Cooking Up Mehran’s Steak House

How we made an internationally-acclaimed restaurant from scratch

On September 23, 2023, Mehran’s Steak House had its illustrious opening and fateful closing night, existing for one brilliant second as the culmination of a year’s worth of preparation. Thousands vied to get in, and on that night, 120 lucky guests finally secured the hardest reservation in all of New York - because it was for a restaurant that didn’t really exist. 

The following Monday, the New York Times and New York Post released articles about the scheme, we shared behind the scenes clips on social media, and the story went viral, covered by ABC, BBC, CBC, CBS, and every other acronym you can imagine. The story swept from Germany to Korea, and TikToks/Reels/Twitter posts racked up hundreds of millions of views. A talent agency reached out about turning it into a movie. 

Quite the fifteen minutes of fame. And it all began with a silly joke we took astronomically far. 

Here’s how we did it. 

(And if you’re wondering why I’m writing about this ten months after the event, well, I’m in my Substack era now.)

Setting the stage: A halfway-hacker-house

In August 2021, I moved to New York to find purpose, etc, as 20-somethings tend to do. I had come to live in a “hacker house,” which was a generous way of describing a coliving house with a dozen or so late teens and 20-somethings in various degrees of employment.

Upon moving in, my first thought was J*sus Chr*st. What did I sign up for. (Imagine exactly the conditions you’d expect from a dozen or so young “adults” living under one roof.)

To be genuine for a moment, though, I loved it. It felt like freshman year of college - a bunch of cool, interesting people living together. Every night we’d be up late playing games (often ones we made up) and talking. Although the interests and personalities in the house were so diverse, surprisingly, we all got on very well, and it quickly felt like living with a bunch of your best friends. 

We got up to quite a bit of tomfoolery. We held Soupsgiving, which was Thanksgiving but every dish was soup. We created a shrine to our housemate who’d been on a lengthy vacation away. The girls claimed a women’s bathroom and fashioned a tampon curtain to deter the boys from using it. Someone’s room was in the tiny space under the stairs, someone else’s “room” was a bed on top of a closet, which could only be accessed by ladder. When most folks were gone for the holidays we made mini clay figurines of everyone, designed according to their personality/style, and took the figurines on a photoshoot around the city. It was a lot of wholesome fun. 

Every couple weeks we had community dinner, where we’d take turns cooking and eat together as a house. Our roommate Mehran mentioned he made a great steak, so one night, he took a turn cooking for us. Man makes a great steak. I genuinely did not care much for steak before, but after that night, I was converted. Community dinner was superseded by Mehran steak night, which we all eagerly anticipated, even bringing friends over to share in the luxury when Mehran made his infamous steak. 

one of the OG steak nights

Life was exuberant, overflowing with so much laughter and inspiration that it felt like meandering through a memory. These were the times that as you lived them, you knew you’d look back on them for the rest of your life. 

The intrusive thought that began it all

One day as I’m walking home, I thought it’d be funny to list our house as “Mehran’s Steak House” on Google Maps. I submitted the listing and it immediately disappeared. Bummer, I thought. And I forgot about it. 

Until a few months later, after I’d moved out of the house and back to San Francisco, and I got a text from my former housemate Riley asking if I listed our house as Mehran’s Steak House. A friend was trying to navigate to the house and saw it listed as such on Google Maps. “We figured it must’ve been you,” Riley said.

We thought it was funny the listing somehow got approved, and everyone in the house started writing ridiculous reviews, trying to top each other in absurdity. Mehran was compared to a God, eating at his restaurant was a religious and transcendental experience, reviews were written like fanfiction or diary entries or contained haikus. 

reviews of Mehran’s Steak House

The reviews were so clearly a joke. Or so we thought. Until people started knocking on the door to get a reservation. One couple even walked into the house, seemingly not registering that it was a residential home (and a fratty-looking, run-down one at that) and asked for a table. 

Some people seemed to realize something was up, which made them all the more curious to learn the truth. 

In part to get people to stop coming into our house, and in part to keep up the bit, we put a housemate’s phone number on the listing and Riley made an official Mehran’s Steak House website which stated - “Booked until Spring. Reservations required.”

More friends joined the bit and wrote even more ridiculous reviews, and Mehran’s Steak House climbed higher and higher in the rankings of fine-dining restaurants on the Upper East Side. “It’s now the 10th result! It’s now the 5th result!” We joked in our group chat. To commemorate this bit, Riley and I designed a “Mehran’s Steak House” poster to hang in the kitchen. I kept making Mehran’s disembodied head more and more transparent and dying laughing each time. 

official Mehran’s Steak House poster

For one lucky caller, Mehran admitted we were not really a restaurant but a group of kids living together, however, he could still cook them a great steak. The caller thought it was funny and agreed - It seemed Mehran’s Steak House would have its first official clientele. Unfortunately, they later called back and expressed regrettably, they could no longer dine with us, as his mother-in-law thought it was weird. Which is so fair of her.

