About Gramercy Tavern
Danny Meyer opened Gramercy Tavern in 1994 with a radical proposition: that fine dining could be warm, that Michelin-calibre cooking did not require a room that made you sit up straight and whisper. Thirty years later, nothing about that proposition has changed — except that the restaurant has become an institution, a benchmark, and the answer to the question every New Yorker reaches for when the occasion demands the best without the frost.
Chef Michael Anthony has held the kitchen since 2006, building a menu rooted in the farmers and producers of the Northeast. The seasonal tasting menu — five courses, $168 — shifts with genuine intention as autumn gives way to winter and spring arrives in the greenmarket. Standouts from any given season might include acorn squash with brown butter and crispy kale, monkfish with a corn-and-mussel broth, or venison with roasted beets and juniper jus. Every plate looks considered and tastes uncontrived.
The room itself divides into a casual tavern at the front and the formal dining room beyond, separated by a hand-painted mural of flowers and insects that has become one of the great dining-room artworks in New York. The tavern takes walk-ins; the dining room requires planning. Both are worth your time.
The wine list is deep and honest, the service is the gold standard of what Danny Meyer calls "enlightened hospitality" — attentive but never intrusive, knowledgeable but never condescending. You are at Gramercy Tavern not to be impressed but to feel, for a few hours, that the world is being run correctly. That is a rarer feeling than any number of Michelin stars can manufacture.
