A guys’ dinner is the meal that doesn’t need a reason but always has one—a brother flying in, a deal closing, a 38th birthday, a bachelor party with a flight from Atlanta and a hotel in Tribeca. New York is built for the genre, with a chophouse tradition running back to the 1880s, a Greek seafood row on Ditmars Boulevard and a Pan-American oyster bar parked on an island in the harbor. The captains and bartenders in this town have seen every version of eight men on a Saturday, and most have a particular move—a wine they nudge you toward, a side they triple-comp, a way of materializing a four-top when the two-top suddenly won’t work.
A few rules a room has to follow to qualify: It needs a proper bar—not three stools by the host stand, but a landing strip where you can stand, order the first round and let the table sort itself out. It needs ambient noise—a guys’ dinner dies in a hushed room and lives in one that bounces the laughter back at you. It needs something to share—a steak for the table, a baked pasta, a multi-course feast that arrives in waves. The menu has to bend for the friend who wants everything from the raw bar and the friend who doesn’t, and the music should drift up after 10 p.m. without anyone asking.
The World Cup lands at MetLife on July 19 with the city in full eat-and-drink mode, and the next two months will be thick with visiting fans, group reunions and last-minute table requests. Whether you’re here for the tournament or rounding up the boys, here are 21 rooms for whatever the night demands—formal to informal, brand-new to century-old, each one ready for whatever you bring through the door.
Best Places for Guys’ Dinner
Huso
323A Greenwich St, New York, NY 10013
Two-time Top Chef winner Buddha Lo’s Michelin-starred tasting room moved from the Upper East Side to Tribeca, taking over a 28-seat, two-level space inside Marky’s Caviar—vaulted cellar kitchen, Haring prints on the walls. The 12-course spring menu runs $285 per person: scallop with ajo blanco, foie gras with brioche, lobster with white asparagus, lamb with green asparagus, Valrhona dark chocolate finished with caviar. The Dirty Rich Martini arrives with an olive and—you guessed it—a caviar bump on the spoon. Between courses, you sneak into the basement kitchen and pose for a Polaroid with the chef.
Huso.
Cayla Zahoran Photography
Keens Steakhouse
72 W 36th St, New York, NY 10018
Four blocks from Madison Square Garden and 141 years into the run, Keens still serves its 26-ounce mutton chop with mint jelly. Roughly 45,000 clay pipes hang above you, a vestige of when patrons, which once included Babe Ruth, J.P. Morgan and Teddy Roosevelt, were permitted to store their fragile clay pipes on-site. The single-malt list stretches north of 300 labels, and the bar Bloody Mary is finished with balsamic, a twist that sounds odd until you’ve had one. Order the chop, the porterhouse for three, the wedge salad and the coffee cantata sundae that wraps up a $400 dinner with the dignity it deserves.
Keens Steakhouse.
Keens Steakhouse
Carbone
181 Thompson St, New York, NY 10012
The captains wear burgundy Zac Posen tuxedos, the Caesar comes whole to the table, and the spicy rigatoni vodka launched a thousand jarred imitations while still tasting better than all of them. Reservations remain a 30-day Resy operation, and the room calibrates itself among Bushwick hipsters, finance guys, and a celebrity in the corner banquette with three security looking deeply uninterested. The veal parmesan for two does what a veal parmesan should and then some, the meatballs with ricotta could anchor the meal on their own, and don’t skip the lemon cheesecake.
Carbone.
Carbone
Torrisi
275 Mulberry St, New York, NY 10012
The bigger sibling to Carbone, with less circus and more production. The Puck Building gives you 30-foot vaulted ceilings, an art program designed to keep you looking up between courses, and an à la carte menu that wanders happily between chopped liver with Manischewitz and cavatelli with Jamaican beef ragu. Major Food Group knows how to throw a dinner, and this is the room they built for the version with 12 guys and a reason. The spaghetti al pomodoro is doing exactly what it’s meant to and very little else; ask the captain which pasta to push.
Torrisi.
Torrisi
Cote Korean Steakhouse
16 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10010
Korean barbecue and American steakhouse on one table, with a Michelin star and smokeless grills cut into every two-top so a four-hour dinner ends with everyone’s shirt smelling like the one they walked in with. Order the Butcher’s Feast at $82 a head—USDA Prime hanger, dry-aged ribeye, short rib galbi, American wagyu, banchan, two stews, an egg soufflé in a stone pot and soy-caramel soft serve to close. Downstairs sits Undercote, the speakeasy with a 1,200-label wine list that handles the after-dinner crowd, and the new Bar Chimera upstairs is making a serious play at the city’s best martini.
Cote Korean Steakhouse.