As more and more people started calling in to get the hardest reservation in Manhattan (because our capacity was literally 0), we started thinking - what would it take to actually make Mehran’s Steak House a reality?

And do people seriously not read reviews before making a reservation?

Actually getting our sh*t together

A few months later, Riley and Mehran also moved to San Francisco, and we talked about creating the steakhouse in the way one talks about hopes and dreams they don’t ever really expect to happen. By this time, there were 500-ish folks on our waitlist.

glowing reviews of Mehran’s Steak House kept coming

Then one day an investigative reporter named Anne Kadet dropped an article about a mysterious steakhouse hidden in a brownstone on the Upper East Side, her investigation into the secrets behind it, and teased that this would be a multi-part series. As amusing as we found this article, it became the first search result for “Mehran’s Steak House,” and having it up, especially if Anne continued her investigation, could eliminate any chance we had of making the steakhouse a believable reality. 

Prior to dropping the article, Anne had made several attempts to contact us, so Mehran finally gave her a call back and convinced her to temporarily take down the article, with the promise she’d be in the know for a much bigger story. We asked for until Fall, and this deadline resulted in us seriously starting to plan. 

Over the next few months, Riley, Mehran, and I figured out what goes into making a five-star dining experience. Serendipitously, we had different skills and interests that aligned perfectly. Riley was the restaurant owner, figuring out the legal and business complexities. Mehran was the head chef and face of the operation. I was the creative director, responsible for the interior design and bits/jokes that brought the spirit of the absurd reviews to life. 

The three of us flew to New York in June, for Riley to take an in-person test necessary for food certification, and for us to check out venues. 

We walked into Bathhouse Studios, and it was perfect. The venue was beautiful - it was a photo studio with pristine white walls and a painted white floor, which gave a striking liminal space aura. When I saw it, I knew instantly how I wanted to present it on the night of the Steak House - “All white everything, with splashes of steak-blood-red,” I wrote on my design board. I wanted it to feel beautiful yet slightly unsettling, like an art piece you’re afraid to touch. The more sophisticated and upscale I made it appear at first glance, the more I could get away with when it came to the jokes hidden in the decor.

Bathhouse Studios

While in NY, I also scoped out furniture rental suppliers and flower shops, while Riley and Mehran checked out restaurant supply stores. 

We returned home to SF and continued planning. We had many zoom calls, many late nights up scheming, and many days spent daydreaming, with excited texts in our group chat when an idea struck. 

One day Mehran insisted that we watch “The Menu” first thing. It was a great movie and inspiring, except for the evil parts, which we vowed not to turn to. 

As we were brainstorming, we played with the balance of pushing the theatrical elements while also maintaining an upscale dining experience and an overall delightful evening for our guests. The menu at first was pretty standard fare of what was served at steakhouses (at least what we learned from Google and ChatGPT - none of us were exactly in the tax bracket to frequent fine dining). Since the project itself was based on an ongoing bit, the line between proposing genuine ideas and making jokes was very blurred. Many sentences started with “This is a joke, but...” and ended up with us actually incorporating it into our plans. 

“This is a bit morbid,” I started, half-serious, “But what if the menu theme is around the lifecycle of the cow...The Bovine Circle of Life?” We laughed, but then realized this could actually work. “So the first course could be like a lemongrass salad to represent what the cow eats, then some sort of veal dish, then the steak as the adult cow, then like a dirt cake or angel food cake to represent the afterlife...”

I had a vision for the menu - something pretentious and ridiculous, a comically-large, circular menu shaped like a clock to represent the passing of time in a lifespan. 

After much debate on the contents of the menu, trying to balance sticking on-theme with choosing dishes that would be the most appealing to our guests and that we could cook well, we put our plan to the test. Mehran was connected with Elias, a friend of a friend who used to own a Michelin-guide restaurant, and we tested each dish with him. He critiqued the recipes, shared tips, and finally gave his stamp of approval - “If you cook it exactly like this on the night, it’ll be one of the best meals they’ve ever had.”

Chef Elias showing us how it’s done

We called up former housemates and friends and told them our plans to make Mehran’s Steak House a reality. Almost everyone wanted in. Over half of the 60-ish friends who joined us flew in to NY just for this. It was in many ways a reunion of all the people who lived in or came through the “hacker house,” and their friends, and friends of friends. We were in awe and so, so grateful for our friends’ eagerness to join our escapade. 

The three of us planned to arrive in NY a week before the event, with most friends joining us a few days before or day of. Riley cold-emailed some media companies about the story, and This American Life, The New York Post, and The New York Times were interested. H*ly sh*t. This was really happening. Things started to get very real very fast. 

A few days before we flew to NY, This American Life interviewed us all, separately. I was first, and they asked questions on how we got the idea, what our plans for the night were, etc, etc, and then asked, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” 

I thought it was a bit of an odd question, but responded, “Well, people could not like their food, they could not have a good experience...”

