The 72-Hour Rib-Eye Cheesesteak in the Old Chumley's Room
Michael Vignola and the Catch team have taken over the former Chumley's speakeasy and built a 35-seat steakhouse around dry-aged beef, a tableside smoked martini, and a reservation drop that vanishes in minutes.
The smoked martini arrives with a small piece of theatre: an applewood-smoked olive, frozen into an icicle, sitting in the glass while a server pours hyper-chilled distilled water over it at the table. The olive melts, the smoke bleeds into the gin, and you have a drink that is both a party trick and — once it settles — genuinely good. It sets the register for the room: precise, a little showy, aware of its own effect.
The address is 86 Bedford, the old Chumley's, the Prohibition-era speakeasy that many people credit as the origin of the term "86." Eugene Remm, the operator behind the Catch group, has taken the space and installed Michael Vignola behind a steak program built around dry-aged beef pulled from a cellar beneath the century-old bar. Thirty-five seats, bar included. Rib-eyes and porterhouses from small independent ranches. A working fireplace with a two-top pressed against it. It opened in 2025 and, within weeks, became one of the harder rooms in the city to sit down in.
A Catch operation with a serious steak program hiding inside a jewel box the size of a large living room — and priced accordingly.
Editorial Deep
The rib-eyes and porterhouses are dry-aged in a cellar under the bar, which is the kind of provenance detail that would be marketing everywhere else and is closer to an operating principle here. The cheesesteak — a 72-hour Australian rib-eye folded into Philly cheesesteak form — is the dish that best explains what the kitchen is doing: the aging concentrates the flavour, the shave-and-melt format keeps it from feeling ceremonial, and the result eats like a sandwich you would order again. The foie gras-topped filet is the more expected splurge and delivers on it.
At 5:00 PM the fireplace is lit, the bar is empty, and the space reads as what it is: a jewel box of dark wood, bronzed mirrors, copper velvet banquettes, and Art Deco brass detail, thirty-five seats arranged tightly enough that every one of them feels like a good one. By 8:30 PM the same room is a different product — full, warm, loud in the way small rooms get loud, and unmistakably a scene. The two-top wedged against the working fireplace, said to have been F. Scott Fitzgerald's when this was Chumley's, is the seat in the room.
A server catches you looking at the ravioli on the next table before you have said a word and confirms, without being asked, that yes, the caviar is worth it and no, the portion is not large. That kind of reading of the room runs through the service — pacing is confident, the beef is described with real knowledge of where each cut came from, and the smoked martini is delivered with the theatricality it needs and none it does not.
The nearest comparison is Cote, a few blocks north, where a full dinner with the Butcher's Feast and cocktails runs into similar money and delivers a different product — Korean barbecue theatre versus American steakhouse in a room a third the size. Cote is the better call if you want the format to be the show. The Eighty Six is the better call if you want the room itself to be the show and the beef to be a serious secondary reason.
If you came expecting a neighbourhood steakhouse — the kind of place where you drop in on a Tuesday, sit at the bar, order a martini and a strip, and leave with a modest tab — do not come back. The room is not built for that customer and will not become one. The reservation friction alone will exhaust anyone treating this as a rotation restaurant rather than an occasion.
What to eat
Don't miss.
72-hour rib-eye cheesesteak, potato and 26-month Gouda ravioli with Osetra, the Waldorf, the tableside smoked martini. Dry-aged burger at lunch only.
“A Catch operation with a serious steak program hiding inside the old Chumley's — go for lunch if you actually want to eat, go for dinner if you came for the room.”
The Infatuation lands lower on this room than we do — Bryan Kim reads it as a corporate-sponsored event, and there is something to that at 8:30 on a Saturday. We are above them because the beef program and the ravioli course are genuinely doing work the scene frame obscures. If you want the format to be the show rather than the room, Cote a few blocks north is the better call for a similar evening.
The Verdict
