A '40s hangout for Marlon, Brando, Tennessee Williams and Frank Sinatra; Monkey Bar has been brought back to its heyday with revitalized look and fresh new menu. Its owners are headliners in their own right, a team that includes Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and an owner of Waverly Inn, teaming-up with hotel/restaurant partners Jeff Klein (Hotelier of City Club and Sunset Tower Hotel) and Jeremy King (The Wolseley London).
The restaurant looks much the same as it did before with its pastel mural of mischievous monkeys in the main bar and various New Yorker-style portraits of old Hollywood that surround the main dining room. While technically attached to the 3-star Elysee Hotel, it's guests are most definitely unwelcome and rarely present unless filly a pre-6pm or post-10pm reservation. In their place are a butt-to-bosom contingent of NYC corporate and media brass that are more Page 6 than Perez Hilton lining the various be-seen booths you really want to be in and lesser 4-tops for everyone else at the center of the dining room.
The Food
Is there any chef that wouldn’t drop their spatula to run the kitchen of a Graydon Carter-owned eatery? Enter Elliot Ketley, most recently of Soho House, who ditches his Euro-comfort food in lieu of French rich people food in one of the showiest restaurant openings in recent memory. The menu begins with a medley of bistro specialties including tower of fresh oysters, steak tartare with toast points and fancy foie gras dippers. Lighter eaters and pouty actresses find seafood salads, classic crab dishes and rather healthy seafood presentations ala Paris’s Brasserie Lipp. Main course is a heavy affair of hangar steak with crispy fries, roasted chicken and American burgers enjoyed by most people too old or rich to really have to care about their figure.
Last Word
Fashion editor creates latest be-seen feeding frenzy at reinvented NYC dining landmark with glitzy main dining room and romantic bar featured in Sex and the City. Opening week guests included Madonna, Rihanna, Anna Wintour and Charlie Rose.
