The vault still holds something worth waiting for.

106 Main Street in Woodbridge, New Jersey, opened in the early 1900s as a bank. It closed during the Great Depression, and the building spent years as a hunting and fishing store, where a local kid named Michael Strickland used to buy his bait. Today it’s his steakhouse. The old steel vault dry-ages ribeyes behind glass, mugshots of bank robbers hang in the lounge, and the Wagyu is finished at the table on a 500-degree stone.

The building has a history, but the people inside it make the story. So that’s where we focused: the hands that torch and carve a tomahawk at the table, the kitchen mid-service, a server who can tell you how long a ribeye has been in the vault and why it matters. And the guests, who are as much a part of the room as the people serving them.