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Frog Club Needs to Grow Up

The first rule of Frog Club is you must talk about Frog Club. Like so many things designed to be discussed, it expresses this ambition by misdirection. Frog Club is reservation-only, by email, and that email address has, after a short time of semi-public availability, been removed from the restaurant’s website. The unsaid wants saying. You can try explaining this to the very unanimated bouncer who stands outside its green door on Bedford Street in his fur trapper hat, consulting an iPad to see if you are expected inside. If you are, he will peel off branded Frog Club stickers — Frog Club loves branding, as you will see — and place them over your phone’s cameras, front and back. The unseen wants seeing. There are no photos allowed.

This is apt. 86 Bedford Street, the former Chumley’s, the site of the world’s most famous Prohibition speakeasy. Lore (okay, Wikipedia) suggests that the term “86’d” was originally coined in reference to the eviction of a raucous Chumley’s patron, although surer sources are silent on the matter. The OED wonders if it originated as rhyming slang for “nix” and finds its first usage in 1936 in reference to the now-more-common restaurant meaning of being out of a menu item. Green’s Dictionary of Slang gives no etymology but notes it was in pretty common usage from the 1940s onward, as in a Washington Post mention in 1948: “The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board eighty-sixed two Ninth st. [sic] grog centers yesterday – cut off their taps.”

Whatever the case, Frog Club wishes to 86 the uninvited in advance, which has naturally made it one of the hottest reservations in town. (This, and the whiff of notoriety, that chef Liz Johnson brings with her — she was one of the married partners of L.A.’s Horses, the site of l’affaire des chats.) The memes are percolating. Nolita Dirtbag compared it to Señor Frog’s. The night I went, Ryan Murphy was holed up at a table on one side of the room with a few friends; at the other, an old, L.A.-based friend of mine celebrated the day’s announcement that she and Kim Kardashian had sold a thriller, with Kim to star, to Amazon after a five-way bidding war.

The room itself is warm, dim, and eye-popping. (For a very brief glimpse, you can watch this YouTube video.) Murals of hectic, carousing frogs cover every wall: frogs boozing, frogs smoking, frogs laughing. It is the froggiest, most mind-altering vision you can have outside of, I assume, a psychedelic toad experience. La Grenouille would take one look and croak. Frogs on the walls, frogs on the ledge, frogs on the menu — sort of. The Dirty Kermit, a green bloody Mary on the cocktail list, was, alas, 86’d by the time I got there at 9 p.m., along with a goodly number of other menu items.

Nevertheless! The roaring fire charmed, and Frog Club did have, I must admit, the ineffable charge of a place that is enjoying its cool. “This would be a great place for drinks,” one of my companions said, and while there is a bar, I can’t say whether or not it’s bookable — I don’t know. I contented myself with a waiter-recommended Cosmopolitan in lieu of my preferred Dirty Kermit, into which a twist of orange peel was flamed but which, for better or worse, tasted a bit like cough syrup.

I confess I am not immune to the contrived charm of the unbookable. I was prepared to enjoy myself. But as a restaurant — rather than as a clubhouse or a thing to brag about — Frog Cub didn’t offer much to recommend. The menu is made of up of sort-of chop-house-y classics: a very decent (and, at $52, reasonably priced) filet mignon on the bone with a sticky slice of bacon draped on top; creamed spinach turned into a “New York, New York” (?) spinach soufflé; pre-shucked oysters in shot glasses with a too-vinegary beet mignonette; a saddish burger on a too-plush bun served with a little cup of whipped butter, if you’re feeling suicidal. I might not have minded the lobster pierogis — a kind of upcharged crab rangoon — if they had tasted more of lobster and less of their creamy filling, but even more than that, I couldn’t quite make out where they fit into the mix. “We call it the new nostalgia,” said our waiter, natty in his white jacket and green tie, when we asked what brought the restaurant’s offerings together. Aha! A faint suggestion of Houlihan’s. Hence the frozen fries (gimmicky, but tasty) and a dessert that was advertised as the house take on Eton Mess but was really mostly a pile of extruded sherbet. Whose mess? It appears on the bill as Tutti-Frutti Spaghetti Sundae.

