{"id":207107,"date":"2026-04-23T11:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T11:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/207107\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T11:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T11:41:08","slug":"donohues-steak-house-an-nyc-icon-is-set-to-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/207107\/","title":{"rendered":"Donohue\u2019s Steak House, an NYC Icon, Is Set to Close"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Donohue\u2019s <\/p>\n

\n The unassuming restaurant first opened in 1950.
\n Photo: Robert K. Chin\/Alamy\n <\/p>\n

Yet another old-school New York dining icon is leaving us, and this departure is particularly wrenching. It\u2019s Donohue\u2019s Steak House<\/a>, the railroad-car-size Upper East Side time capsule that has for decades been punching well above its weight in antique ambiance and archetypal significance. The spiritual home of Yankee pot roast and mid-century service will close in June.<\/p>\n

There is some solace to be had in this, as owner Maureen Donohue-Peters would have it. Even if the joint\u2019s lease hadn\u2019t been up for renewal at the end of this year \u2014 which it is \u2014 she was ready to bring this chapter of Donohue\u2019s to a close. \u201cI want to leave while I still love the game,\u201d Donohue-Peters says. \u201cThe city is not for me anymore. I want a better quality of life. To me, it\u2019s bittersweet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donohue-Peters appeared to have made up her mind earlier this year. With an Instagram post<\/a> in March, she invited Donohue\u2019s followers to \u201cjoin us for our final St. Patrick\u2019s Day. Thank you for all the great memories.\u201d More than one of the comments on that post began with \u201cFinal???\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, final. Donohue-Peters wasn\u2019t interested in waiting out her lease; even offers from the landlord to lower the rent couldn\u2019t dissuade her. The curtain will officially fall this summer.<\/p>\n

The tide seemed to shift for Donohue-Peters when she and her niece and partner, Mary Barrie, opened Donohue\u2019s East<\/a> in Westhampton Beach last summer. It was the business\u2019s first extension in 75 years. Suddenly, Donohue-Peters, who lives in Hampton Bays and grew up in the area, had a restaurant in her backyard. The new location proved an immediate success and attracted many of the same fans who loved the original. The food and atmosphere out East are replicas of those in Manhattan, though the new space has more windows.<\/p>\n

What happens to the timeless Lexington Avenue location is not yet clear. Donohue-Peters isn\u2019t interested in selling the name, and she plans to open another Donohue\u2019s on Long Island with another niece, Maureen Healy. (Regarding all the Maureens in the family tree, Donohue-Peters says the Donohues \u201chad a habit of repeating.\u201d) But she is entertaining offers to buy the classic interior. Any buyer \u2014 potential suitors are said to include the Frenchette Group, which famously revived Le Veau d\u2019Or<\/a> \u2014 will have to adopt the milieu as a whole, however. Otherwise, Donohue-Peters will take every last oil painting and metal coatrack with her, leaving only the bare walls and the landmarked fa\u00e7ade. \u201cI\u2019m not going to sell the space inside if I\u2019m not comfortable with the person,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt\u2019s not about the money. That\u2019s a unique, coddled space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donohue\u2019s was founded by Martin Donohue in 1950. He and his son Michael built the decorative wooden backbar that greets guests as they enter. Martin eventually handed it down to Michael, who\u2019d started working at the restaurant as a teenager and died in 2000. Then came Michael\u2019s daughter Maureen. The generational family dynamic is reflected in their real estate. The Donohues have never owned the four-story building they inhabit at 845 Lexington Avenue, but for all 76 years in business they have dealt with the same landlord family.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Michael Donohue, father of current owner Maureen Donohue-Peters, working at the bar when it opened in 1950.
\n Photo: Courtesy of Maureen Donohue\n <\/p>\n

