Chumley's

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 in 2017 as a restaurant, and it’s just 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. When we went, 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.