BY KURT RABIN

Let me make this clear up front: I'm not a steak guy. I've heard the industry sales pitch--that there's nothing like a restaurant steak. The pros have got the right purveyors, the best cuts of meat, the culinary know-how and the 900-degree heat to do the job right. But take me to a steakhouse, and I'm liable to order ribs, fish, even chicken.

I'll admit, that first bite of steak can be a many-splendored thing. But it's like that first sip of Coke: It's hard to imagine there could be anything better. But then flavor fatigue sets in, and finishing it feels like a chore. A little history here: My so-called steak-eating life has consisted exclusively of the fare from buffets, banquets and barbecues. So what am I doing reviewing Culpeper's new Piedmont: A Virginia Steakhouse?

I felt there was a story that needed to be told, a narrative with something for everyone. The tale would begin in the town of Culpeper, in a brick building of pleasing proportions from the 1890s.

Originally home to Central Hardware, the structure would go on to house such businesses as a coffee shop, an Irish bar and, most recently, a popular Italian restaurant operated by a husband-wife team from New England. The story would include a bit of history, a natural disaster, dashed dreams, survival and renewal.

But someone else is going to have to tell that tale, because I got sidetracked by another story--a kind of bromance, if you will. Suffice it to say that when the August 2011 Virginia quake came rumbling through Culpeper, it left that old hardware annex, not to mention that Boston couple's finances, a shambles.

But four months later at the turn of the new year, there rising from the rubble was the Piedmont steakhouse, brainchild of owner David Hackett, 54, of Washington. Hackett, who washed his first dish professionally at 14, spent the bulk of his 40-year restaurant career working at a pair of D.C.'s finest steakhouses, Morton's and The Palm. And, if pressed, he's got the photographic evidence to back it up: There he is, back in the 1990s in his waiter garb, looking like a young Dan Aykroyd, with his arm draped around, first, President Bill Clinton, then Joltin' Joe DiMaggio and finally, Vladimir Putin (who, it turns out, is quite a good tipper).