6 NYC Restaurants with Iconic Artwork
Skip the museum. Some of the best murals in the city are a reservation away.
Be honest. How many of you have googled “restaurants with a good vibe” before a date or a guest comes to town? Because sometimes, there’s a type of New York City dinner that has nothing to do with the food - we’re looking for mood, for 19th-century sconces, for Aesop soap in the bathroom. But what if I told you we could do even better?
I’m Rose, and I write The Rose Period - a newsletter about the special, unusual, and slightly unexpected stories from the art world that you need to know. And today I’m letting you in on the art world’s open secret: the best canvases in the city aren’t hanging in a gallery. They’re painted directly onto the walls of your favorite dining rooms.
We’re talking murals - one of the oldest storytelling traditions in human history, and as it turns out, one of New York’s best-kept secrets.
So throw away your museum ticket. Make a reservation instead. Here are five NYC dining rooms with a secret worth keeping - and everything you need to know.
Old King Cole Bar - Maxfield Parrish, 1906
Head to the Old King Cole Bar at the St. Regis and beeline to a bar seat. Order a Red Snapper (the bar’s og name for the Bloody Mary, invented here) and settle into the real reason you came - the 30-foot mural behind the bar that’s been there since 1906.
Here’s the backstory: Railroad heir John Jacob Astor IV commissioned the famous illustrator Maxfield Parrish to paint it, with one condition: Astor’s own face had to be the King’s. Parrish, a Quaker abstinent who didn’t want his work in a bar and butted heads with Astor from the start, took the unheard of sum of $5,000 and got his revenge.
According to legend, the King — Astor— is depicted mid-flatulence. Every grimacing courtier has Parrish’s own face. Astor never let on that he knew!
The mural originally hung in Astor’s Knickerbocker Hotel. After Astor died on the Titanic in 1912 (yes…the Titanic!), it eventually landed here in the 1930s.
Use this for dinner conversation: Salvador Dalí checked into Room 1610 every winter in the 1960s - wife Gala, pet ocelot, and cape of dead bees in tow - and announced his arrival by throwing open the doors and shouting “DA-LÍ… IS… HERE.”
Bemelmans Bar — Ludwig Bemelmans, 1947
You might have to politely wait in line for Bemelmans Bar at The Carlyle alongside TikTok stars - but unlike them, you didn’t come for the $30 martinis (although they do come with a sidecar).
You came to feast your eyes on the sprawling mural by Ludwig Bemelmans - aka the Madeline guy.
In 1947, the Austrian-American illustrator behind the beloved Madeline children’s books painted the entire bar in exchange for 18 months of free accommodation at the hotel.
Take a closer look, and you’ll see he designed a whole universe: Central Park across all four seasons, rabbits in top hats, hippos in tutus, Madeline and her eleven friends in two straight lines. Somewhere to the right of the cash register, he painted himself in as a waiter holding the bill.
What I love most about this mural? You get a whole new chapter of an iconic children’s story. We can see what Bemelmans’ brain looked like outside of France - as if Madeline grew up, moved to New York, and yes, ordered that $30 martini with a sidecar for herself and her eleven friends.
Use this for dinner conversation: this is the only surviving public Bemelmans commission in existence - one of the few places in the world where you can sit inside an original Madeline universe.
The Waverly Inn — Edward Sorel, 2007
The Waverly Inn is the kind of West Village restaurant that makes you feel desperate to LIVE in the West Village - low ceilings, candlelight, and a dining room wrapped in New York legends.
In 2006, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter bought and revived the place - and commissioned American illustrator and satirist Edward Sorel to create the now iconic murals on the walls.
Sorel is famous for his sharply funny caricatures in publications like The New Yorker and Vanity Fair - and he went all in here.
He immortalized 40 Greenwich Village greats - Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz - in his signature style: loose, wickedly observant caricatures that almost feel more accurate than the photos.