Nostalgia, regression; potato, po-tah-toe. It’s too soon in Frog Club’s existence to call the whole thing off. I want to believe; I’d go again, if they’d have me. (Somehow I doubt it.) But the vertigo-inducing mix of adult privacy and kiddie cuisine — baby-carrot crudités, an after-school snack — feels unsettled at present. I do not expect that Johnson or her team will care. They have parbaked a response to any criticism in the form of a cringe manifesto printed on the back of the dessert menu. “Here, the customer isn’t always right,” it reads in part. “Frog Club is brash, but you love it.” I may not love it; I will still talk about it, as intended. And it is memorable. But just in case, collect a souvenir on the way out: A commemorative-coin-stamping machine sits by the door, like the ones you’d beg your parents to try at any highway-side rest stop.

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The Best Bar Snack Is a Hot Dog

For a long time, it seemed there were only two bars that served hot dogs in New YorkRudy’s, the famous Hell’s Kitchen dive that for years has handed them out as free snacks; and PDT, the St. Mark’s cocktail den that’s attached to Crif Dogs. In addition to Crif favorites, PDT also offered, in the past, collaborations with name-brand chefs around the city; if someone wanted a kimchee dog designed by David Chang, PDT was the place to get it.

Perhaps because other owners and bartenders didn’t want to appear to be copying the East Village’s most famous faux-speakeasy, nobody really followed suit. Instead, bars would serve fussy signature burgers and fancy deviled eggs. Shishito peppers became ubiquitous. You could easily find tinned fish, marinated olives, charcuterie and cheese plates, Spanish tortillas, soft pretzels, shrimp cocktails and boatloads of oysters. Hot dogs, however, remained more or less uninvited to the high-end cocktail party — a situation that made zero sense, because, “hot dogs are the quintessential bar food because they’re easy to prepare in the kitchen and even easier to eat when standing belly-up to the bar,” says Gregory de la Haba, an owner of McSorley’s Old Ale House, which has been selling a Feltman’s dog for several years. “Plus, hot dogs are affordable.”

Luckily, some operators have gotten the message: At the Little Ned bar in NoMad, the Ned Dog is an all-beef Niman Ranch frank with bacon jam and Taleggio cheese, perched high on a brioche bun and delivered on a wooden plank. In Williamsburg, Basik — keeping true to its name — serves a straightforward Allen Brothers beef dog, either plain with mustard and ketchup or as a chili cheese dog. (Owner Jay Zimmerman’s inspiration was Frank ‘N Stein, a chain that once dotted the U.S.) The most ornate dog in town is surely the Hot Dog au Poivre at the Portrait Bar, tucked inside the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Chef Andrew Carmellini’s kitchen fills a toasted, split-top brioche bun with green peppercorn aioli and a layer of crispy potatoes, then inserts a grilled beef dog that has been tossed in au poivre sauce and chives. He tops that with more sauce, chives, and discs of pickled onion. “It’s not a new idea,” Carmellini says, “but if we were going to do one, it was going to be the best one we could do.”

The most famous hot dog in town is the much-discussed $29 sausage at Alex Stupak’s Mischa, a smoked, eight-ounce, pork-veal blend spiced with garlic, mace and paprika. Though technically a restaurant entrée, the hot dog is ordered at the large bar, where it is sometimes sliced up for sharing purposes. On the other side of the price spectrum, the best bargain in dogdom is at Grand Army, where the house frank recently moved to the happy hour menu and sells for $7.50. It sits in a split-top Orwasher’s brioche roll and is topped with applewood-smoked bacon, truffle pâté aïoli, mustard, diced onion and pickle, and herbs.

The prize for greatest dedication to barroom hot-doggery goes to H & H Reserve in Williamsburg. Last year, it welcomed in a full-blown branch of Dog Day Afternoon, the Windsor Terrace–based Chicago hot dog purveyor. For the shortest connection between butcher and bar, there’s Jeremy’s on the Upper East Side. It is owned by Jeremy Schaller of neighboring meat legend Schaller & Weber. The butcher’s cocktail franks go into the pigs in a blanket plate that is Jeremy’s top-selling appetizer. (If you don’t want to head uptown for Schaller & Weber quality, join the TikTokers at Ray’s on the Lower East Side, which also serves a Schaller link.)

Hot dogs began to creep back onto the bar-world radar during the pandemic, when state law dictated that bars selling to-go drinks also had to offer food. Suddenly, watering holes that had never sold anything other than drinks added chips or the most basic of hot dogs to the menu. Now, a few blocks from Rudy’s, Rum House owner Kenneth B. McCoy offers a simple steamed, all-beef frank from Allen Brothers, served on a Martin’s potato roll with Gulden’s brown mustard. “It feels so fitting to have a hot dog on our menu in Times Square, as we have terrible hot dogs sold on all the corners around us,” McCoy says. At nearby Madame George, meanwhile, chef JC Colón came up with mini wagyu wieners that play off street-cart dogs with riffs on classic toppings, such as pickled mustard seeds and homemade mushroom ketchup.

