Noah Tepperberg is one of the partners steering places like Tao, the Downtown restaurant and club from 2013 that (on my visit last season) still seats 600 covers on a rainy night. His Tao Group Hospitality is also connected to the luxurious Crane Club, the far-west restaurant and private club where Melissa Rodriguez cooks and Beyoncé held her afterparty for the Met Gala on Monday night. Now, in partnership with Hudson Yards, the group is bringing back Avenue in June, the aughts-era club that shuttered in 2020.
Avenue Sky Lounge, at 30 Hudson Yards, is the newest addition to the Tao-operated address that’s doing quadruple-duty: In addition to Avenue, there’s the current restaurant Peak with Priceless, Edge, and Marquee Skydeck – all operating under one very tall roof.
“Bringing Avenue back to New York is deeply personal for us,” Tepperberg says. “It’s a brand that has always represented the best of what we do, and reimagining it 1,100 feet above Manhattan felt like the only way to do it justice.”
Avenue, at its peak, drew a crowd that included Lindsay Lohan, Justin Timberlake, and celebrities of the late 2010s. Tao Group tried to save the original 10th Avenue location by renegotiating the lease, but the landlord sold the building to make way for an office tower.
The new Avenue Sky Lounge spans 6,000 square feet on the 101st floor and holds up to 170 customers. The cocktail menu riffs on New York neighborhoods: the Upper East Side (gin, cucumber, mint, and Champagne), the Rockaway Colada, and Hell’s Kitchen (tequila, peach, amaro, firewater tincture), for example. The wine list with nearly 2,000 labels rounds it out.
Avenue’s design, developed with global agency Journey (which worked on the David Bowie installation and the set of the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), draws on Art Deco motifs: lacquered woods, suedes, geometric accents, and architectural arches.
The food menu is a light bites selection from sibling spot, Peak with Priceless, a restaurant that has also been updated since Tao took over the location last April. Chef Ralph Scamardella, Tao Group’s chief culinary officer, along with chef Jason Hall, will oversee a menu of American cuisine — oysters, burrata, roast chicken, halibut, porterhouse — with prix fixe and a la carte offerings alongside new additions. Peak with Priceless is one of the growing venues paired with credit cards in New York, alongside places like Capital One’s coffee shops around the city.
Adjacent venue, Edge — the sky deck experience at 30 Hudson Yards that’s the highest indoor-outdoor sky deck in the Western Hemisphere — is also getting seven new permanent immersive installations this summer. It will span the entire indoor footprint from the fourth-floor entry to the 100th-floor sky deck.
And as of Friday, May 1, Marquee Skydeck is back for its second season on the Edge sky deck, with DJ sets from Benny Benassi, Cassian, and others.