"What It Is: The American restaurant in the West Village space that used to be a legendary speakeasy Perfect For: Dinner With The Parents, Impressing Out Of Towners The original Chumley’s was a speakeasy that opened during Prohibition, and the West Village bar was a great a place to hang. Then the building fell apart, they had to close it, and Chumley’s reopened last year as a restaurant. The first time we stopped in, we weren’t huge fans. But we recently went back, and we can now confidently tell you that it’s fine. The food is on the heavier side with stuff like cassoulet and steak tartare, and it’s all pretty decent - but, for the prices, it’s hard to justify a night out here. The burger is $29, for example, and it comes with more bone marrow than you’ll actually want. Although we do like the space. It’s sort of like a dark, old-school country club, and there are pictures of authors everywhere. There also happened to be an in-house historian walking around quizzing people on literary portraits, and we correctly named both Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer. The Verdict: The space is cool and the food here is good - but it isn’t quite good enough for how expensive it is." - hannah albertine, bryan kim, katherine lewin, hillary reinsberg, chris stang, matt tervooren
