The $5 lunch special at the Penthouse Club is quite simply the best deal you can get in a…read morerestaurant that doesn't (directly) involve methamphetamine.
There's no cover to get in, which is already a pretty good deal, given that there's a show going on (if you're not hungry, you could just sit there and look at naked girls for free for hours on end, albeit from a distance), and there's a list of $5 lunch specials which includes an 8 oz. New York strip steak.
Schnucks will sell you a garbage-quality 8 oz. New York strip steak for $5, but you gotta cook it yourself and you may or may not be able to get a girl in her underwear to bring it to you. It doesn't come with a baked potato either. You can get a big-ass bag of potatoes for not much money, but what do you need with an entire bag of potatoes? Given how I've been treated there, I doubt you could talk them into just giving you one for free.
Also, in the interest of fairness to the Penthouse Club, which has done so much for me this weekend, I should point out that the lunch special is actually less than $5. It's $4.99... for both a steak dinner and a show. It really is the best lunch special you can get at a strip club. My homeboy Jimmy looked at the websites of all the area strip clubs. The next best deal was $5.99--a full dollar more.
Walking in the front door, you're greeted by Scatman Crothers from the Shining. Even though there's no cover, they make you sign your name to a clipboard, so there's a permanent record of you having visited (and eaten in) a strip club at 11 o'clock in the morning. If you're not carded (we must not have looked young enough), you could just sign someone else's name, but if you get caught they probably take you out back and break your legs. If you're not planning on running for the Senate, I'm not sure why this would be an issue.
Business was surprisingly brisk, given the time of day, not to mention the fact that it was Black Friday. There was a couple of tables of girls, who, presumably, were there to take advantage of the prices and not so much what was going on down on the stage. Both groups left without going down to play feed the kitty.
For most of the time we were there, there was no one down in front of the main stage funding college educations. While this was tragic for the performers (I'm pretty sure they don't get paid at all if nobody tips), it was ideal for those of us at the tables a few rows back, because there was nothing obstructing our view.
At one point, one of the last surviving members of the Greatest Generation went down to get some glitter on his face. He may have had a Pavlovian response to the song "Lit Up" by Buckcherry. I was glad to see a man that age still out here giving back to the community, but it kinda ruined the (free) show for the rest of us.
(Members of the Black Keys, close personal friends of mine, will be pleased to know that I heard a few of their songs, and I was only there for like two hours. Though I'm not sure if they get paid for that.)
My little brother, who'd probably been planning this for weeks, as if it were a bank robbery, thought to order fried shrimp and buffalo wing entrees for the table. This was an excellent idea. For $5 apiece, i.e. only $1.25 per "gentleman," you're adding two different kinds of protein--surf and air, in addition to turf--to your lunch, which is something you should do whenever possible, as a matter of principle. And because 8 oz. is not the biggest steak in the world, you might want a couple of chicken wings to go along with it, lest you end up getting temperamental later in the afternoon.
Fried shrimp is fried shrimp. Unless the shrimp is fake shrimp from China, I'm not sure if you can ruin it, it being deep fried and all. You get a decent quantity of them for (less than) $5, and they're bigger than the fried shrimp you get with the Endless Shrimp deal at Red Lobster.
The buffalo wings were among the best buffalo wings I've had in a restaurant, both in terms of the size of the wings, which were ginormous, and the preparation. They were deep fried to the point where the exterior was crisp, but the interior wasn't all dried out. The latter may have been a benefit of the size of the wing.
The quality of the $5 steak makes me wonder what the full-price steaks are like. I might try to get my parents to take me there for my birthday. I requested, and received, a legit, well-prepared medium-rare steak. The interior of the club was a little on the dark side to get a sense of the depth of the pink in the center (ayo), but I could kinda taste the blood, which was delicious. The cut was a little bit thinner than I prefer, but it was still a pretty decent-sized piece of meat (ahem) and more filling than I expected.
The three beers I drank may have also helped in that regard.
