How NYC’s fine-dining elite got pranked by Gen Zer’s fake steakhouse — complete with milk servers, ‘celebs,’ and wedding proposal
This Manhattan restaurant is a tough reservation to book — because it doesn’t exist.
The foodie gentry who gathered for their dinner at Mehran’s Steakhouse this weekend believed they’d at last gotten off the years-long waitlist for a highly exclusive, 100-year-old chop house, which finally had an available table at its Lower East Side location.
In reality, what some 140 diners experienced this Saturday evening was an elaborate prank pulled off by a 21-year-old AI startup founder — and some 65 of his friends.
The practical joke of a white tablecloth institution was born during the pandemic, in 2021, when Mehran Jalali’s 16 housemates decided to commemorate the biweekly steak dinners he’d cook them by marking their Upper East Side home as a chop house on Google Maps.
The mostly teenage roomies all left glowing reviews for the newfound institution, leading to intrigued strangers showing up at their door seeking steak.
Mehran then made a website for their solidly booked, “revolutionary steak experience” and, by the end of 2022, had accrued a 2,600-person waitlist.
Seeking to make the hoax a reality, he and a crew of co-conspirators recruited friends to compose the volunteer staff, found a venue, got a one-day liquor license, food handling permits, and plane tickets to New York (he now lives in San Francisco) and a 212 number to invite select wait listers to his ephemeral eatery.
For those who attended, the relatively subtle charade was the only in New York one to be remembered.
Set in an unmarked public bathhouse-turned-event space on East 11th Street, Mehran’s Steakhouse was not immediately obvious as being a one-night-only joke, although over the course of the night, most guests appeared to notice that something was off.
The first clue for the more observant of the crowd lay off the lobby, hanging on a wall en route to the main dining area: A selection of framed photographs depicting chef Mehran posing with an array of celebrities he had ostensibly cooked for over the many, many years.
Pictured stars included Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, a group of 1920s mobsters, Obama and JFK.
“I would recommend suspending your understanding of linear time,” Mehran advised when asked about the images.
Further down the wall were a series of large format promotional posters from Mehran’s Steakhouse over the decades, including one advertising “bone marrow ice cream.”
Across the way, a looping black and white projection varyingly showed videos of raw meat cooling off, being salted, and in a skillet next to a large half-head of garlic.
As violin covers of pop hits (and at one point the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme song) played, one of the ridiculously overstaffed venue’s armies of barely legal servers showed the well-dressed patrons to their seats, where a 15-inch laser-etched wood-cut provided them with a comedic amount of text describing their upcoming, $114 prix-fixe meal.
“The bright blissful days, the frigid unforgiving nights, heat, snow, drought, storm, all earthly experiences felt in tandem. Is this not community?” read one high-brow gibberish line from the giant block of text describing the “Agrarian Synergies” course, one of five themed to “the Bovine Circle of Life.”
As part of this meal concept, two suited waiters at one point paraded around a gallon of whole milk as though it were a fine wine.
“The milk is intended to represent the bovine life cycle,” my 21-year-old server, Erika, informed me as a sommelier suppressed a smile and poured me a large glass of it, adding “We felt it would be remiss to not include the cow’s byproducts.”
Another different waiter later informed me the milk came from a cow in Uganda named Philip.
“Mmm, yes, Philip, a common name for a female cow,” Mehran commented, hands perpetually clasped behind his back, playing a solemn chef as he ambled among tables in a black double-breasted jacket.
At around 8 p.m., a large crowd could briefly be heard screaming for Drake at the front of the building, and at 8:30, the music stopped (and never resumed) as a disheveled man gave an extremely scripted-sounding marriage proposal to a woman he had known “for five to six years.”
(“Did she say yes?” asked a blonde at the table next to us who seemed very much not in on the joke.)
Overall, as the five-or-so hours of Mehran’s Steakhouse’s brief existence progressed, the general ambiance remained typical of an NYC restaurant on a rainy Saturday.
Guests checked their phones, checked out their neighbors, ate their food and otherwise went through the normal motions of those enjoying a nice meal on the town — not realizing they were part of an intricate performance piece.
“Some improvements could be made,” agreed two Upper East Side gourmands I spoke with on my way out, citing their experience eating at Michelin-starred restaurants as their judgment credentials, and noting they were disappointed they’d been on the waitlist for years only to get reservations at this location, and not the one in their neighborhood.
Outside, in the drizzle, two guests were smoking and attempted to get two of the steakhouse’s in-house videographers to explain what was happening.
“I went into the kitchen and there were 50 people in there — I wanted to find someone who would confess,” said retired colonel David Menegon, disbelieving this writer worked for The New York Post, having already met purported reporters for the New York Times and This American Life that evening. “It’s bulls–t. I’m having a great time.”
Not everyone was amused: One couple threatened Mehran with legal action after finding out his “restaurant is fake.”
Others, though, considered the farce to be a delight, a rare moment of absurd and edible entertainment in a city that often takes itself and its food too seriously.
“It’s New York, you can eat anywhere,” said opera singer Scott Thomas. “But for it to be this fun is priceless.”
