About Keens Steakhouse
Albert Keens opened his chophouse at 72 West 36th Street in 1885. The building has not moved. The pipes on the ceiling — clay churchwarden pipes, once left by members of the Lambs Club who dined here regularly — have not been disturbed. The mutton chop, the restaurant's signature dish, has been on the menu since the beginning. This is not nostalgia or theatre. This is continuity, which is a different and rarer thing.
The pipes number 90,000. They belong to former patrons who claimed them by name — Babe Ruth, Albert Einstein, General Douglas MacArthur, Buffalo Bill Cody, and, legendarily, Lillie Langtry, who sued the restaurant in 1905 when it refused to serve women and won, opening the dining room to female diners for the first time. That story, and the pipe bearing her name, remain on display.
The food is serious: the prime rib is one of the most requested dishes in Midtown, served on the bone in portions designed for people who mean business. The mutton chop — an American saddle cut, roasted and carved, with a deep savory complexity that most protein cannot achieve — is the reason serious eaters travel specifically to this address. Steaks run from a 28-ounce prime porterhouse to a carved sirloin that arrives still sizzling from a broiler running at temperatures no home kitchen can replicate.
The dining rooms are multiple — the main room, the Bull Moose Room, the Lincoln Room — and each functions as a private world. Bourbon selections are extensive and selected with the understanding that the people drinking them know what they're ordering. The wine list holds New York back vintages that most restaurants cannot offer because they were not smart enough to buy them when they were available.
