CHEF MICHAEL LAMONACO on The 21 CLUB
“It was always exciting when Frank Sinatra came in,” Lomonaco says. “Mr. Sinatra was very particular about being a very simple eater. He was a small man. He wasn’t big. So he ate very small portions. Sometimes it was a small steak. A normal guest would get a New York strip steak that would be 12 or 14 ounces. His had to be eight ounces, a small steak. Or, he would have a veal Milanese. We’d take a veal chop, take it off the bone and bang it out nice and thin then bread it with Milanese breading. He would like it. These simple things, with a Jack Daniel’s, were a Frank Sinatra dinner.”
In addition to coming to 21 Club — the setting for Gordon Gekko and Bud Fox’s power lunch in 1987’s Wall Street — for Lomonaco’s food, repeat celebrity guests like Pavarotti and Sinatra patronized the restaurant because they were able to have privacy in a public space despite the eatery’s filled dining rooms.
“People didn’t bother them for autographs,” Lomonaco says. “That ability to shield famous people within a public space and give them their privacy makes a place special. It’s what we do at Porter House. We have a lot of high-profile guests. We manage the room and the tables so they’re able to have their privacy in public.”
In addition to putting the chicken hash (chicken cooked in a cream sauce) that had been taken off the menu in 1987 back on the restaurant’s tables in 1989, Lomonaco reinvented the 21 Club’s signature burger.
“They always had burger on their menu, but it was not the burger we think of today as a great burger,” he says. “They had two patties of beef, cooked in a saute pan and ladled over with a brown sauce. That’s how they served their burgers back in the ’70s. In ’89, I really took it to the level I thought it should be, which was appropriate for a fine dining restaurant. We did a great 10-ounce burger on a grill from the same USDA prime beef we ground every day for steak tartare. It was all about great ingredients, simply prepared, precisely cooked.”
Although 21’s standard burger came with lettuce, tomato, cheese, bacon, French fries and any other traditional accompaniment a guest might request, it did not come with a bun unless one was asked for.
“He always came late. It was a party around him,” Lomonaco tells InsideHook. “He would arrive at 12:30 at night and it would be, ‘No, not eating too much. No no, too late. But a little pasta, a little smoked salmon, maybe some shrimp and can you make a little veal for me? And what do we have for dessert? Gelato? That’s it. So small meal.’ I’m not kidding. That was one meal.”
According to Lomonaco, who took over at 21 Club in earnest in 1989 after first coming aboard in ’87, it wasn’t uncommon for chefs at the restaurant to provide on-demand meals for VIPs.
