurant in his teen years.
Now he serves those steaks to other loyal guests as part of the wait staff. "I really enjoy working here. We have a connection like no other," he says.
Adds Armstead: "There's a pride to it. I know how hard my mom, my aunt and my grandmother worked right here in this building. Now I have kids of my own. It's a legacy, carrying on this tradition."
Reviews
By John Tanasychuk | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
October 21, 2007
Curtis Lewis is a young 62-year-old. But get him talking about Okeechobee Steakhouse - the restaurant his parents opened 60 years ago this month - and he sounds like an old-timer.
"Years ago we had to peel the potatoes and sort them," he says. "I started out washing dishes by hand."
Sixty years is a long time in South Florida, but it's even longer in the fickle restaurant business.
Okeechobee Steakhouse is the rare restaurant that has been owned by one family and sustained on customer loyalty. It has endured by changing with the times, but never too much. Nothing too fancy. Just reliable meat and potatoes.
"I still do things the old way, but we try to adapt it to the new modern taste," he says. "I don't want to be caught back in the mentality of 50 years ago."
In 1947, the steakhouse was known as Okeechobee Drive In, a new concept built to accommodate a burgeoning car culture.
"This was the country," says Lewis, motioning out the windows at the whiz of traffic on Okeechobee Boulevard.
His parents, Ralph and Norma, had owned a sandwich shop in downtown West Palm Beach, which they sold during World War II. They tried to make a go of farming in Georgia, but tobacco and cotton weren't for them.
Instead, they returned to South Florida and bought the half acre of land on which the restaurant sits. "I wish they'd bought more," says Lewis.
They took a big chance when they opened the restaurant in what was then the boondocks.
Until the late '50s, the restaurant was too far out of town for meat and bread deliveries. The Lewises drove to West Palm Beach for supplies. They lived in Westgate, the neighborhood behind the restaurant, where many households kept chickens and cows on the city-sized lots.
Drivers on the two-lane Okeechobee Boulevard had to stop for gators to cross the road. Lewis hunted birds in the swamp that's now home to several car dealerships. He remembers riding a Model A swamp buggy into the woods. By age 8, he washed dishes during summer break. When he was 12, he started working weekends on the broiler. He graduated from high school when he was 16 and joined the family business full time.
"That's the way it was back then," says Lewis. "This is all I've ever done."
Curtis Lewis college
After six decades, you'd think that Lewis might be in a reflective mood. He's not. Nostalgic? Not really.
The restaurant succeeds, he says, for some pretty basic reasons. Reasons every business can learn from.
He inherited his parents' work ethic, and he has no plans to retire. He treats his employees and customers fairly. He watches the competition and always looks to the future.
It appears that he's passed on those same qualities to the next generation, to his two children and three grandchildren who now work alongside him.
"I went to Curtis Lewis College," jokes Cindy Griffis-Raniere, his daughter and general manager.
When Lewis' father died of a heart attack at age 53 in 1963, the restaurant was left to his only child and his wife.
She was of the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it school. But Lewis wanted to move from drive-in fried catfish and hush puppies to sit-down fine dining. He wasn't able to do that until he bought out his mother in the 1970s.
It was right around this same time that a woman named Jeannie Griffis walked into the restaurant and into Lewis' life. She had five children and was working on a divorce. Lewis was separated with two children. By 1971, he and Griffis were dating. In 1985, they married in Lake Tahoe, Calif. Their respective children are now just "the kids."
"The restaurant has been so good to me and my husband and the kids and now the grandchildren," says the semi-retired Jeannie Lewis. "I'm not saying it hasn't been a lot of hard work and dedication. I'm not saying we haven't had our ups and downs. We have."
'We're all family'
Okeechobee Steakhouse employs about 70 people, and half have been there at least 15 years.
"We're all family," says Elaine Tatum, an assistant manager who has worked for the family for 16 years. "That's the great benefit to working with them. They want you to succeed."
John Mercurio first ate at the restaurant in 1962, when he moved from Ohio to West Palm Beach. He was quickly drawn into the family.
"You're not talking to hired help. You're talking to the owners and family," says Mercurio, a car dealer. "Back then, the dining room had a cement floor. They made steak sandwiches on a hoagie roll. The catfish was the big draw. But Curtis was able to grow with the times."
"Or be left behind," says Lewis.
After Lewis bought out his mother, he remodeled. He got rid of the windows that face Okeechobee. He added resin table tops with pieces of rock suspended inside. Times change. And change again.
Business has been consistently good, except for a rough patch in the early 1990s when Okeechobee Boulevard was torn up and put back together.
