Back in 2016, shortly after I joined the magazine Bon Appétit as an assistant editor, two of the top editors treated me to lunch. They decided on Augustine, the short-lived, four-dollar-sign Keith McNally restaurant on the ground floor of the Beekman hotel in the financial district.
I don’t remember much about the meal other than the seafood tower we split, and the midday Negroni I ordered, but I remember thinking to myself, “This is a power lunch.” Or maybe a show-of-power lunch. Either way, with that extravagant meal in that extravagant dining room, my bosses wanted to impress me: a 20-something making less than half their salaries in a job that I would be laid off from a year later.
This is not to say I hate power lunches. They’re actually the best, like a tiny vacation in the middle of the day. Without power lunches, we wouldn’t have tales from the Algonquin Round Table or Patti LuPone’s rendition of “Ladies Who Lunch.” In 2021 and 2022, it seemed as if the power lunch might not be long for this world; The Times even ran a story with the headline, “The Business Lunch May Be Going Out of Business.” The intervening years have demonstrated, however, that many of us are coming back to our offices here on Work Island — I mean, Manhattan — and so have restaurants that want to serve us seafood towers and cocktails.
Enter the new generation of power lunch restaurants.
Café Chelsea
The Hotel Chelsea has long been synonymous with its Depression-era Spanish restaurant El Quijote. Unfortunately, the restaurant doesn’t serve lunch; but its eight-month-old sister restaurant Café Chelsea does. Where El Quijote is dark, moody and soaked with sangria, Café Chelsea is romantic, bright and soft and a great place to discuss business — both personal and professional — over a croque-madame and an endive salad.
218 West 23rd (Seventh Avenue)
Revelie Lunchonette
Midtown may be the center of Work Island, but some people are lucky enough to work below Houston. If you’re one of them, (1) I’m so jealous and (2) I encourage you to take a long lunch at Revelie Luncheonette, a diner-esque restaurant from the team behind the ’70s-era French bistro Raoul’s. It’s exactly the kind of place that drives diner obsessives crazy — so-called blue-plate specials priced $26 to $36 — but people who love high-low dining experiences will really enjoy it. Where else can you split moules frites and hatch chile con queso over a midday Malbec?
179 Prince Street (Sullivan Street)
Mischa
If you’ve never visited Mischa, the chef Alex Stupak’s newest restaurant, then you might not know that it was built with power lunches in mind. After all, it’s the anchor restaurant of the Hugh, an upscale food hall on the ground floor of the Citigroup Center building. If you’re entertaining out-of-town clients, there’s a high chance they’ll enjoy Mischa’s cheffed up takes on classics like spinach artichoke dip and clam chowder. Or blow their minds and order the excellent $29 hot dog — they’ll be telling that story for years.
153 East 53rd Street (Lexington Avenue)
Mari.Ne Handroll
Of all the restaurants on this list, Mari.Ne is the least formal, but that’s not a criticism so much as a heads up. The restaurant, from the team behind the Michelin-starred Mari in Hell’s Kitchen, serves its hand rolls from a long counter. As the name suggests, their specialty is seafood hand rolls like scallop, salmon, yellowtail and an incredible spicy tuna variety, but there is also a Wagyu hand roll and a nice vegan selection. (Soy bulgogi, anyone?) The chefs place each roll into a little stand as they’re ready, so there’s plenty of time to chat between bites.
135 West 41st Street (Broadway)
Sailor
Sailor has the distinction of being the only restaurant on this list that isn’t in Manhattan, but I felt moved to add it after enjoying a languorous meal there on a Wednesday afternoon. From my booth, I watched as the chef April Bloomfield cooked lunch service — I got the day’s special, a fortifying burger with caramelized onions and French fries — and I took note as the dining room slowly filled with people who looked as if they had envious LinkedIn connections. A tip: Though lunch and dinner reservations may seem to be in short supply, half of all the seats and the entire bar are always reserved for walk-ins.
228 DeKalb Avenue (Clermont Avenue)
Delmonico’s
OK, Delmonico’s isn’t all that new: If you don’t count all the times it has closed, burned down or been sold off, it’s been around in some form since 1827. But since September, the latest iteration has been serving all the dishes that made it a staple of 19th- and 20th-century fine dining — porterhouse steaks, wedge salads, crab cakes, baked Alaska — in a gorgeous, Renaissance Revival building in the financial district. Plus, as The Times’s restaurant critic Pete Wells pointed out not that long ago in this newsletter, the dessert menu has been taken over by the celebrated pastry chef Miro Uskokovic, previously of Gramercy Tavern.
56 Beaver Street (William Street)
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