“Really?” They sounded surprised. “That’s the worst thing that could happen? What if there’s a fire?”

“Um...” I laughed uneasily. “What? I mean, we’re not that dumb. We’re putting in the work to prepare and I guess if that were to happen there’s a fire extinguisher...”

It felt like they were waiting for a gotcha moment. I asked what sort of story they were thinking about writing. They expressed that they were surprised that we cared about creating a positive experience for our guests. I reiterated that creating a fun, enjoyable experience was our number one priority and the point of this endeavor. I left the call very stressed. I freaked out in our group chat. 

Mehran did his interview next, then Riley, and we live-texted, but they didn’t feel their intentions were questioned. “They’re gonna ruin our lives!” Mehran joked. 

But I actually become very concerned that this was a possibility. As Mehran and Riley liked to keep teasing me, I had a lot more to lose as someone in a traditional corporate career path, where schemes such as this could be frowned upon. While since they had their own startup, even a scheme gone wrong would probably get them twitter followers and investors. 

As someone raised by an Asian “Tiger Mom” with a narrow, traditional view of success, who for most of my life measured my self-worth by my test results, taking a bit this far was very out of my comfort zone. I figured with our months of preparation we’d controlled for all the contingencies, but this interview validated my fears that there were so many extraneous factors that could go wrong, and involving the media would amplify any mistakes exponentially. 

A massive failure may make a better story and sell better than a success. Even a success could be misconstrued by my employer, and any future employers in my industry. Most of my friends were on a more traditional life path and thought the Steak House was funny but they didn’t really *get* it. 

Was it really paranoia to think that this project had the potential to ruin my life?

And J*sus Chr*st, what if there was a fire??

T-minus one week to the illustrious opening and fateful closing night of Mehran’s Steak House

As I sat in the airport, about to fly to New York, one week before The Day, the reality really started to hit. Oh sh*t, we’re actually doing this. We are making a restaurant, with no real experience, serving 120 people, and the New York Times will be there. For a moment, I seriously considered if it was too late to back out. I called my mom, minorly freaking out. 

My mom had already expressed that while she thought the Steak House was a fun story, she didn’t really understand why we were doing it. I expected her to encourage me to quit, but surprisingly, she reassured me that everything would turn out fine, that she was proud of me, and I should just have fun with it. Ok, thank you, but where was this mom when she made me start memorizing SAT vocabulary in third grade?? 

I took deep breaths and tried to focus on the tactical. Despite working on this project for a year, there was still so much to do. I’d recently had the thought that we should utilize the wall space more, so was designing a series of posters to commemorate previous menu themes in years past. Crouched in the stiff airport chair, two hours to go before my flight departure because of how risk-averse I usually am, I focused my attention on designing on my iPad. 

Since the three of us were flying in from SF, and bringing stuff on a flight is expensive and unwieldy, we planned to pick up most things in NY. So we needed to spend this week running around collecting everything.

I arrived in New York and hit the ground running, going to various flower stores to find the best deals for the flowers I had in mind. Lilies, etc - strikingly white theme, remember? Of course, even in bulk, even unarranged, they were very expensive, and we were paying for everything out of pocket, with hopes of coming close to break-even. I scoped out Trader Joes, Home Depot, and some farmers’ markets, taking inventory of what they had and bringing it back to the drawing board - ultimately making flower arrangements and plantscaping with these suppliers. Art isn’t limited by the raw materials you select, but by the skill with which you mold them to your vision. This was the pretentious mindset we were bringing to our illustrious steak house. 

Mehran and Riley went to the restaurant supply story to, obviously, acquire restaurant supplies, and brought back stories of how they had to aggressively play bumper cars with other patrons to navigate through the store. 

I got the “former menu themes” posters printed, and learned there are so, so many CVSes in NY but so few have poster printers and even fewer have functional ones, and the fun thing is they don’t tell you which locations have the functional ones, so you get to play a little game of finding out. 

“past menu themes” of Mehran’s Steak House - these posters were pretty massive and spanned one wall of the restaurant

Mehran had found a butcher on Reddit that could apparently provide the bulk order of high-quality meat we needed - only we needed to pay upfront, and the butcher would be ordering in from a supplier so he didn’t have a sample of the meat we’re actually ordering to try. I was dubious of this. Mehran vowed that if this didn’t pan out, he would personally pay for replacement steak from Whole Foods. 

We needed to print the menus, the emblem of Mehran’s Steak House, “The Bovine Circle of Life.” I designed the menu as a 16” wooden circle, laser-etched with the six courses, each accompanied by a paragraph of artful, pretentious bullsh*t I wrote explaining which stage of a cow’s life that course represented. We had the wood, we had access to a makerspace, but we needed a shop manager to oversee printing and didn’t realize how difficult it would be to get this laser printer to work. The shop manager was supposed to meet Mehran at the makerspace, I was frantically trying to get the text perfectly curved on the menu which required contorting it by eye (no tool) in Procreate then exporting it to Figma then repeating that a million times until it looked perfect, I don’t even remember what Riley was busy doing, we were all freaking out at each other in the group chat, I said I’m about to take a trip to The Vessel (k*ll myself), I got it done minutes before the shop manager was supposed to arrive and sent it over to Mehran (and then the shop manager was like an hour late but we got it done)! 

