One of New York City’s most awaited returns of the past decade, the massive and historic Waldorf Astoria hotel—which takes up an entire city block in Midtown Manhattan, between 49th and 50th Streets along Park Avenue—reopened on July 15 after years of renovations. The refreshed space includes three new restaurants outfitted with a world-class wine cellar.
The hotel was closed in 2017, primarily to convert the upper stories of the structure into condominium units, with the rest reserved for hotel rooms and suites. Once the largest hotel in the world, the Waldorf Astoria has been immortalized hundreds of times over in song, film and memory—a favorite haunt for the likes of Frank Sinatra, Herbert Hoover and Winston Churchill.
The new dining options at the Waldorf Astoria include Lex Yard—an American brasserie from Michael Anthony, the chef who has long helmed Best of Award of Excellence winner Gramercy Tavern. (Anthony will continue to lead the Union Square Hospitality Group restaurant in addition to Lex Yard.) In signature Anthony style, the menu will be hyper-seasonal, which excites Natascha Patterer, the beverage director for the entire hotel and its three new concepts. “It makes [my] job sort of easier, because underlying this modernity [in the cuisine] we are circling tradition,” says Patterer.
Lex Yard is the flagship restaurant for the hotel, with 220 seats spanning a more lively ground-floor bar and the more upscale second floor. With both a prix-fixe market menu and à la carte options available, Anthony’s menu leans into old-school New York classics with some international touches, like a Japanese egg sando–inspired caviar dish, or poached halibut bathed in borscht sauce. And of course, there’s a Waldorf salad.
Outfitting a cellar that not only pairs well with the vastly different restaurant concepts but also covers room service and the overall level of quality expected by guests was a welcome challenge for Patterer, who previously curated lists for the New York City–based Bowery Group and Stephen Starr’s Starr Restaurant Group.
With the second restaurant Yoshoku, which serves kaiseki cuisine—a traditional, multi-course style of Japanese meal—Patterer made sure to provide wines that would complement both those dishes and Anthony’s. That includes chilled reds, red and white Burgundy, German Riesling, and sparkling wine. Highlighting local products, the wine program is particularly strong in wines from New York. Wineries from across Long Island and the Finger Lakes are featured, including Wölffer Estate and Channing Daughters on the South Fork. Since joining the team this spring, she expanded the 200-selection cellar to over 500 different bottlings available across the different concepts before opening. For the future, Patterer has ambitions to grow the cellar to over 700 different labels by the holiday season.
The last new dining option from the Waldorf Astoria crew is Peacock Alley, a classic cocktail bar in the heart of the hotel serving twists on tipples like the “50th St. Martini,” accented with grassy vetiver liqueur. At the center of it all is a Steinway piano, which was played by legendary pianist and composer Cole Porter when he lived at the Waldorf Astoria nearly a century ago—a reminder of the hotel’s past as it opens the doors for its future.
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