And over by PDT? The new cocktail bar Romeo’s — across the street — is run by Evan Hawkins, formerly of Broken Shaker. He serves a Brooklyn Hot Dog Company beef-and-pork frank in a toasted, split-top bun with jalapeño relish, crispy fried onions and yellow mustard.

But PDT itself has hardly been overshadowed. Owner Jeff Bell recently asked Billy Durney of Hometown Bar-B-Que fame to contribute his own guest dog to the menu. Durney laid a thick slab of pastrami bacon, melted Swiss, sauerkraut and Russian dressing into a bun, transforming his dog into another underappreciated bar snack: a Reuben.

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A Diner Designed by Movie People

In August, the producer Gabriel Nussbaum was walking by the former Happy Days Diner, a 24/7 Brooklyn Heights stalwart that had served neighbors for two decades before it closed in 2022. A broker had just put his card in the window. “Should I open a diner?” Nussbaum texted his wife, director Elizabeth Wood. She responded instantly: “I dare you.”

When it debuts this month, the restaurant — now named Montague Diner — will join a growing number of new-old lunch counters and coffee shops to open across the city (including S& P, Greenpoint’s Three Decker Diner, and Kellogg’s in Williamsburg), and it will be the most fastidiously refurbished. But how to open a diner that feels both modern and timeless while avoiding the kitsch of a Johnny Rockets? To realize this very specific vision, Nussbaum got to work with his partners — including directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost (Catfish), production designer Sam Lisenco (Uncut Gems, The Bear), attorney Ben Gross, and contractor Kastriot Blakaj.

The first step: Avoid the clichés, especially the chromed-out look that defines so many retro diners, “the trappings of fetishized Americana,” as Lisenco calls them. Instead, they wanted to pull inspiration from the look and feel of Great Depression coffee shops and restaurants. To design the space, Lisenco brought on set decorator Henriette Vittadini and carpenter Eric Dean. Together, they put their film connections to work. One item, venetian blinds, came from a Los Angeles shop that makes products for the film industry. They also have a “pending delivery of equipment” on its way from The Bear, says Nussbaum. Then they went further: The team scoured sample books from the 1940s to find a period-accurate shade of green they could apply to the walls. “Sam’s even making sure the choking poster is era-appropriate,” says Schulman. The “Exit” sign is vintage, too — rewired and brought up to code.

For the overhead lighting, they took cues from more contemporary sources. “You can’t imitate everything about Florent,” says Schulman, “but you can try to imitate the lighting.” The group looked at every photo they could find and reconstructed the tinted plasticine inserts and Lucite that ran down the ceiling of the iconic Meatpacking spot. Elsewhere, Vittadani went through hundreds of ideas for sconces. She ended up secretly buying the fixtures on eBay and stashing them — they were above the budget but otherwise perfect. Eventually, they went in too.

For the floor, Lisenco ripped up the one they’d inherited and found pinwheel tile. Some parts were scuffed, other areas were missing, so the design isn’t entirely consistent. “The gauge of tile that they manufacture currently is slightly different than it was whenever that was laid down initially,” he says. They leaned into the inconsistency: “All of this was done under the guise of it doesn’t have to be perfect.” (Up on the ceiling, they invested around $3,000 in sound dampening modeled after the acoustical tile at Sun Studio in Memphis.)

But what about the food? That’s being overseen by more co-owners, Halley Chambers and Kip Green, the duo who runs Margot in Fort Greene. Similar to the design, they wanted to meet people’s expectations without being forced into an opus-length, zillion-item menu. They’ll start the day with classics like pancakes and eggs, and at night will shift to a mood that’s more bistro than Bob’s Big Boy: olives, roasted chicken, steak-frites. “Even the diners people love, I feel like you don’t typically order a steak,” Gross says. They’re also trying to keep their neighbors’ requests in mind: “We have these old-timers poking their heads in the door, and each one is like, ‘You need to have a breakfast special,’” Nussbaum says. They typically suggest eggs, toast, coffee — “and they want it to cost $12.”

There is one other area where the group may bow to local pressure: televisions. The original plan calls for keeping out all TVs, but it may not work out that way. “My dad lives around the corner,” Joost says. “One of his main requests was, ‘You have to have a TV where I can watch a Giants game.’”

Photo: Montague Diner

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