The Bovine Circle of Life

We had another stupid argument about the cost of the menu mid-printing. Riley’s friends who work at restaurants in Manhattan said the pricing at $100 was suspiciously cheap. I thought it was a fair price given our lack of experience and was worried that pricing it higher would make people upset when they learned the truth. 

The printing issues continued - we planned to have some wood and some cardstock menus, but printing on the cardstock didn’t work. Mehran slept overnight in the makerspace to print on the 25 wooden slabs we did have, setting an alarm every 22 minutes throughout the night to change out the wood. So all we had was 25 menus, for our 120-some guests. We’d just have to figure it out.

Riley had applied for a temporary wine permit, and the NY state liquor authority met every week to approve the next week’s permits. Meaning we’d only know if we got approved for a permit a few days before the event. Riley repeatedly called them to try to get some reassurance we would get approved. Also, NY liquor laws prevented us from buying from a regular wine shop, so Riley struggled to find a distributor. A day before the night, a friend Malik suggested one, but after saying they’d accept credit card, the distributor barely spoke English and kept saying “CASH, CASH, CASH,” so Riley literally ran to an ATM and back in the rain with $700.

It was a craze of figuring sh*t out and running around the city and bickering as the stress ramped up. 

A reporter filled out our reservation request form, telling us that he knew Mehran’s Steak House was a ruse and he was writing a story on it. He was a “reporter” from one of those little neighborhood sites that only have two types of articles: Woman killed in crosswalk! New bakery opens on 60th street! Violent crime at an all time high! Yum, yum, these are our top 5 favorite cookie stores! 

Riley told me he’s taking care of it, and I had enough to worry about that I don’t think too much of it. September 23 loomed nearer, and there was still so much to do...

It was the night of September 22. The night before the Steak House opening. Our 60-ish friends who we’d enlisted as staff for the restaurant joined us at Elevated Acre, a privately-owned-public-space in FiDi. Riley arrived early and then had run out to get pizza, so he hid a huge bag with various pots and pans and his literal laptop in some bushes, and called me when I got there to check it wasn’t taken. 

We rallied, mingled, ate pizza, and Mehran gave a speech, declaring, “What we lack in experience, we make up for in massive overstaffing!” 

The night was a reunion of our group house, and we caught up with housemates we hadn’t seen in the last couple years. There were also friends of friends, people who heard about this scheme and wanted in, flying in from across the US just for this, missing classes or calling off work. It was funny but also inspiring for so many to be rallied by this call - a call for a silly bit that had somehow snowballed into a gargantuan endeavor. 

T-minus 10 hours to T-minus 1 hour to the illustrious opening and fateful closing night of Mehran’s Steak House

It was the morning of the steakhouse. 8am and we were up and at Bathhouse Studios to set up, with our friends trickling in over the course of the day to help. Even with all our preparation, there were a million little things we forgot - friends made a dozen trips to Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, CVS - to collect all the last-minute details that were required in such an endeavor. 

A crew from This American Life mic’d me, Riley, and Mehran, and followed various folks as we prepared - quiet flies-on-the-wall, but with a strong presence in intensifying the stakes. The steaks were high, we could make no mis-steaks. 

A light drizzle that morning threatened to turn into an onslaught of rain, and some parties called in to cancel due to the weather. We worried whether enough folks would follow through on their reservation - we didn’t take down a deposit, so people could simply not show up, even though we’d confirmed all reservations in the couple days prior. We set up a reservation station where a few friends took turns calling folks on our waitlist for a last-minute opening. I heard the spiel a hundred times: “I see you’ve been on our waitlist since so and so last year...unfortunately our Upper East Side location is still fully booked, but we do have an opening in our other location for tonight, it’s a smaller, more intimate space...” as I sat nearby and turned raw flowers into flower arrangements. 

We only offered reservations of two or four - not wasting a seat on an odd number. Having waited so long to dine with us, guests graciously complied. 

Below the dining space, in the kitchen, food preparation began. We made everything from scratch, and different stations were organized throughout the space on folding tables, one for each course. One group chopped up lettuce and mixed together dressing for the grassy salad, at the next station a group formed meatballs, at another tomato was finely diced for bruschetta, to the side our baker Amy frosted cakes she’d made the night before, nearby 130 steaks were patted dry and seasoned. 

food prep

The rentals arrived, and we started assembling the interior. Tables were constructed and arranged across the white photo studio, white chairs pushed in, pristine white tablecloths whisked on with a flourish. Each table adorned with a clear milk-bottle vase, holding white flowers, with a strikingly red Mehran’s Steak House logo on the side. 