Cote Korean Steakhouse
Coqodaq
12 E 22nd St, New York, NY 10010
Another entry from Simon Kim: Coqodaq, where you wash your hands at the entrance with rotating luxury soaps, sit under gold-arched ceilings styled like a chicken coop reimagined by Gucci, and order from what the restaurant bills as the longest Champagne list in America—roughly 400 labels. The Bucket List menu runs $42 a head and arrives in waves: consommé, banchan, the original fried chicken, a second round glazed in soy garlic or gochujang, cold perilla noodles and frozen yogurt. The $28 caviar nugget exists as a photo op—pretend you’re above it before ordering one anyway.
Coqodaq.
Coqodaq
Café Carmellini
250 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10001
Andrew Carmellini’s fine-dining return inside the Fifth Avenue Hotel is one of the most beautiful rooms opened this decade: sapphire-blue velvet booths, caramel leather, two sculptural trees scraping toward 30-foot ceilings and rotating art on the walls. The lobster cannelloni with cream and caviar is the headliner, the Sicilian sardines on toast are the sleeper, and the wine program runs through master sommelier Josh Nadel and wine director Robin Wright—meaning the $200 bottle and the $2,000 bottle are both going to be good.
Café Carmellini.
Café Carmellini
Six Coasts by Smorgasburg
Soissons Landing, Governors Island, New York, NY 10004
This Pan-American waterfront restaurant opened May 9 in the 32,000-square-foot space that used to house Island Oyster. Chef Scotley Innis runs a coastal menu pulled from six coastlines across the Americas—Nova Scotia, Baja and Bahia among them—across raw bar, whole grilled fish, ceviche and rice plates, all coming out of a fully electric kitchen. A seven-minute ferry from the Battery Maritime Building drops you at Soissons Landing with unobstructed views of Lower Manhattan and New York Harbor. Built for long Saturday lunches with rosé and zero plans afterward.
Six Coasts by Smorgasburg.
Six Coasts by Smorgasburg
Cuerno New York
1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
The Mexican chophouse from Costeño Group opened in summer 2025 inside the former Time & Life Building, directly across Sixth Avenue from the rink at Rockefeller Plaza and a block from the Telemundo Fan Village. The 52-ounce tomahawk arrives crusted in Colima salt and charred in a Josper; you’ll want it alongside the 16-ounce ribeye with bone marrow, the bone marrow tacos and as many mezcalitas as the table can muster. Tortillas keep coming in place of popovers, which feels right. The 50th Street patio just opened for the season, and a new weekend brunch handles the morning after.
Cuerno New York.
Eric Vitale Photography
Bowery Meat Company
9 E 1st St, New York, NY 10003
The room is dark, the lighting flatters everyone, and Josh Capon’s duck lasagna for two arrives in cast iron hot enough to need warning labels—easily feeding four if you order it as a pregame. The Bowery Steak makes the case for staying, the charbroiled oysters land under garlicky breadcrumbs and Romano that sounds wrong on paper and right on the table, and the sides hold up better than the meat at most legacy steakhouses. For six guys in town for a Knicks game, this is the East Village answer to the $200-a-head Midtown chophouse—followed by a nightcap at McSorley’s.
Bowery Meat Company.
Bowery Meat Company
4 Charles Prime Rib
4 Charles St, New York, NY 10014
This subterranean townhouse on Charles Street has no windows, lighting tuned to a Don Draper mood and reservations that drop 21 days out at 9 a.m. EST on Resy—and disappearing in 90 seconds. The salt-crusted prime rib is the move, the burger and French dip have a cult following, and the martini service remains an integral part of the experience. The room seats roughly 60 with parties capped at six, so larger groups split tables and accept the alarm-clock contortions. Repetition and strategy is the only way in.
4 Charles Prime Rib.
4 Charles Prime Rib
Don Angie
103 Greenwich Ave, New York, NY 10014
The pinwheel lasagna for two—stuffed rolls of pasta fanned like a sundial across a cast-iron skillet—is one of the great carbohydrate engineering feats downtown. Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli have been running this 50-seat West Village room since 2017, with sister restaurant San Sabino next door for the spillover (it’s always packed, too). The chrysanthemum salad and gnocchi with pancetta and pomegranate fill out an order that turns four-tops into three-hour dinners. Six guys fit comfortably, 10 probably won’t.
Don Angie.
Don Angie
Hawksmoor NYC
109 E 22nd St, New York, NY 10010
The London import lives inside the restored 1893 Assembly Hall of the United Charities Building, all 26-foot vaulted ceilings and a porterhouse hung in-house for at least 35 days. The Sunday Roast is famous on both sides of the Atlantic—dry-aged rump, beef-fat potatoes, gigantic Yorkshire puddings, onion gravy and bone marrow—and the cocktail program pours what the bar claims as the coldest martini in New York. Book early, order the potted beef with Yorkshire puddings to start, the bone-in prime for the table and the sticky toffee pudding to finish.
Hawksmoor NYC.
