New York City: Monkey Bar (August 2018)

Monkey Bar – If You Want to Eat in the Dining Room, Don’t Accept Bar Room Seating

My spouse and I visited the Monkey Bar for dinner on a Wednesday evening in late August 2018. The Monkey Bar is open for lunch weekdays and dinner Mondays through Saturdays (closed Sunday all day). We make a reservation using the online Open Table system.

The Monkey Bar opened in the 1930s in Midtown East’s Hotel Elysee (on East 54^th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues), although it did not receive its official title until the 1950s. It was so named because of its many mirrored wall panels in which guests mimicked each other in a “monkey see, monkey do” way. In the 1950s, the mirrors were replaced with the painted monkey caricature murals that still decorate the walls today. Famous guests like Tennessee Williams (who actually died in the hotel), Tallulah Bankhead (who lived at the hotel with her pet monkey and pet lion), Babe Ruth, Isadora Duncan, and Ava Gardner visited to enjoy the off-color jokes and double-entendre songs of the performers. (There wasn’t any of that on the night we dined; just a pianist at the upright in the bar.) The Library Hotel Collection group operates the Monkey Bar, as well as other NYC hotels including the Elysee, Library, Giraffe, and Casablanca; they also own properties in Toronto, Prague, and Budapest. 

The bar room is more casual than the dining room, featuring a cozy dimly lit atmosphere accented by red-and-white checkered tablecloths on its few booth and tables (two of which are high tops) and lots of monkey decor (including light fixtures and the famous wall murals). In the more elegant Art Deco dining room (for which we have twice held reservations and for which we have twice [disappointingly] been seated in the bar instead), a three-panel Ed Sorel mural featuring caricatures of Jazz Age icons (including Frank Sinatra, Fred Astair, Duke Ellington, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes) dominates the walls. (Not only weren’t we seated in the dining room, but during our meal in the bar, the host drew the heavy velvet curtains across the entry to that room so that we couldn’t even take a peek inside at the famous painting.

The Monkey Bar offers American-style cuisine. We started with two drinks: the Bandito (jalapeno tequila, grapefruit, St. Germain) and the Park City Old Fashioned (their version contains pear liqueur and cinnamon). We snacked on delicious tiny yeasty rolls and butter while we perused the menu. As an appetizer, we shared the excellent steak tartare served with toast points. As our entrees, we ordered their classic cheeseburger (served on a brioche bun with a side of French fries) and the half-roasted chicken (served with Romano beans). For dessert, we shared the sticky toffee pudding, served with vanilla ice cream.

Although we enjoyed our dinner at Monkey Bar, the bar was extremely loud and crowded on the weeknight that we dined. We were hugely disappointed that for a second time, we were seated in the casual bar instead of in the more glamorous dining room.