From a 2-D design board in Figma to watching my vision become a reality - not a pale imitation of what I aspired to create, but even greater than I had imagined it could be - it felt surreal. I set up the projector with a loop of ostentatious black and white stock clips of steak being cooked. Our staff changed from street clothes to all black wear - like stagehands. We dimmed the lights, and the theater was set. It felt exactly like gazing upon an empty stage from the wings, minutes before your performance. It felt strangely reverent.

the dining space, photo credits @memoriesbymathu

My vision was to play on the subliminal space, with an adult alice-in-wonderland vibe - upscale and sophisticated at first glance, but with joyous and whimsical details. 

When you enter the steakhouse, you first encounter a 6 foot circular archway, adorned with flowers, the shape an allusion to the circle of life. Past our hostesses and coat check, you are ushered past a velvet rope, then an enormous black door that spans the height of the wall is pulled open, and you enter a gently-lit space, white on the walls and the floor, with ceilings that rise up high to a skylight open to the night.

decor with allusions to the circle of life and a 3-D printed bust of Mehran himself

On your left as you enter, you probably won’t notice a series of photos of Mehran with historically improbable figures - JFK, Marilyn Monroe, The Clintons. Your attentive hostess (one of four) will guide you to your seat, and your waiter (one of 30) will present you with a 16” wooden disk titled “The Bovine Circle of Life,” they’ll explain this is the set menu, and ask if you’d like a drink - the options being three reds and “a tall glass of milk.” 

a few of the esteemed past guests of Mehran’s Steak House

After ordering, you’ll be left to turn the circular menu or your head around as you attempt to read the pretentious, lengthy description of the meal you’re about to enjoy. As you wait for your first course to arrive, you may look around and see a wall with framed posters, seemingly past themes of Mehran’s Steak House through the years. You may find it strange to have tasting courses around “The Exploration of the Cow” or “The Quandaries of Genesis,” or you may dismiss, or even applaud it, as the usual New York grandiosity. You may hear the lilting classical music softly playing and recognize it as adaptations of meme-like songs including Africa by Toto, WAP, and the track from Subway Surfers. You may look to the other side and see a video projected crisply across the white wall, a black and white visage of steak being cooked. You may smell something...agricultural...and turn to see a table towards the back with a planter filled with dirt and vegetables and recognize this is a play on “farm-to-table.” You may wonder why all the waitstaff look in their teens or twenties. Or, if you’re like many of our guests, you may think this is just another night on the town, finally getting a table at the highly-rated restaurant you’ve been waiting a year for, enjoying a delicious meal with your lovely husband. 

our sommeliers with our beverage options and the “farm-to-table” table

The illustrious opening and fateful closing night of Mehran’s Steak House

In these final moments leading up to our opening hours, I was too sick with nerves to even think about eating, let alone stomach anything. All I had eaten since 8am was half a croissant my cousin brought me. Up until then, I could turn my blinders on and focus on the task at hand, as there was so much to do. Putting together the flower arrangements took a few hours, then setting up and tweaking the furniture, perfectly placing all the decor, arranging the entrance arch, aligning the poster frames just right, dumping 80 pounds of dirt atop some beautiful linens for the “farm-to-table” table...

I overheard the space manager talking to the security guard about our endeavor, saying, confused and dubious, “They’re making some sort of restaurant for one night as a joke? Yeah, I don’t get it either.”

Mehran and I argued about whether to use the warm or cool toned lights. 

Riley brought back some tea candles from the restaurant supply store, and I, with war flashbacks on the threat of fire from the This American Life interview, vetoed putting them on the table. 

Mehran briefed the security guard (a requirement for this venue) and told him to not let some guy named Michael in. The hostesses apparently had heard the same spiel and wrote a sticky note reminder to not admit “Michael Asshole” (written as if “Asshole” was his last name). I asked about it and Mehran brushed me off, saying it was the reporter for that silly little paper and he had it handled. Whatever, I had enough to worry about. 

As the opening hour drew near, we herded our army of staff downstairs into the kitchen. We’d set up a livestream of the restaurant from a camera hidden on the balcony above, and this was shown on a monitor in the kitchen below.

livestream of the dining space

Our first guests were Riley’s parents and a few groups of friends. We excitedly chattered, crowded around the lifestream screen. “Our first guests! Oh, these are friends. Are those friends or real guests?” Then, our first real guests arrived, and we watched as their hostess guided them to their seats. We jabber and shush each other in turn, trying to contain our excitement so we’re not overheard. 

We send up our first waiter to present the menus and take orders, then eagerly gathered around them to hear what they reported back. “Do they suspect anything? Do they think it’s a real restaurant? What did they say?”

The tables started filling up, and the staff were in full swing. The assembly line of food prep stations handed finished plates to waiters, steak was sizzling on the stove, party after party was seated. I scurried between the upstairs and downstairs, checking in with the hostesses upstairs, helping where I could in the kitchen below, walking with purpose on the main stage when troubleshooting, and texting back answers to the NYT reporter’s questions.  

