Others sit in the caged bottle keep, with personalized labels that can be bought. ” Some sit atop high shelves and can only be reached by ladders, which members of the staff will climb throughout the night. ” The walls are decked out with the restaurant’s inventory of over 1000 bottles, which Tommy noted are, “part of the architecture. There’s always a show going on even if nothing is onstage. “We want the performance to enhance, but not be, the experience. The jazz stage provides a theatrical ambience to the space without overpowering it. ” Each side of the dining room features a fireplace: one has hand carved marble from Italy, and the other is repurposed from the door of a country schoolhouse. “Wherever you are in the restaurant, you feel like you’re in your own area. ”The room is large, but because the tables are isolated from one another, each setting is intimate and unique. Hanging above the booths are pieces of taxidermy that Tommy believes “bring in some more old world charm. Two of these investors are Tommy’s young sons, River and Sawyer, who each made a $1 investment in the establishment in order to garner a place on the floor. Descending into the restaurant, we walked on 125-year-old floorboards from Connecticut that have the names of the restaurant’s investors carved into it. The wallpaper is finely textured with glass and sand, and the stainless steel ceilings are reclaimed parts from a former distillery. In 2016, it became a little slice of vintage Manhattan, complete with a repurposed teller booth from Grand Central Station serving as the hosts’ stand. The space has had other lives as a Japanese restaurant and a photocopy center - Tommy said that when he first saw the space, it was raw, with concrete floors that had holes them and wires hanging from the ceiling. “The challenge was getting it to look like the Flatiron Room - old world, almost like we discovered it, ” Tommy told the Manhattan Sideways team. In contrast to the more common restaurant theme of the 1920s and 30s, which Tommy considers to have “played out, ” Fine & Rare aims to be an aristocratic parlor straight out of the 1950s, modeled after classic Manhattan hideaways such as The Explorers Club. Fine & Rare, shorthand for “fine food and rare spirits” is the latest creation of Tommy Tardie, restaurateur and owner of the Flatiron Room on West 26th Street. ![]() This feature was first published in September 2017. The location was renamed in 2023 as The Flatiron Room Murray Hill.
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