Romanian steakhouses were much fancier kosher joints with linen tableclothes. The waiters wore bow ties. They first sprung up sometime before the beginning of the twentieth century The early ones were on Delancey Street, the main commercial drag of the Jewish Lower East Side. They spread to Second Avenue, the Yiddish Rialto, where the theaters were and then on to midtown as their East European Jewish clientele became increasingly assimilated and geographically widespread. In 1946 these restaurants drew a multi-ethnic crowd and were lively places. The mob frequented them, calling them "Jew joints" or, in the case of the fancier ones like Moskowitz and Lupowitz on Second Avenue and Second Street, "carpet joints." Some of the restaurants had strolling violinists who played gypsy or Yiddish music. The steaks they served were usually from less expensive cuts. The Romanians also introduced the city to pastrami, an adaptation of basturma, the spicy, air-dried beef that the Turks, who once ruled the Balkans, ate.
The Romanian steakhouses offered similar menus. Arthur Schwartz writes that chopped liver was the popular starter but there were other options such as sliced brains, P'tcha (calf's feet jelly with garlic), chopped eggs and onions, gefilte fish or Romanian eggplant salad. Groups would often order several appetizers to share with a side of unborn eggs, a big deal that to Schwartz tasted the same as plain egg yolks. Stuffed cabbage could be had as a starter or as a huge main course, as could chicken fricassee (mostly giblets with tiny meatballs in gravy), or sweetbreads and mushrooms with egg barley. Romanian tenderloin was the popular choice among the "broilings." It was usually skirt steak but sometimes the cut now known as hangar steak. The big spenders ordered the mushk steak; Mimi Sheraton wrote that she never figured out what cut it was but Schwartz says it was rib-eye. For garlic lovers there was karnztzlach, essentially a garlic-laced beef sausage without the casing. Breaded, fried veal chops was another standard as were boiled flanken with noodles, kreplach, knaidlach, and roast goose with kasha. By 1946 the distinction between some of the midtown Romanian steakhouses and other steak and chop houses was less clear. A place like Phil Gluckstern's also had "American" dishes on their menus while places like Cavanagh's and Dinty Moore's offered gefilte fish and kosher beef.
Mimi Sheraton accompanied her boyfriend, Irv Hochberg, to the wedding of his cousin, later to be famous as the artist Larry Rivers, at a kosher Romanian restaurant on the Lower East Side. It was, she writes a Felliniesque assemblage of first-generation Jews. The bride was pregnant. The music was provided by the pot-smoking members of the jazz combo with whom Rivers played at 52nd Street nightclubs. Sheraton remembers being served icra de sucra (whitefish roe caviar), jellied calf’s feet, matzo ball soup, beef kanetzlach, skirt steak, stuffed derma, kasha varnishkes, potatoes mashed with fried onions and schmaltz; french fries, latkes and fried silver dollar potatoes. Irv also took her to Phil Gluckstern's, a leading midtown representative of the category. It was on West 49th Street when Irv and Mimi frequented it and advertised that it was under strict rabbinical supervision. In 1946 it moved to West 48th Street, Dinner started at 75 cents. Here is a postcard photo of the location on West 48th Street from the website for the Center For Jewish History.
Sources: Eating My Words by Mimi Sheraton
Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food by Arthur Schwartz