The video projected across the wall malfunctioned, casting the default screen, in a frenzy folks watching the livestream alerted me and I rushed to correct it. “Cut it if it’s not fixed in a minute!” Mehran whisper-yelled. “I’m fixing it!” I whisper-yelled back. The video resumed and our guests dined peacefully, oblivious to the chaos below them. 

When I proposed offering “three reds and a tall glass of milk” as the beverage choices of the night, I did not think people would actually order the milk. But they did, to my great delight. And milk was poured artfully by the sommeliers into wine glasses. 

While waiting to deliver the next course, waiters exchanged the elaborate backstories they’d concocted to tell their guests.  “I’m saying I’m a prince of Persia.” “I told my section I come from a long family tradition of waiters.”

Some diners requested takeaway boxes, which we hadn’t anticipated. Riley ran out to source them, and ended up buying them off an ice cream shop across the street.

We staged a fake proposal between two of my friends - Dan, a diner, and Serena, a waitress. Dan was unfortunately seated at the one table off-camera, so I had to work with him on a realistic plan to move to a visible space, coordinate the reporters to conveniently be nearby, and hype him up to go through with it (a worthwhile investment of our finest wine). The NY Post would later describe Dan as “a disheveled looking-man” who got down on one knee - kinda funny, but I am so sorry Dan, thanks again for doing this. 

Dan and Serena 4 ever

Riley coordinated a group of his friends to stand outside and cheer for Drake, they held up some signs and successfully convinced passerby to join their crowd, believing that Drake was dining in the restaurant. 

planted Drake fans, firemen doing a check nearby stopped to join in

At one point, all the sizzling steak caused the kitchen to fill with smoke, and it started to slowly rise up to the dining level - we had to emergency open all the windows, source some fans, and redirect the fumes. 

As I hung around the hostess station, several groups called out to us on their way out, “That was a great performance!” Smiling, letting us know that they were in the know. What did they know, exactly? I don’t know what they knew. But they knew something was up. Another party asked their waiter if we were NYU performing arts students. 

I heard through the grapevine of our 60+ staff that one diner asked to buy the menu - I found the waiter to learn more, he was talking to Mehran, who said to price it at $75. And he bought it. I found the diner and let him know he made my night. I later learned he was an opera singer - so cool. Later, a second diner also bought a menu.

We were all starving, most of us there since the early morning, cooking delicious food reserved for our guests. Portion sizes were huge, some guests didn’t finish their plates, and as the waiters returned we’d descend, sharing these half-eaten meals and eating with our hands like savages in a moment of funny camaraderie. 

A few hours into the night, as a couple rounds of parties had come and gone, it finally hit me, that h*ly sh*t, we were actually pulling this off. We actually made Mehran’s Steak House into a real restaurant. For the first time since 8am that morning, I could finally take a breath and enjoy the ride.

I was still concerned about the potential news coverage though, and checked in with the NYT reporter. She was talking to people as they dined and as they were leaving, and I asked what people’s sentiment was so far. She said that she wondered for a second if our diners were plants and if we were actually pranking her because of how positive the feedback was! 

As the night went on, I ventured more onto the stage, asking people how their food was, basking in the energy of Mehran’s Steak House come to life.

I watched as people took pictures of the “past menu themes” on display, lingering on their way out to pose with them or chuckle. Peering closer at the photos of Mehran with historical figures and laughing in delight at what they’d previously overlooked, exactly as planned. 

The security guard and the space owner, who began the night confused and begrudging participants, both enthused to me how much they loved the experience we’d created, and how we shouldn’t make this a one-night-only event, but keep it going.  

A couple friends loitered outside the venue, posing as reporters among the real reporters, asking diners how their experience was. “It’s bullshit! I’ve having a great time.” One exclaims. “Some lady claiming to be a food writer for the New York Times talked to me too.” One said doubtfully. “I don’t even know what’s real anymore.” Another laughed. One remarked that the interior design reminded them of the Museum of Modern Art.

And many left completely unaware that we weren’t a long-standing establishment, enthusing that they loved the food and would be back - if they could please get a reservation.

It was so incredible to see people enjoying the night - all our hard work paying off to bring these strangers into this world we’d created, confiding in them an inside joke among friends. 

Of course, we couldn’t please everyone - one party dined and dashed after eating all six courses, another requested their bill be comped after realizing something was up, another drank three bottles of wine and asked to remove it from the bill since they thought it was complementary, and a few parties charged back their bill after the story went viral in the following week. Reading the reasons for the chargebacks, e.g. “we thought this was a 114 year old steakhouse” when that was a joke made night-of based on the $114 price of the meal, not to mention all the clearly-joking reviews of the steakhouse on Google, it should’ve probably been a lesson on reading comprehension. But we took the loss, our intention being to create a positive experience for all. Some folks in the restaurant business told us such customer complaints were standard, so we tried to not take it personally. 

