A latest weekday lunch at Tommy Bahama.
Photograph: Daniel Paik
On a Tuesday afternoon every week and a half earlier than Christmas, the sharks are swimming on the Marlin Bar. Sharp winds whip down Fifth Avenue, however the scene contained in the Tommy Bahama Restaurant on the nook of forty fifth Road is way extra serene, Frank Sinatra taking part in softly over a low murmur of mergers and acquisitions. Close to the doorway, simply previous a beached log and a few dangling strings of seashells, a site visitors jam of consumers tries to sneak in earlier than dashing again to the workplace. The Morton’s steakhouse across the nook is half full. Tommy Bahama is, as it’s almost each weekday, slammed.
“I made my reservation final week — I wouldn’t go away it as much as likelihood,” one visitor says as he waits to examine in. He explains that he works in finance however doesn’t wish to share another particulars as a result of he “can’t speak to the press.” Scanning the room, it isn’t onerous to establish different diners’ employers. Firm logos are all over the place: An Ernst & Younger jacket right here, a VARS cybersecurity puffer there, branded Patagonia vests all around the room.
“Energy eating” conjures photographs of grand structure and ornate salads, not the upscale-Margaritaville vibes of this second-floor restaurant, reached by way of a spiral staircase within the street-level Tommy Bahama retailer. Martinis, sure. Coconut Cloud martinis (vanilla rum, coconut rum, and coconut cream), not a lot. However someday over the previous few years, midtown’s captains of business coalesced on this explicit restaurant — a part of a nationwide chain with 29 outposts — that now does between 200 and 250 covers throughout lunch, 80 to 90 p.c of that are enterprise diners. An previous pal who works in personal fairness confirms that Tommy Bahama is “proper up there now with all of the Greek locations and the Lobster Membership” on the midtown business-meal ladder.
“I’ve performed all of the power-lunch locations for the final 20 years,” says Ron Geffner, a former SEC enforcement lawyer who’s a founding accomplice within the agency Sadis & Goldberg. “They’re inconsistent, in my thoughts, with the present financial actuality of the world — if I take somebody to a really, very costly restaurant, both potential purchasers or folks I do enterprise with, they could query my worth of cash.” Right here, he is aware of the workers so effectively they generally select his order, and he maintains a most well-liked spot (desk No. 16, in a nook that provides a view of the road and host stand).
An opulent banquette matches the sand-white partitions, however the principle enchantment is just not décor. It’s utility. A personal eating room is “excellent for throwing up some slides,” in accordance with one common. There’s loads of house between tables and little concern {that a} delicate dialog can be overheard. And the meals — coconut shrimp, crab-and-avocado salads, tuna poke bowls — comes out quick, an essential element for purchasers with small home windows on their calendars. “If I miss lunch, if I miss it inside that 45 minutes, I’m not consuming,” says Geffner.
“We affectionately discuss with it as our cafeteria,” Nate Burbank, a vice-president on the reinsurance agency Man Carpenter, tells me. Once I’d requested if he would meet me there, he’d shortly texted again, “I’m at all times down for extra Tommy B’s.” And as we settle in, he presents his view of the midtown lunch panorama. “We generally do the Rock Heart circuit. Butter sucks. We do Bobby Van’s, which simply feels drained,” Burbank says. “This space is such a nexus of midtown, and so they do an excellent job. It’s proper by the practice, which is nice for the individuals who must get again to the suburbs.”
Basic supervisor Christopher McLeod says he typically tells his workers that they’re primarily serving two completely different eating places — the weekday lunch crowd and everybody else: “We’ve the lunchtime Tommy Bahama in Manhattan after which we now have a ‘common’ Tommy Bahama time for supper.” McLeod was on the workers when the Fifth Avenue restaurant opened, having additionally put in time on the firm’s eating places in Texas and Florida. Half-American, half-French, he grew up in Alsace with a household of butchers, bakers, and brasserie homeowners. Earlier than touchdown at Tommy Bahama, he was a director of visitor relations for Boston’s Ritz-Carlton resort. “They’ve an incredible hospitality faculty,” he says. Does he apply a number of the Ritz’s strategy — a heat welcome, anticipating visitor wants, realizing how one can learn the ability gamers — to Tommy B’s? “I don’t know if I’m doing it on goal, however it’s ingrained in me for positive.”
How did a model finest recognized for golf shirts and beach-chair-market dominance develop into the default eating possibility for thus many white-collar employees? It could have one thing to do with altering cultural norms. Jamie Hodari, an government at real-estate agency CBRE, suggests {that a} youthful technology of employees could be turned off by conventional energy hubs. “There’s one thing self-effacing about saying, ‘Let’s do this M&A gathering at Tommy’s,’ ” he says.
Douglas Meyer, the regional president of New York Metropolis business banking for Valley Financial institution (and considered one of Crain’s “Notable Leaders in Finance” for 2025) says he has been consuming on the Tommy Bahama restaurant for the reason that day it opened in 2012 — years earlier than it grew to become a vacation spot. On the time, he labored in the identical constructing. “It was a secret for a short time,” he says wistfully. “There have been days — I’m laughing at myself — that I’d go for breakfast after which lunch after which joyful hour.” He estimates he has been lots of of occasions (although breakfast service has been scrapped). And he admits he developed a status amongst his co-workers. “A few of my colleagues, they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re Mr. Tommy Bahama over right here,’ ” Meyer says. “After which my query again is at all times, ‘Effectively, do you ever have a foul time?’ They’re like, ‘No, no. I’ve by no means had a foul time, ever.”’
Now that phrase is out, after all, some folks within the space have began to keep away from Tommy Bahama, a pal who works in midtown says, as a result of they’ll inevitably run into “too many” folks they know. However McLeod, the GM, isn’t fearful. In October, JPMorgan Chase celebrated the grand opening of its new headquarters at 270 Park Avenue, a couple of blocks away. “They’ve completely different eating places there, however we’re going to see an enormous push,” he says.
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When you want to learn in print, you can even discover this text within the January 12, 2026, situation of
New York Journal.
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When you want to learn in print, you can even discover this text within the January 12, 2026, situation of
New York Journal.