Steak at the Penthouse Club Last week, the Times' Frank Bruni reviewed the steakhouse at New York's Penthouse Club, which is, as one might guess, a New York strip club. (Hah! Sorry, that was too easy.) Apparently the place has a serious chef.

The review itself is pretty entertaining, especially when you consider that the writer is not known for, um, frequenting such establishments. "Great food often pops up where you least expect it," Bruni writes. I'll bet.



An employee of the
Penthouse Club.


Anyway, today the letters are in, and they range from pretty funny—one correspondent asks if they deliver—to huffing and puffing.

Here's the latter—see what you think.

To the Editor:

I write with distaste concerning Frank Bruni’s review of Robert’s Steakhouse, located in a strip bar. Stripping and the sale of sexual services arise in a world where privileged men can freely buy and sell female bodies, and where women have limited economic choices. It involves constant hustling, even in the “best” clubs.

This form of “entertainment” flourishes in the inequality of power between men and women, and sexual selling relies on women fitting themselves into the stereotypes that attract and flatter male clients.

One wonders, would Mr. Bruni be willing to sit through a minstrel show for some really good fried chicken?

Pamela Rubin

Halifax, Nova Scotia

The writer is the coordinator of the Women’s Innovative Justice Initiative.

I was all prepared to write this letter off until that last sentence when I thought, hmmm, maybe she has a point there. But then there are those people who say that stripping is an economic good for these women, free speech advocates who say it's a right, and feminists who talk about the positive power of female nudity, etc., etc.

Me, I like a good steak, but I have never been to the Penthouse Club. A writer friend of mine did, once, but on an expense account. Which only goes to show that, sometimes, I wonder why I chose to write about higher education.

Anyway, it's worth checking out the letters. There's also one about whether Whole Foods is straying from its roots, which is probably important for you Cambridge folks.  ¶ 2:50 PM