THEDRUNKENMUNKEY
Take the whole room. Weekend brunch runs Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 am to 3:30 pm, we seat 32 at the table with 10 more at the bar, and a standing party takes 50 to 55 — which covers a group of forty comfortably.
A buyout is simpler than it sounds: for the length of your booking, the restaurant takes nobody else. The dining room, the bar and the screens are yours to point at whatever you came for, and the kitchen cooks to one menu instead of forty.
For a group of forty, seated and standing both work. Thirty-two at the table with 10 at the bar covers forty-two; a standing format stretches to 55.
For the whole room, send the date about a month out; a smaller group needs one to two weeks. Weekend brunch fills with regular reservations, and once those are on the books we can’t clear them, however good the reason.
We screen major cricket events, and a big match takes over the whole room. Groups book the place for a final and eat their way through it, which is the correct way to watch cricket. Other major sporting events play with the sound off, unless a New York team is making history.
Supporters’ clubs, alumni groups, societies and meetups end up here for the same reason: it is a room that holds a crowd without losing the food.
Your name on the menu
Menus are printed with the group’s name in script across the top — the club, the society, the year everybody graduated. It costs nothing and it makes the morning look organized, whatever the truth of it.
Weekend brunch is the easiest slot for a big group. The Breakfast Biryani, the Short-Rib Eggs Benedict and the French Toast come out alongside the rest of the kitchen’s cooking, and with starters shared and mains plated, forty people eat at the same time rather than in waves.
If the group can’t come to us, we cater off-site to homes and offices across New York for 15 to 50 people, with three days’ notice.
Drinks can be settled in advance as well — one signature cocktail, beer or glass of wine per guest, pricing on request — which is considerably simpler than forty separate bar tabs at the end of a morning.
Tell us the date, the numbers, and what everyone is coming for.