As I was rushing through the kitchen doing...something...I heard the murmurings that the silly little reporter, “Michael Asshole” had shown up, and Mehran went to deal with him. As I bustled by a few times, Michael Asshole was sitting stubbornly by the entrance, refusing to leave but barred by the security guard from entering as guests awkwardly walked by him. I thought it was a bit strange that he’d shown up, because of course, Mehran must’ve told him he couldn’t write a story when he was “taking care of him.”

As the last few guests finished up their meals, we congregated in the kitchen, no longer needing to bustle around to cook or serve dishes. Tired but riding the high, shushing each other to not alert the remaining diners but too exhausted to really care. Finally, the last guests were out, and it was a huge sigh of relief and exhilaration at having actually pulled everything off. There was a collective feeling of disbelief... And then there was again urgency - it was 11pm, the rentals were being picked up at midnight, and we needed to be out of the space by midnight. 

In a final rush we threw all the linens together, disassembled tables, stacked plates and glasses back in their crates, slung silverware together, collected trash, and ravenously descended upon leftover cake. 

And Mehran and Riley finally told me the the full story of Michael Asshole - Mehran’s plan to “take care of him” was the same approach he had used with Anne Kadet, the substack writer who spurred us into action months back. He told Michael Asshole everything. Only instead of promising to keep it a secret until after the night, Michael Asshole said he was going to write the story of Mehran’s Steak House right then and there, a few days before the night, which would’ve jeopardized the entire event, the past year of planning, all the time and energy and money we’d invested, and the time of our 60+ friends who had flown out for this event. He’d put all of this at risk, just for his stupid little “news” site that probably 10 people read - but that would certainly show up in Google search results. “If I don’t write about it, someone else will beat me to it,” Michael Asshole whined. So Mehran cussed him out, they argued, then Mehran had to relent and called Michael Asshole back and promised exclusive behind-the-scenes access night of, hinted that we had a celebrity chef, etc, etc, but he had to hold off on the story until after the event. While of course planning to prevent Michael Asshole from ever stepping foot inside. “Risky” would be a generous descriptor. Yet somehow, it worked. (Truly, that seems to be the theme of our story.)

“Aren’t you so glad we didn’t tell you?” Mehran asked.

“In principle, I shouldn’t say yes...but yes.” I agreed. I was stressed enough about everything else, this probably would’ve driven me manic.

We wrapped it up, got the rentals whisked away, pawned off all the decor we bought (as most of us had to fly out, we couldn’t take much with us), and claimed various memorabilia as trophies for the night. Friends started heading to the afterparty location while we made a final sweep of the space and turned it over to the venue manager, albeit a bit late. 

We stood outside in the rain, now simmering down to a light drizzle, exhausted, exhilarated, alight with incredulous wonder. Vibrating with endorphins, awestruck at pulling off something we shouldn’t have been able to. And then we headed to the afterparty. 

I walked with Amy the baker, too full of everything to settle down, chittering with excitement as we floated through the New York City night. The afterparty was a collective exhalation of nervous energy, colored with camaraderie of pulling off such a stunt together. People whose names I couldn’t remember were like family in that moment, friends of friends we didn’t know instantly becoming bonded in this experience. We packed into this room in Chinatown, bangers playing, friends dancing, laughing, singing their hearts out. Doing “mystery shots” - something you’d never take from a stranger, but in that room, everyone was a friend. Chanting and yelling and it felt like the end credits of a movie - too much of everything to be real life.  

riley, me, mehran - riding the high of an executed scheme - photo creds @memoriesbymathu

Trial by jury: the public response

That Sunday, the stress of getting through the night was gone, replaced with the high of a successful scheme pulled off even better than we’d dreamed. Alongside the growing imminent fear of what the press would write. They’d been very positive when we spoke, but you never know. 

On Monday, the press was dropping. I did feel like I was going to throw up. I had real work to do, but I could hardly focus. The group chat was blowing up with recollections of the night and anticipations of what was to come. 

I found a Mehran’s Steak House Instagram account, which was weird, because I didn’t make it, and I didn’t think Mehran or Riley had. They confirmed they hadn’t. The group chat confirmed it wasn’t any of them. So some stranger had just made an Instagram impersonating us? They stole photos from our Google reviews, but much worse, they wrote captions that attempted to be clever but were so cringe. As the creative director, I would not stand for our brand to be besmirched like this. We messaged them but they wouldn’t answer, and I was concerned what they were planning to do with this. I made an authentic Instagram to counter, so people wouldn’t follow the other one and give them influence, and the impersonator stole all my photos and reposted them on their account. 

Meanwhile, the NYT texted us many follow-up questions. There was no ETA for when the articles would drop, just sometime on Monday, so I felt slightly nauseous the whole day. Optimistic, but worried. The night had gone so well, but now was the time that a career-ruining article could drop. It could be so over for me. 

