In late 2024, Brooklyn lost Buttermilk Channel, the long-standing Cobble Hill brunch spot that, for the 16 years it sold house-fermented pickles and cheddar waffles, had punched far above its weight in both awareness and exposure. Regulars were understandably upset by the closing, but as it turns out, this was not the end of Buttermilk Channel’s story. The restaurant and its waffles live on … in Tokyo. So, somehow, does Cafe Gitane, the 30-year-old institution for Nolita scenesters that’s on life support in its hometown. There’s just one Gitane in Tokyo, but City Bakery serves its famous hot chocolate and pretzel croissants at dozens of locations in Japan.
The fantasy of “somewhere else” will always be a strong marketing tactic. Tokyoites go to Buttermilk Channel to feel like they’re in New York the same way Brooklynites go to Ichiran to feel like they’re eating tonkotsu ramen in Japan. But a restaurant doesn’t have to be from even one city for the illusion to work. This is the case at New York Grill, the low-lit dining room immortalized in Americans’ minds as the backdrop to a budding romance in Lost in Translation. When the Park Hyatt Tokyo, where the restaurant is located, closed it for renovations, the goal was to make the restaurant, which has never actually existed in New York, even New Yorkier.
Walking in now feels a lot like walking into Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film: A jazz singer is set against skyscrapers while an even mix of Japanese diners and tourists sip drinks. The restaurant feels contained not only within the film but in the late ’90s and early aughts. I rewatched the movie after eating here and found it hard to believe the place had been renovated at all. It helps that the original painter hired for the project, Valerio Adami, is still alive and could easily be phoned in to touch up the sun-faded 52nd-floor murals depicting the Rainbow Room, Carnegie Hall, and Yankee Stadium.
On the menu, staples like Caesar salad and shrimp cocktail with Thousand Island dressing remain, with much of the food options unchanged from 1994’s opening menu. But during renovations, executive chefs Thibault Chiumenti and Ben Wheeler did take a trip to New York to assess the current steakhouse scene. They visited Keens and Gallaghers (but skipped Peter Luger since there’s one of those in Tokyo) as well as restaurants such as Gramercy Tavern that opened at the same time as the New York Grill (of course, they could have gone to Union Square Tokyo, Gramercy Tavern’s sister restaurant in Japan). They also stopped in to Simon Kim’s Cote and Daniel Boulud’s La Tête d’Or and returned to Tokyo wanting to make one major change in the kitchen: adding a broiler. “We feel it is important to have very high temperature cooking,” says Chiumenti. “And it tastes nicer.” The change meant the team could add USDA-graded American beef — often larger than Japanese cuts — to the menu, a move that is far more complicated than it sounds. “It was very difficult to import beef,” Chiumenti says, “especially here in Japan. The Japanese are very proud of their beef.”
Even if you never plan to visit Tokyo, New York Grill is worth knowing about because it honors a New York that never really existed, certainly one that doesn’t exist now. This steakhouse overlooks Shinjuku Central Park, while the only steakhouse where diners could peer into Manhattan’s Central Park — Porter House Bar & Grill — closed last year. Maybe one of those could open in Tokyo next.
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