\u201cDonohue\u2019s dark-paneled dining room and its comfortable booths provide an intimate and old-fashioned atmosphere that permits its customers to converse in a relatively quiet atmosphere,\u201d says Gay Talese, one longtime fan. \u201cI can\u2019t remember during my decades of faithful attendance ever regretting patronizing the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somewhat surprisingly, almost all the press about Donohue\u2019s has been written in the past 15 years, but the restaurant did draw its fair share of boldface names over the decades. In its earlier days, they were mainly politicians, financiers, and journalists, people who were famous because of the power they wielded. (Donohue\u2019s is on the Upper East Side, after all.) David Rockefeller came in, as did Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, future felon Bernie Madoff, advertising exec Jerry Della Femina, gossip columnist Liz Smith, television journalists Morley Safer and Peter Jennings, and \u201call of Channel 5.\u201d There were also a smattering of artistic types, including Talese, historian Teddy White, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Liza Minnelli, and architect Robert A.M. Stern.<\/p>\n

Celebrities to stop in more recently include Drew Barrymore and Robert Redford. They were perhaps alerted to the restaurant\u2019s existence when it was used as a perfectly New York\u2013y backdrop for shows like The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, and Billions. Or perhaps it was difficult for them to ignore a 2015 story<\/a> about Donohue\u2019s regular Robert Ellsworth, a multimillionaire art collector who bequeathed a $100,000 tip to Maureen and her niece Mary Barrie.<\/p>\n

What drew everyone in? The visual spell cast by Donohue\u2019s can\u2019t be underestimated, even if you\u2019re approaching it from the sidewalk as a stranger to the place. The fa\u00e7ade is shiny black; the sign above is dark red; the awning is green. The small picture window reads \u201cDonohue\u2019s\u201d in gold-leaf script and, below it, \u201cDining Room in Rear.\u201d This glass box is often decked out in homey decorations for the holidays.<\/p>\n

Inside, the exterior color scheme is echoed. There\u2019s more black in the form of the gleaming vinyl booths and the black-and-white checkerboard floor, red in the shape of the bright tablecloths, and green in the paper place mats that tell you Donohue\u2019s is open for \u201cLunch * Dinner * Supper\u201d \u2014 making it perhaps the only restaurant left in New York that offers \u201csupper\u201d by name. (\u201cBack then, supper was after 9 p.m., for the theater crowd after the shows got out,\u201d explains Donohue-Peters.) Whatever the meal, the menu has long featured greatest-hits comfort food from the Eisenhower years: shepherd\u2019s pie, Maryland turkey, French onion soup, center-cut pork chops, London broil, chicken potpie, fish and chips, meat loaf. These specials are written on a chalkboard hung on the back wall.<\/p>\n

As appealing as Donohue\u2019s d\u00e9cor and home cooking may be, they don\u2019t explain the restaurant\u2019s magnetic pull on New Yorkers of a certain temperament. Its departure from the scene isn\u2019t about losing a style of cuisine so much as an irreplaceable reverberation of a lost dining ideal. It\u2019s a vibe that\u2019s free of front-of-house obstructionism, where you can eat at the bar but you don\u2019t have to eat at the bar; you can just drink. It\u2019s a vibe where the bartenders wear white collared shirts and black ties, and the servers wear white shirts and black pants, and none does so ironically. It\u2019s a vibe where your martini or Manhattan is basically a double with the remainder of the cocktail served in a pint-glass sidecar complete with julep strainer. It\u2019s a vibe where that cocktail is served by a career bartender who\u2019s slinging drinks because it\u2019s a good steady job, not because cocktails got cool 25 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an institution,\u201d says Catherine Treboux, who inherited Le Veau d\u2019Or from her own father, Robert. \u201cIt takes years to establish one and generations in the ownership and clientele. Heart, soul, comfort, and consistency \u2014 and father-daughter relationships create the best institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"US-PEOPLE-LIFESTYLE-RESTAURANT\" <\/p>\n

\n Donohue-Peters in 2014.
\n Photo: Jewel Samad\/AFP via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n