Earlier this week, the hosts of How Long Gone discussed New York City restaurant BONDST. “It was very, very popular in like 2008, 2009, 2010,” says Chris Black, referring to his clubbing heyday. He continues: “It was smackin’, I have to say, and the scene is crazy, because it feels like a club the cast of The City would have gone to…the food is good, but they were literally playing Benny the Butcher while I was eating.” Though, Black clarifies that hearing rap music at a “clubby, Japanese sushi restaurant” feels appropriate. “Is that crazy?” His co-host Jason Stewart affirms his musings; no, it is not crazy, for muddled reasons that compare the art of sushi making to writing lyrically impressive rap music. “I like clubby style restaurants, those do need to comeback… what if they were good?” Black retorts: “Then they wouldn’t work.”
Black avoids using the portmanteau “clubstaurant” for unclear reasons—it is probably “not chic”—despite decidedly defining a “clubstaurant” in his description of BONDST. It is not just the word that is unchic, but the “clubstaurants” themselves: loud, with unimpressive cuisine and a clientele to match. Stewart and Black’s conversation also implies that clubstaurants ever went away. This is not true: The City may have been canceled after two seasons, but Whitney Port’s favorite restaurants never closed, instead inspiring both nouveau imitators and more of the same.
I pondered the lives and deaths of clubstaurants as I ate at the Straker’s pop-up a few weeks back. It was hosted at Ella Funt, a textbook clubstaurant owned and operated by Lounes Mazouz, the son of sketch London owner Mourad Mazouz who, in his own famous venture, prioritizes experience over sustenance.1 sketch was once London’s trendiest (or most viral, in a pre-TikTok sense) place, housing eclectic, differently themed dining rooms whose theme park ambience overshadowed menus. In fact, sketch’s bathrooms, which are 2001-esque halls with giant, egg-shaped stalls, overshadowed the dining rooms. But, at least this is a definable experience; it was built to be the restaurant with the bathrooms. As I finished my meal at Ella Funt, the chairs and stools around me were haphazardly swept aside before my dessert even arrived. A be-suited early-twenty-something arrived with a USB stick in-hand to DJ the “afters,” which is a weekly occurrence at the restaurant. Ella Funt claims, per its Instagram page, that it’s dedicated to “the sensual and the surreal” vis-à-vis walls decorated with art by “global artists who explore the erotic and eccentric.” I suspected that my meal was so lackluster not because of Straker, but because his hedonism was too enabled by this setting and similarly vapid kitchen. Unlike the thematic club rooms at sketch, Ella Funt is not a space defined by anything except a generic “good time.”
Clubstaurants of all kinds, though, are not necessarily in the restaurant business as much as they create a new industry of food and music delivery. The Michelin Guide does not factor external “experience” into its rating system, awarding the maximum number of stars for specifically food “worthy of a special journey.” Clubstaurants thrive on everything but, and thereby seek other metrics of prestige and draw.
Quintessential clubstaurants come courtesy of the CATCH Hospitality Group, known for its steak and seafood-forward restaurants that first graced New York City in 2011, when “indie sleaze” gave way to Obama-era optimism, and supermodels, actors, and musicians ditched downtown and Brooklyn loft parties for aspirational meatpacking nights out. Investment bank corporate expense accounts were once again expanding, and, a few years out from 2008, people finally had money to spend again. What better way to blow it than on the elevated excess of a CATCH property? Shortly thereafter, TAO—perhaps the most widely known “original” clubstaurant—opened its “downtown” location nearby. Yes, the former meatpacking district certainly had the space for capacious eating and drinking establishments. But, it also was the former meatpacking district: slaughterhouses gave way to luxury rental and retail so that you could eat overpriced proteins and watch the sun rise from the newly-converted High Line. Though not on purpose, CATCH and TAO Downtown perhaps embodied that historical transition.
Clubstaurants usually do not have a point, though, so defining them is slippery. They are commonly frequented by bankers, consultants, and any other professional services employees entertaining clients and themselves, both on and off the clock. But, just because a restaurant is frequented by these types does not necessarily make it a clubstaurant. Consider a new guest column called Expense Account on Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me, which is “about Business Guy Restaurants—the bistros, sushi spots and lounges that are best rationalized with the involvement of a corporate card.” Perhaps the most famous of these establishments, which Expense Account’s critic visited on election night, is Balthazar. They outline the attraction of Balthazar as a place where “anything can happen, yet nothing will ever change,” and liken it to Disney World. But, they also lament Baltahzar’s status as an iconic New York restaurant: can a pastiche of another city’s dime-a-dozen eateries really be quintessential to a city flush with cultural diversity?
