Crane Club – wood fire and gold leaf in a 1913 Chelsea shell

Inside a West Chelsea building whose bones date to 1913, Crane Club occupies one of the most argued-over dining rooms in New York — the same soaring space that housed Del Posto, then the two-starred Al Coro. Chef Melissa Rodriguez, who rose through Daniel and Del Posto to become the first woman to run a restaurant awarded four stars by The New York Times, has turned the room over to a 12-foot custom Mibrasa grill built in Spain, cooking wood-fired steaks, whole fish and a tableside raw bar instead of pasta. Opened on 20 November 2024 with restaurateur Jeff Katz and the backing of Tao Group Hospitality, Crane Club is unapologetically a scene — Pharrell's Met Gala after-party was held here — but the kitchen still answers to a chef who has held two MICHELIN Stars. It is selected in the MICHELIN Guide.

01The room and the setting

The dining room is distinguished by double-height ceilings, grand arches, and rich finishes including velvet upholstery, smoked wood, and walls hand-brushed with gold leaf, designed by Laseu Studio working with Tao Group Hospitality's in-house team. The building's industrial past — the structure began as a bakery whose origins the design nods to — sits underneath a deliberately theatrical new skin: burgundy velvet drapes cosset the floor-to-ceiling windows and stately Art Deco arches, framing custom chandeliers that keep the scale intimate despite the room's size.

Six seven-foot custom pendant lights anchor the main dining area, and the bar opens onto a gleaming red marble counter with low coffered ceilings, moody lighting and deep red and gold accents. Upstairs, a mezzanine of three combinable rooms — Mezzanine East, Mezzanine West and the Gucci-wallpapered Crane Room — looks down over the dining floor through glass balconies that curtain off for privacy, while a corner Curtain Room with parquet floors and velvet banquettes seats up to 26 behind its own drawn curtains.

02The chef

Melissa Rodriguez trained at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park before working for Elaine Bell Catering and Oceana, then joined Daniel Boulud's flagship Restaurant Daniel as a line cook in 2006, rising to sous chef over five years. She moved to Del Posto, was promoted to Chef de Cuisine and then, two years later, to Executive Chef — becoming the first woman to lead a restaurant awarded four stars by The New York Times.

Insider tip

Opened November 2024; à la carte only; smart dress requested; closed Sundays.

When Del Posto closed in March 2020, Rodriguez partnered with Jeff Katz, her colleague of nearly a decade at Del Posto, to take over the space at 85 Tenth Avenue. In 2022 the pair opened the Italian restaurant Al Coro, the subterranean bar Discolo and the pizzeria Mel's next door; Al Coro earned two MICHELIN Stars within months. In 2023 Rodriguez and Katz partnered with Tao Group Hospitality to conceive Crane Club, her first restaurant built around wood fire rather than French or Italian technique.

03The cooking

Everything of weight passes over or beside Rodriguez's 12-foot Mibrasa grill, built in Spain and shipped to New York, which chars a long roster of meat, fish and vegetables with equal attention. A roving raw-bar cart brings oysters, razor clams and crudo to the table, and the kitchen treats vegetables as seriously as the steaks, sourcing from small regional farms and fisheries.

Among the headline dishes are a 30-day aged bone-in ribeye, a Parmigiano Reggiano-aged NY strip steak, a 50-ounce porterhouse for the table and a 36-ounce Iberian Duroc tomahawk pork chop finished with porcini and smoked chili. Pastas survive from the room's Italian past in reduced form — an anolini of braised short rib with Parmigiano vacche rosse, a spaghetti frutti di mare with saffron, lobster and squid — alongside a long list of grilled vegetables and potato sides.

04What to order

Start at the raw bar with the Table Tower, a per-person sampler of oysters, razor clam, shrimp and half a lobster tail, or go larger with the Sky High Tower of a dozen oysters, ten shrimp and four lobster tails for the table. The bone-in ribeye and the Parmigiano-aged NY strip are the two steaks to know, served with sides such as pommes fondants with Parmigiano fonduta and guanciale, or trumpet mushrooms with black garlic. Finish with the Tiramisu Viennetta, built from espresso sponge, coffee rum and dark chocolate, or the peach pavlova with grilled peach sorbet.

05Wine and drinks

The bottle list runs past a thousand selections, and the cocktail programme pairs reserve pours — a '60s vintage Negroni among them — with contemporary creations such as the Demoiselle, a gin, vodka, vermouth and sake mix finished with cucumber, and the Pornstar Martini, which can be topped with Krug Grande Cuvée. At the bar, sharp riffs on classics keep the marble counter busy well past the dining room's last seating.

06When to go and booking

Crane Club seats parties of up to eight guests à la carte online; larger groups are asked to contact the events team directly, and changes or cancellations require 48 hours' notice. The restaurant asks guests to avoid excessively casual dress. In October 2026 the published hours were Monday to Wednesday from 6pm to 10pm and Thursday to Saturday from 6pm to 11pm, with the restaurant closed on Sundays.

07The neighbourhood

The restaurant sits at the corner of Tenth Avenue and 16th Street in West Chelsea, across the street from Chelsea Market and a short walk from the High Line — a stretch of the old industrial waterfront now given over to galleries, design studios and some of the city's most watched new restaurants.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.