Tony’s of Lexington

The Restaurant

Tony's of Lexington holds the ground-floor corner of West Main Street and Patterson at The Square retail-and-residential complex directly across from Rupp Arena and the Lexington Convention Center, and has run as proprietor Tony Ricci's Lexington flagship since opening. The dining-room footprint runs across a single large main floor with a mezzanine private dining loft above the sushi bar: the main floor reads as a deliberate urban-chic blend of Southern hospitality and Manhattan steakhouse — high coffered ceilings with industrial pendants, deep leather booths along the eastern wall, white linens and gold-and-mahogany finishes across the central four-top floor, and the dramatic central feature wall of back-lit wine cubbies that holds about eight hundred labels visible from every table on the floor. The marble bar runs the southern length of the room and pours a hundred-plus-bourbon programme alongside a thirty-cocktail signature menu.

The kitchen runs a hand-cut U.S.D.A. Prime steakhouse programme — bone-in ribeye, dry-aged New York strip, filet mignon, the signature Tomahawk for two — alongside a fresh seafood board that runs daily through Hawaiian opah, Atlantic halibut, Maine lobster and Alaskan king crab, and a full sushi-and-sashimi programme from the room's six-seat sushi bar at the back. Signature plates include the beer-battered cheese curds appetiser, the seared ahi tuna tartare with sesame-soy glaze, the colossal Crab Louis Roll, the dry-aged tomahawk for two with bone-marrow butter, the broiled Maine lobster tail, and the dining-room's signature beef carpaccio plated tableside. The wine programme has held the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence — about eight hundred labels with deliberate Napa, Bordeaux, Tuscan and Burgundy depth — and the bourbon programme runs at the Lexington steakhouse benchmark north of one hundred labels.

Service at Tony's runs at the Manhattan-and-Chicago steakhouse pace the format requires — career captains who break the table down to the salt rim, side-tableside Caesar and beef-carpaccio plating that the Keeneland regulars order weekly, and a bone-in steak pace that runs at the longer hundred-and-five-minute rhythm of a real birthday or close-a-deal evening rather than the fast turn of a casual steakhouse. The booth seating along the eastern wall handles real privacy with head-high leather backs, and the mezzanine private dining loft books for groups of eight through twenty-four for full birthday dinners and corporate evenings. The Rupp Arena address — across the street from the Lexington Convention Center and a five-minute walk to either the Hyatt Regency or the Lexington Marriott — closes the after-dinner transit risk for both Kentucky basketball game nights and Derby Week corporate visitors. For a downtown Lexington birthday or team dinner that needs the architectural photograph of a real fine-dining steakhouse with a full sushi programme, Tony's is the standing room.