On any given midsummer Saturday night, New York's Upper East Side is a social wasteland. The neighborhood's wealthy habitués flee the city for breezier country homes, leaving their tony stomping ground deserted. Aside from the hum of taxis passing by and the random Pomeranian bark, the streets are all but silent. On a recent July evening, however, rumblings can be heard from a crowd lingering in front of the stately Carlyle hotel. Inside, an earpiece-wearing security guard politely organizes a line snaking through the lobby—a scene more often found outside clubs below 14th Street. They aren't waiting to hear some mononymous DJ or even to dance; they're just hoping to snag a table at Bemelmans Bar—the circa 1947 boîte known for piano standards and stiff martinis.
Named after Ludwig Bemelmans, the Madeline author whose whimsical murals adorn the 672-square-foot canteen, the bar is a vestige of Old New York seemingly frozen in time. Waiters in white dinner jackets and bow ties ferry silver bowls of potato chips to every table while a jazz trio plays tunes from the Great American Songbook, just as they have for 75 years. Bemelmans's consistently gracious service and genteel environs have made it a favorite neighborhood watering hole for generations of Upper East Siders, from Jackie O and Brooke Astor to the average Park Avenue prince.
The line on this Saturday night, however, isn't composed of locals roughing it in town for the weekend, though some of them can be found among the bar's candlelit banquettes. Along with the expected patrons in their Van Cleef & Arpels jewels and Tom Ford suits, there are Gen Z women taking selfies, a man-bun-sporting dude slipping the pianist a twenty and a hipster carrying a Machado de Assis paperback. They're all part of a new demographic, coming from downtown, Brooklyn and beyond, that defines such throwback civility as an ideal night out.
Since Bemelmans reopened post-lockdown, there has been a surge of younger clients coming for a taste of bygone Manhattan (and the highly Instagrammable setting). “We never had lines prior to the pandemic,” says Tony Mosca, the Carlyle's food and beverage director. “Now there are lines out to Madison Avenue on a nightly