Last year, Lewis spent $200,000 redoing the 160-seat dining room. The table tops have been replaced with mahogany. The windows are back, shaded with Bahama shutters. Booths are high-backed and covered in what looks like rich leather. Mirrors line the walls. Oil paintings fill alcoves. The kitchen got a new serving line.
Lewis says the biggest change in the restaurant business is the sophistication of diners. So he makes a point of going to restaurant shows and eating in every great American steakhouse a steak eater can imagine: Peter Luger, The Palm, Smith & Wollensky, Gibsons, Ben Benson's and the original Morton's when Arnie Morton had just one. Unlike most of those places, the Okeechobee doesn't charge extra for salad or potato.
Okeechobee Steakhouse has served everyone from Conway Twitty to Al Roker. But 60 percent of the diners who walk through the door are regulars. When the Atlanta Braves wintered in West Palm, Hank Aaron was a regular. Lewis says he mentioned the restaurant by name in his autobiography.
Vivian and Gene Trout have been regulars for 25 years, dining at the steakhouse three times a week. They have seen lots of changes, but the constant has been the sense of family.
"You go to some restaurants and you're there for dinner and that's all," says Vivian Trout. "Here, you feel like you're going to dine at someone's home."
Keith Scragg worked under Lewis for 23 years before leaving in 2002 to open his own Callaro's Prime Steak & Seafood in Manalapan.
"I started as a bus boy and left as the chef. He taught me everything," says Scragg. "The hardest thing I ever did was to have to tell them I was going into business with someone else."
Scragg calls his mentor the best kind of restaurateur.
"He doesn't cut corners. That's the way the restaurant business is supposed to be. They make their own desserts. They cut their own meat. They make their own soups. They don't buy everything out of a can."
None of that for Lewis. No shortcuts.
"You have to decide what quality you want to serve and demand the best and serve nothing but the best," says Lewis. "I think it shows in the long run."
John Tanasychuk can be reached at jtanasychuk@ sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4632.
IF YOU GO
Okeechobee Steakhouse, 2854 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach, celebrates its 60th anniversary 4 to 10 tonight and Monday with a special buy-one-entree, get-a-second-entree free. For details, call 561-683-5151.
Okeechobee Steakhouse / West Palm Beach
By DONALD KIM | Special Correspondent for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel
December 28, 2007
The Okeechobee Steakhouse is a long-standing establishment serving aged prime Angus beef, fresh seafood and other classic cuisine.
The star of the show is the beef, and the Okeechobee Steakhouse cast its lead role well. The Angus beef is beautifully marbled. Combined with its four- to six-week aging, the result is a tenderness and remarkably intense depth of flavor. The cuts are huge. The smallest is a half pound of filet mignon ($34.95); the largest is a 1 1/2-pound Porterhouse ($40.95). Other cuts such as Delmonico, T-bone and strips are offered in the 14- to 23-ounce range.
The steaks are seared, which is the best way to prepare an expensive prime cut without introducing a distracting "charred" flavor. All the entrees were perfectly cooked to the exact "doneness" as ordered. The steak seasoning was a little too salty; I would request it "lighter" or have it omitted next time.
Additional embellishments offered for the steaks include Oscar style ($6.95 extra); gorgonzola, mushroom and caramelized onion crust ($3.95 extra); lobster tail (market price); and classic sauces such as Béarnaise, mushroom demi-glace and au poivre.
Unlike other high-end steakhouses, salad and a choice of starch are included with the entree. Even though a salad bar seems somewhat out of place in a top-end restaurant, the presentation of large blocks of cheese from which to help yourself is a redeeming quality. The baked potatoes are normal size (unlike places that serve a spud the size of an economy car), the steak fries are decent and the rice pilaf fairly nondescript.
As is the prerequisite for a "chop house," vegetables play only a supporting role and are offered a la carte. Nothing fancy or nouveau, simply substantial portions of spinach, broccoli or asparagus are available ($5.95-$6.95).
The appetizers are tried-and-true standards, such as the fried onion ($7.95) and escargots ($10.95). They are well prepared and delicious, but not a very innovative selection. Desserts ($6.95) are large portions and richly decadent, although a fairly standard selection.
The pace of the dining room is slow and relaxed. There is no hurrying when working through better than a pound of beef. For our party of four, the dining experience lasted just over two hours. The team service was very attentive and accommodating, although there were two aspects that didn't meet my expectations.
First, the wine list was comprehensive, but the server could have been more knowledgeable when asked for suggestions. Second, the food was brought to the table by "food runners" and "auctioned" ("Who had this?") rather than being expertly delivered to the proper seat. I would expect this when paying $30-$40 for an entree.
Overall, however, the dining experience at Okeechobee Steakhouse was excellent.