4.7
Superb
261 Reviews
390 Park Ave at, East 53rd Street, New York · 3.3 miles
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“Casa Lever may be my favorite expression of Park Avenue: architecturally serious, commercially consequential, and somehow much more playful than the traditional power lunch establishment. Lever House itself is one of my favorite classic buildings in New York, a 1952 modernist landmark whose glass-and-steel design still looks almost impossibly sharp against this stretch of Midtown. For my money, the design relative to the location is unbeatable if you prefer great twentieth-century architecture to new construction. Park Avenue from the high 40s through the upper 50s is the highest velocity investment corridor in the world: information, fundraising, and transactions all moving through an extraordinarily dense piece of Manhattan. Third Point once headquartered here before moving to Hudson Yards, which I always thought was incredibly cool and a particularly fitting choice for Dan Loeb. Iโve experienced Casa Lever on several different occasions, including meeting a friend outside for a beer after work and, on another visit, having lunch inside. Inside, everything feels considered, from the curved architecture and sculptural ceiling to the wonderfully restrained Casa Lever typography. The Warhol portraits were the masterstroke when I knew the restaurant: Giorgio Armani, the Shah of Iran, Farah Pahlavi, Aretha Franklin, and Dennis Hopper were among the faces looking out over the dining area. There is something deliciously apt about dining beneath that Warhol pantheon on Park Avenue, where financiers, media titans, and dynastic fortunes have long crossed paths with the people shaping fashion, advertising, and culture. Later, on a completely separate occasion, I returned for dinner with a larger group and remember sitting around a big round table near the banquettes. Across lunch, dinner, and drinks, what stayed with me was how polished the service was and how effortlessly chic the whole experience felt. There is a more creative, feminine energy here than at many of Midtownโs harder-edged power restaurants, sophisticated without becoming stiff and glamorous without feeling theatrical. The prices are pure Park Avenue, but so is the proposition: extraordinary architecture, extraordinary geography, and one of the coolest places in New York to bring someone when you want the city itself to participate in the evening. Casa Lever feels timeless because it never seems to chase relevance; the building, the design, and the people passing through already provide enough electricity. Few establishments capture this particular intersection of commerce, taste, history, and social theater quite as well.”