I happened to be at Balthazar the day after the election. Yes, Keith McNally plays DJ from his chosen corner. The music is loud, and the drinks are flowing, cold, and occasionally free (or, almost free); the menu is not very large, and does not require much thought beyond whether you want a side of chicken, beef, or seafood with your frites. Even still, the food is why the restaurant has been open and packed for so many years. I agree with Expense Account: Balthazar is like Disney World, if your aspirations are quaint familiarity and magical enjoyment of decent, radically consistent food backed by The Black Keys and Miley Cyrus. When I sit in a leather-bound booth there—as I have about eight times over the past nine years—I am reminded that it is more an equalizer than anything else, a place where I might run into Marc Jacobs waiting for his brunch table, or realize the elegant housewife at an adjacent table is wearing $1,000 Chanel flats while enjoying the same mussels as me. An expense account hotspot, yes; a clubstaurant, no.
In September, CATCH Hospitality Group opened The Corner Store, its first restaurant in 13 years at what it refers to as “the landmark corner of Houston and West Broadway in SoHo.” To me, this intersection is a landmark because it is home to Morgenstern’s, but to others, it is a landmark because Taylor Swift dined there twice within a month of The Corner Store opening. The first time, she was pictured with pal Gigi Hadid, the second, with her boyfriend Travis Kelce and celebrity couple Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. When my girlfriend saw pictures of the latter occasion, she asked: “How did the paparazzi even know to find her there? That’s just… an intersection.”2 As arguably the most famous person in the world, Swift’s visits to reservations-only The Corner Store do read more as paid club walk-throughs than actual enthusiasm for the “whole section of the menu devoted to martini service.”
Whatever the reason, it has proved effective, because The Corner Store is now Resy’s “trendiest” restaurant. It is fully booked for the foreseeable future by patrons looking to don “smart elegant attire” for a “nostalgic tribute to New York City” that “blends the timeless charm of the past with a playful yet meticulously curated food & beverage program.” While the latter part of this description could apply to many places, namely Balthazar, the unmoored nature of The Corner Store’s aesthetic places it into a different category. Designed by Rockwell Group, the restaurant features “Soho-inspired design” that is a nu-Deco “mix of classic and modern,” perfect for people who do not really want to think too hard about the place they are in, instead just that they are in it. In the words of Peter Griffin, it insists upon itself, as do the people who dine there.
Rockwell Group has designed numerous clubstaurants around the world, including CATCH Steak, and nearly every property it has touched seems rife with the same modernized Art Deco booths and bars that are so sought after at The Corner Store. Though unseemly, it epitomizes a growing sentiment that we are currently living though the new “Roaring Twenties.” Characterized by “risk-on optimism” and “new technologies,” the 1920s were a product of the Spanish Flu which devolved into the Great Depression at home and the rightward creep of fascism abroad. Today is eerily similar, though everything seems more stupid.
Max Read recently wrote about what he calls the “TikTok electorate,” defining young, impressionable male influencers as analogous to small business owners, their susceptibility to volatility in multiples forms a new political currency that has been utilized far more effectively by the right than the left. But it’s not that fascist influencers are turning normal, chipper people into misogynists, it’s that, in Read’s words: “some young men bring a set of misogynist assumptions and masculinist entitlements to TikTok and YouTube, and have those self-flattering ideas reinforced and strengthened into hardened beliefs.” Clubstaurant culture has been institutionalized: it’s easier to be convinced that something familiar is also something good, especially when the “risk-on optimism” and “new technologies” of the 2020s are legalized sports-betting and generative AI, the Gatsby-esque parties not in actual homes or clubs, but in restaurants that resemble those homes and clubs of yore. Sure, Gen Z males are seemingly becoming the new Hitler Youth en masse. But, they also really want to score that Resy to try steak disco frites with a side of “McOli Sauce.”
As America heads into Trump’s second term, clubstaurants might lose their luster. Wait, Taylor Swift voted for Kamala Harris? Babe, we can’t go to her favorite restaurant. If history repeats itself, there may not be any partying to do at clubstaurants. Although markets soared as Trump’s victory was announced, if Gen Z continues to be enticed and manipulated by volatility, Corner Store Five Cheese Pizza Rolls might be replaced by Totino’s. Or, this new wave of fascist optimism could carry The Corner Store to heights unforeseen: every reich needs its Chez Maurice. If times are good, celebrate; if times are bad, forget. Like TAO and CATCH, it will endure not because the food is good, but precisely because it isn’t.
Clubstaurants are more ventures than purveyors of cuisine.
She specifically said that Blake must have called because there are pics of them exiting and entering.
I went to Balthazar on election night, hoping to be able to mooch of Keith. While I didn’t get a bottle of champagne I did get a free glass of champagne for dining by myself. That remains one of my favorite things about that place tbh
very good. very terrifying. thank you.