About Keens Steakhouse
Here is the heresy: at the best old steakhouse in New York, you should not order steak. You should order the mutton chop. Keens opened at 72 West 36th Street in 1885, and the chop, a 26oz saddle of lamb roasted and carved for about $68, has been the signature since the first night. It is the one thing on the menu you cannot get at any other steakhouse in the city, which is the entire reason to come.
The ceiling carries 90,000 clay churchwarden pipes, claimed by name over the decades by Babe Ruth, Albert Einstein, General Douglas MacArthur and Buffalo Bill Cody. Lillie Langtry sued the house in 1905 for refusing to serve women, won, and her pipe still hangs. None of this is staging. The building has not moved and the room has not been redecorated into a theme, which is rarer in this city than any Michelin star.
Executive chef Bill Rodgers runs a broiler hotter than anything you own, and the beef is genuinely good: bone-in prime rib, a 28oz porterhouse, steaks from $75 to $177. But good beef is the easy part of New York. A dozen rooms cook a porterhouse this well for the same money. What they cannot sell you is the chop, the pipes and 1885, so spend your order on what is singular here and the bill earns its keep.
There are several dining rooms, the main floor plus the Bull Moose and Lincoln rooms, each its own pocket of the building. The bourbon list is deep and chosen for people who know what they are pouring, and the cellar holds back vintages the restaurant was smart enough to buy decades ago. Service is brisk, old-school, and refreshingly unbothered by trend.
