Sink Your Teeth Into Eric Wareheim's Steak House Book And Try A Smoked Tomahawk Recipe

A fun romp through America’s signature steak houses with 45 recipes

Eric Wareheim is probably best known as half of the comedy duo, Tim & Eric, with Tim Heidecker. In the late 2000s, their experimental comedy potpurri “Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Good Job!” became a cult classic of late-night TV on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network). They’ve been making comedy ever since. Wait, you’re not familiar with Tim & Eric? How about Arnold Baumheiser, Wareheim’s “token white friend” character on the Aziz Ansari dramedy series “Master of None” on Netflix? Wareheim’s not only a longtime comedian, writer, and actor, he also directed and produced several episodes of that series. Maybe you’re more familiar with Wareheim as the author of Foodheim, his first cookbook, which was a New York Times bestseller. Or maybe you know him from “Sweet Berry Wine,” the viral comedy sketch with Dr. Steve Brule (a.k.a. comedic actor John C. Reilly) that eventually became an actual wine bottled by Wareheim’s real-life wine company, Las Jaras Wines.

As with many things Wareheim, IYKYK. After a while, it might all seem like an inside joke. Wareheim’s first cookbook, Foodheim, plunged fans deep into the eccentric food brain of his goofy personality, complete with Circle Foods, Grandma Foods, and a four-page “Small Horse Chapter” consisting solely of small horses photographed and photoshopped, images reminiscent of the outlandish curios curated at Archie McPhee. Super fun.

An Ode To Opulence

Now comes Wareheim’s second, more serious and accessible cookbook, a paean to the pleasures of the plate and the glories of gluttony in America’s quintessential bastion of beef, the steak house. With a supple maroon cover smacking of a leather banquette, Steak House chronicles the multi-hyphenate’s journey as he eats his way across the country with collaborator Gabe Ulla and chef-photographer Marcus Nilsson, forever preserving in book form a classic style of American dining. This thick slab of a book includes exclusive interviews with the staff behind the steaks, the champions in every region of America who have kept meat-loving traditions alive—the bartenders and service captains, the chefs and founders—in uniforms ranging from bowties and button downs to white-fringed blue suede vests and shorts. Some of these institutions, like Keen’s, Peter Luger, and Musso & Frank, have been operating since the 1800s. About 45 recipes are nestled throughout the book.

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A sort of nostalgic travelogue, the stories in Steak House are organized by American region and city, in chapters called “The Journey, Part 1: The South,” and “The Journey, Part II: New York City,” and on around the country to Chicago, Texas, North by Northwest, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and even Mexico.

For their part, the recipe chapters are organized by course, the way you might experience the food at a steakhouse, starting with Breads & Crudités and progressing through Appetizers, Salads, Steaks, Other Meaty Delights, Sides, and Desserts. The recipes are strewn among the regional narratives. As you join the authors on their bacchanalian road trip and read Steak House cover to cover, you get a mix of stories and recipes; however, a tasty dish you read about (say, for Smoked Tomahawk steak from Jon G’s), will often appear so far past the steakhouse story itself that you’re already elbow-deep in another steakhouse story. That makes the book a bit disjointed as a cover-to-cover read. It reads better as a coffee table buffet, where you dip into a story at the beginning, jump to something eye-catching at the end, and mill about in the middle, letting the food imagery draw you in willy-nilly.

Wareheim did gamely agree to share the recipe for Jon G’s Smoked Tomahawk steak.

Fun with Food

Wareheim’s writing is cheerful and quirky. Here are a few lines from the intro to his Chips & Truffle Ranch Dip recipe:

A ridged potato chip and a creamy ranch dipper is a match made in store-bought heaven, but sometimes you feel like dressing up for the occasion. This homemade version, which came into my life at BERN’S (page 37), will take you from basic bitch to BOOM SHAKA LAKA. It’s the kind of dip that will show you that truffle oil has its proper place, the kind of dip that I’m confident will finally make my dad, Poppa Heimy, cry out, “Good lord, son, I congratulate you on your success in life, and I’m proud of you for all of your accomplishments.”

Throughout the stories, the author shares his humor and enthusiasms like scarves he’s loaning you to tart up your own experience of the steakhouse, lest you show up underdressed.

When you read further and get into the recipes themselves, however, the exuberance disappears. Detailed and methodical, the highly executable recipes lack the impulsive, idiosyncratic joy that enlivens the rest of the book.

Many of the recipes are riffed-on or re-engineered versions of dishes served at the steakhouses the authors visit. Recipes include Parker House Rolls, Shrimp Cocktail, Classic Caesar Salad, Steak Diane, Classic Prime Rib, Beef Wellington, Creamed Spinach, Honey-Glazed Carrots, Thick Onion Rings, Lobster Mac & Cheese, Cheesecake with Strawberry Sauce, and Ice Cream Sundae, among others. Lots of classics.

The Imagery

Leather seats and plush carpeting, wood paneling and dim lights, Marcus Nilsson’s plentiful photographs capture the enduring appeal and unfussy plating at America’s iconic carnal castles like Golden Steer, Gene & Georgetti’s, and Pappas Bros. His unflinching staff portraits immortalize the individuals who make these institutions tick, alongside cameos of Wareheim’s famous friends.

No steakhouse meal is complete—or can even begin—without a martini. At the end of Steak House (why not at the beginning?), the author includes a recipe from Aziz Ansari, an unshaken, unstirred, dry gin martini poured into an icy glass and garnished with a lemon peel. The book closes with a short section on wine, where Wareheim shouts out some of his favorite California winemakers and profiles a handful of bottles enjoyed by the caravan on their carnivorous excursions. Here, his tone shifts from whimsical impresario to vinicultural knowledge dropper.

Conclusion

While I found Foodheim more fun, Steak House is a food tourist’s wet dream. It could have used a pinch more of Wareheim’s personality—especially in the recipes—but it’s as thick and heavy as the leather-bound wine list at Bern’s steakhouse in Tampa. A great gift book and a solid Gold Medal.

“Steak House” Text copyright © 2025 by Eric Wareheim. Photographs copyright © 2025 by Marcus Nilsson. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group, A division of Penguin Random House LLC.