First, the Anne Kadet article dropped. Then the NY Post. Finally, the New York Times article was published.

Unfortunately the NYT article was a huge disappointment to me, besides portraying the story as a thrown-together “prank” rather than the work we put in to curate a genuinely enjoyable experience, it largely cut me out of the story and attributed the work we split evenly to just the guys. And since it’s the NYT, the majority of the subsequent media followed suit in excluding me. 

I wouldn’t have minded if the steakhouse wasn’t covered by the media at all, but it was disheartening to be made to feel imposter syndrome about something so close to my heart. Subsequently talking about our scheme, I had to embarrassingly caveat that if you looked it up, most of the media wouldn’t reflect that I was one of the creators, and I wasn’t over-crediting myself in telling the story.

Anyway. I try to remind myself it could’ve been a lot worse - reflecting back on the fears instilled in me by This American Life  - at least there wasn’t a fire! At least I wasn’t fire-d by my employer!

And Athena, a “chef” whose Tiktok about the Steak House went viral, cheered me up by saying, “It’s a good thing we have independent media.”

Our friends created more behind-the-scenes content on the Steak House, and even elected to make some videos specifically highlighting my interior design work. (I love our friends and I may’ve teared up about this.)

I was flying out that night, but we started receiving an onslaught of interview requests. The Morning Show wanted to interview us as I was mid-flight. We freaked out in the group chat, I tried to see if I could take a video call from the airplane bathroom (this did not work), so I ended up interviewing separately in the airport after landing at 2am. At 6am, I was woken by my roommate Elena politely but firmly banging on my door, since my phone was on silent, and Mehran tried to call my other roommate Emily who was out of town and gave them Elena’s number, and through this convoluted chain they managed to successfully wake me to do another interview that started in five minutes. Running on a few hours of sleep, I went to bed after (phone not on silent this time) and when I woke we had several more interviews lined up. The next few days were a frenzy of media coverage as I tried my best to do my day job amongst this whirlwind of excitement. We were covered internationally, Tiktoks and Twitter threads about us were blowing up, and an agent reached out about making our story into a movie. 

It was fascinating getting a glimpse into how the media works from our 15 minutes of fame. And from my inside view, I gained a fair bit of skepticism on the news.

We were flooded by interview requests, but even more so, reporters starting writing about us without even speaking to us. Much of the media focused on speed and sensationalism over, well, accuracy. Even well-known, respected publications jumped to proclaim: Prank! College kids! Group of kids tricked those rich snobby New Yorkers!

Even though that was not the point at all of our endeavor.

Some people literally just made things up. Riley contacted one reporter who wrote many major inaccuracies, and their excuse was, “Oh, yeah, well the NYT article was paywalled, so.”

If the media can’t even be trusted to cover a silly little story like ours correctly, in which all the organizers are willing to talk to them, with copious amounts of primary source videos available, how can they be trusted to report on actually significant, multi-faceted news?

Also, interestingly, it seemed the news followed peoples’ sentiment, rather than facilitating it. The initial articles from the NYT and NY Post were somewhat lukewarm, but as our story picked up traction, and the public response was majority positive, articles starting becoming more and more gleeful about our endeavor. Not necessarily more favorable in the way I would've liked (i.e. on us creating a genuinely delightful experience for our guests) but in relishing in how we young bucks sure pranked those pretentious New Yorkers!

That’s not to say I’m now a complete cynic of news - ABC and SF Gate did a notably good job in my opinion of capturing our story and fact-checking details. 

We learned that someone created a Wikipedia article about us, but a moderator had shut it down, writing they “didn’t want to add another feather to the pranksters’ caps.”

A talent agency reached out about making our story into a movie, and it was very cool. We spoke with some directors, actors, and production studios, and one ended up pitching our story to Netflix and Amazon. Unfortunately, they rejected it and so crushed our aspirations of stardom. Which, honestly, we weren’t too hopeful for anyways - it was a long shot and not to sound like a simp, but even getting rejected by those media companies was still pretty cool. 

Epilogue

If I were to go back in time, I would’ve tried to appreciate the ride more, and stress less about the outcome. Collaborating on a creative project with friends was so much fun, and it kept us closer than we might’ve otherwise been - with Mehran and Riley in our rigorous planning, and with this inside joke that always gave our ex-housemates something to chat about, and ultimately reunited us back in New York. Despite my stress, everything worked out in the smoothly in the end - it was an unimaginable payoff, but also so much fun along the way.

So! Now here we are. Mehran, Riley, and I titled our group Meridian, an approximate amalgamation of the first letters of our names, to leave the door open for more projects together in the future. 

As for what’s next - our schemes may’ve shifted coasts to San Francisco, but they will not stop - I can promise you that. 

I realize this story is very long - thank you so much for reading till the end :) love you :) And, dear reader, if there’s one thing I hope you take away from this story, it’s that with a bit of follow-through, life can be as whimsical as you dare to make it.