This is really Bruce's highlight: eating the prime rib, cooked just right, with a baked potato on the side. Gallagher's was fabulous-the food and service! George was our server and treated us like royalty!
It was a cold walk home from Gallagher's...but fun! Here is MBA just inside the hotel doors.
An interesting history about this famous restaurant:
Helen Gallagher and Jack Solomon launched Gallagher’s in November of 1927, a few nights before the opening of “Funny Face”, next door at the Alvin Theater, a brand-new musical by George and Ira Gershwin that starred Fred Astaire and his sister Adele.
“Funny Face” chalked up a respectable 244 performances and was one of the top hits of the 1927-1928 season. Many years and many musicals later, the Alvin is now the Neil Simon Theater and still conveniently located right next door to Gallagher’s Steak House as is the Virgina Theatre.
In 1927, with Prohibition hanging heavily over the land, Gallagher’s was the first speakeasy-a Runyonesque gathering place for gamblers, sports figures, showbiz folk and other stars of the Broadway firmament. That changed in 1933, the watershed year that saw the Depression bottom out as FDR took office and delivered on his promise to end Prohibition.
With the sale of liquor now legalized, Helen Gallagher and Jack Solomon brought an entirely new dimension to American cuisine: Broadway’s first steak house and where the “New York Strip” steak was first served.
Their idea was a totally different concept, a retreat from the formal, plush elegance borrowed from Europe that was then in favor as restaurant décor. It was back to the basics: plain plank floors, wood-paneled walls and red checked tablecloths-an informal blending of speakeasy and country inn. The dark walls were covered with photos of Broadway and Hollywood stars, business and political luminaries, and athletes past and present, including the equine performers celebrated at Belmont Park and Jamaica, New York’s showcase racetracks of then and today.
Helen Gallagher knew how to lure celebrities; she was something of one herself. Until the mid-20’s, she had been a Ziegfield Girl and the wife of a household name, Ed Gallagher, who with Al Shean made up the comedy team of Gallagher and Shean. They were the leading vaudeville and recording duo of their day until the death of Ed Gallagher. Helen then married Jack Solomon, a colorful restauranteur/gambler with a loyal and large following among what was then called the sporting element.
Helen died and Jack Solomon married Irene Hayes. Hayes was the owner of the top floral design shop in the city. Soon after Solomon dies and Irene Hayes is sole owner.
Irene after a few years decided to sell the restaurant. Out of hundreds of potential buyers, Irene Hayes chose Jerome Brody who was a great restauranteur, the originator of Restaurants Associates, in 1964. Jerome Brody’s accomplishments included the Four Seasons- Rainbow Room, the Forum of the Twelve Caesars’ Fonda del Sole and the Famous Rainbow Room. With Jerome Brody’s ingenuity and foresight, he took the refrigerator that was at the front of the restaurant and opened up the front so that the contents could be seen from the street. He stocked it with the best USDA Prime aged meat. The beef was kept at a constant 36 degrees for 21 days to insure tenderness. This practice is still followed to this day.
Today, in our 75th year- 40 of them under aegis of Jerome Brody - 58 of them as a steakhouse, the décor remains exactly the same as it was and so does the incredible mix of our clientele- showbiz people from both coasts; jocks from every calling of the sports world; business men and women from overseas and of course New York; and Big Apple visitors from Connecticut to Cannes.
Among them it is not unusual to see such celebrities as Bruce and Mary Beth Alexander, Jimmy Breslin, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Vanessa Redgrave, T. Boone Pickens, Jackie Mason, Oliver North, Connie Chung, Jack Palance, Liz Smith, Muhammed Ali, Madonna, the stars and cast of all the top running Broadway shows on Broadway including David Letterman and Paul Shaefer, dining all at once within the spacious walls of Gallagher’s.
The knowledge and know-how that Jerome Brody brought to Gallagher’s will live forever as a great restaurant landmark in New York City.
