A City of Swankstaurants

"Spots such as the minuscule clubhouse 4 Charles Prime Rib and Jon Neidich's the Nines, with its burgundy velvet and caviar-topped baked potatoes, helped to establish the template for a proper swankstaurant. The past few months have seen a rush of them - from the gaslight glow of Chez Fifi uptown to the latest Chumley's reboot, known as the Eighty Six, downtown - often coming from chefs and restaurateurs who had initially followed a more casual path."

"At Chateau Royale, which opened this past summer from the owners of the West Village bistro Libertine, the restaurant is divided into two distinct levels, each with its own menu. In the ground-floor barroom, all dark cherry-wood and oxblood leather, the vibe is clubby, not quite cheap but down to earth. "Le Burger" balances out its bleu cheese with special sauce; a winky "chien chaud" is ground Wagyu with fermented kohlrabi slaw."

A shift is occurring from the rough-and-ready comfort cuisine that followed the pandemic toward glossy, upscale dining labeled 'swankstaurants.' Operators are reopening or rebranding with theatrical interiors—burgundy velvet, caviar-topped baked potatoes, gaslight glow—and menus that mix luxe items with elevated comfort dishes. Examples include minuscule clubhouse 4 Charles Prime Rib and the Nines, plus new iterations like Chez Fifi and Chumley's reboot the Eighty Six. Some spaces split identities across rooms, as at Chateau Royale, where a clubby ground-floor barroom offers casual items including a ground-Wagyu 'chien chaud' and a $20 Wagyu burger, while an upstairs dining room goes fully deluxe.

Read at Grub Street