Reader's View: Absence of Place
BY JENNIFER JENKINS
jjenkins@miamiherald.com
It's a fairly unassuming building on the 79th Street Causeway, just one of many I cruise by every day on my way home to Normandy Isle in Miami Beach. It houses a Chinese restaurant, and I'd never thought about what was there before; if pressed, I doubt I'd have imagined it was once a trendy hangout for mobsters and famous entertainers.
But longtime South Florida resident Brian Scott Older tells a different story of the building where the Place for Steak used to be.
'Simply put, it was a `gin and tonic with a N.Y. strip served on the side' kinda place,'' Older wrote. ''Inexpensive food, cheap drinks and plenty of gold diggers, mob wannabes and floozies inhabited the place.'' The building was also a mob hangout and a stomping ground for the legendary Rat Pack, comprised of Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra.