SAM DINGMAN: Durant’s Steakhouse has a front door, but nobody uses it. Instead, you park out back, where a guy in a vest smiles and opens the door to the kitchen.
You find yourself instantly weaving through a crew of cooks in white jackets and servers in pressed button-downs, shouting at each other and handing off plates of deviled eggs and oysters Rockefeller.
“Guest passing through!” they call, nodding at you as you make your way to the dining room — where, if you’re lucky, a longtime regular is waiting at the end of the bar with stories to tell.
ROBRT PELA: I’m drinking — well, what I ordered was two fingers of Maker’s Mark on the rocks. But I got four fingers.
SAM DINGMAN: KJZZ contributor Robrt Pela has been going to Durant’s for decades. About a year ago, he joined us in studio in the wake of news that the restaurant would be closing temporarily. After 75 years, it had been sold to new owners — the Mastro family, who own a couple other steakhouses in Phoenix.
It was, Robrt said at the time, one of those events where you’ll always remember what you were doing when you heard about it. In his case, he was folding laundry, and he got a frantic message from a friend.
PELA: She texted and said, “What’s going on? How are we gonna — what’s, what is this?!”
DINGMAN: The existential tone of that text, Robrt said, was warranted. Durant’s is part of the origin story of urban Phoenix culture. It opened in 1950 — right around the same time that central air conditioning arrived in the Valley.
But as the population swelled, and the city evolved, Durant’s didn’t.
Part of its charm was that it always had the same red-flock wallpaper, the same menu, and an ever-thickening layer of grime on its surfaces — all of which, to be clear, Robrt loved.
Durant’s, he says, wasn’t trying to be anything other than what it was: an old, dimly-lit steakhouse that you enter through the kitchen.
PELA: But it was not campy — it wasn’t kitschy. It wasn’t, “Let’s try to look like 1957.” It wasn’t that at all. It was just that it had never changed.
DINGMAN: A year after that conversation, sitting at the bar of the new Durant’s, Robrt gazed around the dining room.
PELA: Durant’s used to be sort of a '50s noir film. It looked like one. And what this looks like now is a 2010 film that’s an homage to the noir films of the '50s.
DINGMAN: Back in December, shortly after Durant’s reopened, Robrt and some friends went in for a meal.
PELA: I will be paying for that meal for the next seven months.
DINGMAN: Robrt had the branzino, which is currently priced at $63. Durant’s was never cheap, but unlike the old version, everything is ordered a la carte now. And there are a few items missing from the menu.
PELA: There is no more liver on the menu at Durant’s — there’s no beef liver and no chicken liver. And those are the two things that I came here for. And I came here with three other people, all of whom used to order the liver. So we would dine here together because we could order liver and not offend anyone else at the table.
DINGMAN: The more you talk to Robrt, the more you get the sense that the old Durant’s was a place to be yourself — for better or for worse. One of the many things Durant’s was famous for was their dessert chips — a physical, plastic coin that entitled the bearer to free dessert.
Robrt remembers a pivotal moment in his relationship with the restaurant. It happened a few years ago, when he and his husband were on their way to the restaurant for dinner. Robrt, it won’t surprise you to learn, had a large collection of dessert chips.
PELA: And I grabbed the dessert chips and I threw them in my pocket. And that night, when I went to tender my dessert chips, the waitress, who’d been waiting on us since we were in our 20s, looked at them and said: “Honey, these are poker chips. ... I mean, I’m happy to buy you a dessert, but these are not our …”
And that’s when I knew I needed a new eye doctor.
DINGMAN: Durant’s is still honoring the dessert chips. But the absence of the liver isn’t the only thing that’s different.
PELA: We’re in the bar right now, and what I’m looking at right now is walls wall-papered in monkey-print wallpaper, whereas before it was just the same red-flock wallpaper. I’m not gonna say much more than that, but yeah — the wallpaper is monkeys hanging off of tree limbs. And yeah, there you go. But yeah, I mean, it’s still Durant’s, it still tastes good. The drinks are still more generous than they need to be, and so is the tab at the end of the evening.
DINGMAN: You can probably hear the mixed emotions in Robrt’s voice. He admits he’ll always have an attachment to the old Durant’s.
PELA: I mean, the whole story of a restaurant like this is there’s a sentimental link to it. So any change at all is going to be looked askance at. So if what you’re looking for when you come to a restaurant that you grew up on, and that you came of age in — if you’re looking for those things, a lot of them are gone. But if you don’t know them, I think you’ll be OK.
DINGMAN: Robrt is quick to point out that he doesn’t think the changes are all bad. For one thing, Durant’s is way cleaner than it used to be. But more importantly, Robrt says, cities need to change. As he put it when we spoke last year:
PELA: We can’t be scrapbooks for ourselves.
DINGMAN: But for those of us who never got to visit the original Durant’s, perhaps the new one is best experienced with someone like Robrt, who remembers it.
Robrt, a toast!
PELA: To what — what are we toasting? The new Durant’s?
DINGMAN: Yeah, that sounds good.
PELA: OK, let’s also toast the old Durant’s. They’re both here.
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