Paul Winch-Furness
Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023
Former New York Times food critic Pete Wells’ top-ranked restaurant in New York in both 2023 and 2024, tucked inside David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, where Kwame Onwuachi’s Afro-Caribbean menu plays with a Bronx accent—curried goat patties, jerk lamb ribs in a sweet-spicy glaze, braised oxtail, truffled chopped cheese buns. The music plays loud, the room holds 70 and the energy refuses to settle. Reservations drop 28 days out at noon and the prime windows are gone in under 30 minutes; showing up at 5 p.m. for the walk-in bar list is a real strategy worth knowing.
Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi.
Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi
Din Tai Fung
1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
The Taiwanese soup-dumpling institution founded in 1972 finally crossed the country in 2024, landing its first East Coast location across from the Gershwin Theatre. The Kurobuta pork Xiao Long Bao is the reason you came, and the spicy wontons and pork chop fried rice are the reasons you’ll come back. The cucumber salad arrives cold and garlicky enough to cut through the soy. The bar mixes up an NYC-only Black Sesame Espresso Martini with Blue Bottle coffee. Best as an early-evening pregame round before the proper dinner—or the post-Broadway 9:30 p.m. dumpling stop.
Din Tai Fung.
Din Tai Fung
Peter Luger
178 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211
The 1887 Williamsburg institution accepts cash, debit cards and the Peter Luger card, but no credit cards—period. There’s essentially one order: porterhouse for two, three or four, with the bacon arriving first as its own course (thick-cut, peppery, a single slab per person), followed by creamed spinach, German fried potatoes, the requisite tomato and onion and schlag for dessert. The waiters remain gruff in a way that has become its own form of showpiece, and nothing has changed here in any meaningful way, despite the place losing its Michelin star in 2022.
Peter Luger.
Liz Clayman
Maison Premiere
298 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11249
A New Orleans-style oyster bar and absinthe parlor on Bedford Avenue that has barely changed in 15 years, which in Williamsburg makes it a heritage site by acclamation. The horseshoe marble bar rotates 30-plus oyster varieties daily, sourced from both coasts and read aloud by a server who knows the difference between a Wellfleet and a Beausoleil. The absinthe collection is what the bar advertises as the largest in the country, the Maison Absinthe Colada arrives with a small ceremony involving an actual fountain, and the rest of the program goes hard into oysters, martinis and shellfish plateaus.
Maison Premiere.
Maison Premiere
Crane Club
85 10th Ave, New York, NY 10011
This two-story Tao Group production took over Del Posto’s space in West Chelsea, where Michelin-starred Melissa Rodriguez drives a wood-fire program off a 12-foot Mibrasa grill. The dining room is draped in red velvet and gold leaf and the wine list tops 1,000 bottles. Order the 30-day dry-aged bone-in ribeye, the maitake (hen-of-the-woods) mushrooms with cognac and Thai basil, the bone marrow with grilled filone bread and the bread service that comes in an edible bowl. The members-only club downstairs runs most of the same menu, leading to a version of the night nobody wants to reminisce about on Monday.
Crane Club.
Alex Staniloff
Gage & Tollner
372 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY 11201
In April 2021, the 1879 chophouse reopened after 16 years dark, looking better than it had since the Cleveland administration—cherry-wood walls, brass chandeliers and a menu paying open homage to Edna Lewis, who ran the kitchen from 1988 to 1992. The fried chicken with cornmeal fritters is the order to commit to, and the Baked Alaska is how the meal should end—ideally with the lights down. After dinner, climb the stairs to Sunken Harbor Club, the 35-seat tiki bar above the dining room (walk-ins only), built inside a Gilded Age room without breaking the spell.
Gage & Tollner.
Gage & Tollner
Taverna Kyclades
36-01 Ditmars Blvd, Astoria, NY 11105
The Astoria flagship that takes no online reservations and, frankly, may never need to to fill the convivial dining room. Whole grilled branzino arrives boned tableside and glossed in olive oil and oregano, the grilled octopus and lamb chops anchor the starters, and the Greek salad turns up with feta thick enough to slice with a fork. The line out front on a Saturday at 7 p.m. stacks 40 deep, but the kitchen turns tables fast, so Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. is the play for a group of eight. The bar has expanded since the early BYOB days, leaving a wine list that’s short, Greek and reasonable.
Taverna Kyclades.
Taverna Kyclades
Red Rooster Harlem
310 Lenox Ave, New York, NY 10027
Marcus Samuelsson’s Harlem flagship, located on Lenox Avenue between 125th and 126th, is named after the legendary 1930s speakeasy where Nat King Cole, James Baldwin and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. used to drink. The fried yardbird with shake-on spice is the dish to order, but the shrimp and grits compete and the cornbread is non-negotiable; the wine list takes the African diaspora seriously and carries more South African chenin blanc than any restaurant within 50 blocks. Chef Roshara Sanders is leading new menu development, live music plays most nights, and downstairs sits Ginny’s Supper Club—the speakeasy where the second half of the night belongs.
Red Rooster Harlem.
Red Rooster Harlem
