“It sounds to me like a perfectly good way to ruin a not very good steak, let alone an excellent one.” But then he gave it more thought and analysis than the concept deserved and sent a follow-up email. “What kind of misguided madcap blasphemy is this?!” he answered via email. I asked if there was any possible culinary appeal or advantage to this. I emailed New York restaurant critic Adam Platt to tell him that I was going to Keens, the nicest and most traditional Manhattan steakhouse I could think of (for lack of a Truffoni’s), to dump water all over a steak. But could the reverse be true? Could the siren call of sloppy steaks turn me into a real piece of fucking shit? I decided there was only one way to find out: I’d make a reservation at the nicest steakhouse in Manhattan and slop some steak myself.īut first I had to talk to some experts. The sketch is about how babies know that people can change just because you were a piece of shit doesn’t mean you have to still be one. Sloppy steaks at Truffoni’s is different, though. Restaurants are public theaters of socialization, where you perform according to a set list of unspoken mores, and Robinson consistently finds the humor in characters who didn’t read the rule book and can’t figure out what they’re doing wrong. There’s the hot-dog car from season one and the hotdog-choking incident from season two, the stinky plastic meatballs, and something called a “cherry chuck salad.” He often presents us with dudes acting terribly in restaurants, from the starstruck choking man with a wallet chain and the “nuggets of meat” nachosplainer on a bad date in season one to John Early telling the three hilarious waiter brothers to quit it and the hungry professor who wants to eat Robinson’s burger in season two. Robinson has a fixation on douchebags and the meats they eat throughout his work. An original Ezra Koenig song about sloppy steaks plays. The earnest, beleaguered server begs the table, “No sloppy steaks guys, please - I mean it.” But they slop ’em up, pouring glasses of ice water all over their T-bones, and the waiters are helpless to stop them. But he fixates on the steaks, circles back to them, and doubles down: “Big rare cut of meat with water dumped all over it, water splashing around the table.” Finally, we see past-life piece-of-shit Shane, out with his boys ordering sloppy steaks at Truffoni’s. “Slicked-back hair, white bathing suit, sloppy steaks, white couch.” At first, it seems like he’s just listing things that sound funny. “I used to be a piece of shit,” a Tim Robinson character named Shane says in a sketch from I Think You Should Leave’s second season.
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