Look closely, and you’ll spot Whitman being attacked by a Truman Capote butterfly, or Jane Jacobs, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Willa Cather playing ring-around-the-rosy.
Use this for dinner conversation: the mural is basically a love letter to Greenwich Village - and to that old-world, bohemian version of New York the Waverly Inn has attracted since opening in 1920. Before Graydon Carter took it over, the inn had already lived several lives: tavern, bordello, tearoom - a place where poets, creatives, and beatniks came in troves. Robert Frost himself was once a regular.
The Monkey Bar — Edward Sorel 2009
Two years after the Waverly Inn, Graydon Carter brought Edward Sorel back - this time for Monkey Bar, the storied Midtown restaurant tucked inside the old Hotel Elysée that opened in 1936.
For the mural, Sorel turned his attention uptown. We’re talking roughly 60 Jazz Age and New York cultural legends - Billie Holiday singing into a microphone, Dorothy Parker side-eyeing the room with a cigarette in hand, Frank Sinatra holding court at the bar, critics gossiping over martinis and actors flirting across booths.
Sorel stages the whole thing like a chaotic Manhattan dinner party - everyone talking over each other, performing, gossiping, and scheming.
Use this for dinner conversation: This room has SEEN some things. Monday Bar is a legendary setting in The Catcher in the Rye (remember that scene where Holden tries (and fails) to pick someone up at the bar?!). And on a more somber note: Tennessee Williams died here in 1983, choking on a bottle cap in his suite upstairs.
Clemente Bar — Francesco Clemente, 2024
Eleven Madison Park is already one of the most celebrated restaurants in the world - and owner Daniel Humm decided to one-up himself by opening a cocktail bar upstairs last fall. Enter: Clemente Bar.
Instead of hanging art on the walls, Humm handed the entire room over to Italian painter Francesco Clemente, who painted directly onto the walls and ceilings himself.
Clemente filled the space with floating faces, surreal eyes, fragmented bodies, and washes of red, gold, black, and earth tones. You can still see the brushstrokes, drips, and uneven edges - the whole room feels alive.
There are two massive 17-foot murals, plus a ceiling painting above the staircase filled with swirling figures surrounding a giant eye. Behind the bar, another mural stretches across the walls in deep reds and golds. Nothing is framed - the paintings ARE the architecture.
Use this for dinner conversation: Daniel Humm has said he modeled Clemente Bar after Zurich’s legendary Kronenhalle, famous for its Picassos and Chagalls hanging on the walls. The difference here? Clemente didn’t lend the restaurant paintings - he literally painted the building itself.
F&F Restaurant — Julian Schnabel, 2024
F&F Restaurant is one of those great laidback corner spots. Great food, not snobby. And an original Julian Schnabel hangs in the barroom (yup, no big deal).
Haven’t heard of Schnabel before? Here’s the TLDR: he’s a prominent figure in the American Neo-Expressionism movement, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Eric Fischl. He’s known for massive canvases strewn with color and found objects, and as a filmmaker whose work has won him awards at Cannes and the Golden Globes (and an Oscar nomination!).
Here’s the story: when the restaurant first opened, the celebrated painter and filmmaker asked to try their pizzas. So owners Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli sent him a couple. Schnabel responded with “a little something,” a photo of a piece of art in one of his favorite hues, purple. He liked it so much, he had it framed and delivered.
Schnabel is in good company: famed abstract painter Ron Gorchov’s work hangs at F&F, too.
Use this for dinner conversation: Julian Schnabel and Ron Gorchov were fixtures of the New York art world for decades. Today, Gorchov’s estate is represented by Vito Schnabel, Julian’s son.
There you have it: 6 iconic restaurant murals to make your next dinner reservation around. Isn’t that just the magic of New York after all? Some of the city’s greatest artworks aren’t behind velvet ropes or protected by museum guards. They’re above your martini. Behind your burger. Hiding in plain sight while the rest of the room debates the crudo!
So the next time you go out to dinner in New York, look up. The best table in the city might also come with a masterpiece.
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