Having spiffed up the mythic nineteenth-century saloon without disgruntling its eclectic clientele, P.J. Clarke’s new owners hope to expand the brand upstairs at Sidecar with a gentrified chophouse menu, ambitious prices, and an unlisted telephone. Special cards that open the unmarked door have gone out to pals. “We want only our friends,” allows managing partner Philip Scotti (also an owner of Docks and Sarabeth’s) defensively. But okay, anyone can come with a reservation: “If you’re not a friend, we’ll make you one.” Romantic in a roadhouse way, Sidecar is woodsy and dark, with bare brick, Sinatra crooning, and ceiling planks from an old Vermont bridge. That Docks fishmarket clout buys glistening scallops and the dizzyingly fresh raw cherrystones (alas, wounded in the shucking). “We didn’t want dainty,” Scotti says of the jumbo lump crab cakes, carefully cooked salmon cut as big as a T-bone, Jamison Farm lamb chops with goat-cheese polenta, and a fine sirloin shell with fries. The pastry cook learned those ladies’-magazine-pretty layer cakes at Sarabeth’s. So why is the cherry pie such a mess?

Sidecar
205 East 55th Street
212-317-2044