After 57 years as an Irish pub at 358 E 57th St, the Sutton Place room is now officially The Derby Club, a restaurant built on early-1980s New York dining, with ruby red banquettes, a chandelier from the original Waldorf Astoria, and pastrami carved on the bar through the evening. Chef Ed Cotton runs the kitchen as executive chef and partner, alongside restaurateur Chris Coco and managerial partner Craig Hutson, from the hospitality group behind New York City's iconic Jack & Charlie's No. 118 and Leonetta. The period they chose is the one when the word Cosmopolitan and everything it stood for was at its peak and serious, traditional dining ran into the electricity of a new era.
The original cherry-wood bar still meets guests at the door and leads into a 38-seat dining room lined with ruby red banquettes. A mural by Philadelphia's Bird Studio covers the west wall with a landscape of Sutton Place and the East River. Vintage pieces, period artwork, and showpiece antiques run through the rest of the space. Elaborate cakes sit on display in the middle of the dining room, and through the evening a roasted pastrami beef eye round is carved atop the bar for a beef and cheddar sandwich on a warm onion roll.
Cotton's menu goes back to the dishes of the period and reworks them rather than copying them, so the names read familiar and the plates do not. The Chicken À La King Pot Pie arrives not as a casserole but as a composed dish in a crisp puff pastry shell, filled with slowly poached chicken and root vegetables and finished in a chicken broth enriched with crème fraîche and brightened with fresh lemon.
The Baked Potato Bourguignon does the same to one of the steakhouse's most familiar accompaniments: a crisp-skinned baked potato paired with beef braised slowly in red wine and a rich beef jus, with smoky bacon, mushrooms, pearl onions, and fresh herbs, then finished tableside with whipped horseradish cream and chopped chives. Around those two the menu runs through Steak Diane, Rack of Lamb Persillade served with Neary's Mint Jelly, Broiled Littleneck Clams Casino, Cottage Pie Croquettes, Potted Chicken Liver Mousse, and a Hawaiian Wagyu London Broil, among others.
"Opening The Derby Club in this legendary location is an honor," Cotton said. "This corner has been a landmark for New York hospitality for generations, and we've always known that we wanted to create a concept that would carry out its legacy and honor its history in an unexpected way. My vision immediately connected to a time when dining out was an event, when restaurants felt more like social clubs, and when every shared meal was a new memory." The Derby Club runs seven days a week, with the bar opening at 4 p.m. and dinner starting at 5 p.m. It opened with dinner service and plans to add a weekend roast later this year.
Book your table at: https://www.derbyclubny.com/