![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/9d82eefc0cda26f81c4efc67a712c1ff57-tommy-bahama.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
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\n A recent weekday lunch at Tommy Bahama.
\n Photo: Daniel Paik\n <\/p>\n
On a Tuesday afternoon a week and a half before Christmas, the sharks are swimming at the Marlin Bar. Sharp winds whip down Fifth Avenue, but the scene inside the Tommy Bahama Restaurant<\/a> on the corner of 45th Street is far more serene, Frank Sinatra playing softly over a low murmur of mergers and acquisitions. Near the entrance, just past a beached log and some dangling strings of seashells, a traffic jam of customers tries to sneak in before rushing back to the office. The Morton\u2019s steakhouse around the corner is half full. Tommy Bahama is, as it is nearly every weekday, slammed.<\/p>\n \u201cI made my reservation last week \u2014 I wouldn\u2019t leave it up to chance,\u201d one guest says as he waits to check in. He explains that he works in finance but doesn\u2019t want to share any other details because he \u201ccan\u2019t talk to the press.\u201d Scanning the room, it isn\u2019t hard to identify other diners\u2019 employers. Company logos are everywhere: An Ernst & Young jacket here, a VARS cybersecurity puffer there, branded Patagonia vests all over the room.<\/p>\n \u201cPower dining\u201d conjures images of grand architecture and ornate salads, not the upscale-Margaritaville vibes of this second-floor restaurant, reached via a spiral staircase in the street-level Tommy Bahama store. Martinis, yes. Coconut Cloud martinis (vanilla rum, coconut rum, and coconut cream), not so much. But sometime over the past few years, midtown\u2019s captains of industry coalesced on this particular restaurant \u2014 part of a national chain with 29 outposts \u2014 that now does between 200 and 250 covers during lunch, 80 to 90 percent of which are business diners. An old friend who works in private equity confirms that Tommy Bahama is \u201cright up there now with all the Greek places and the Lobster Club<\/a>\u201d on the midtown business-meal ladder.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve done all the power-lunch places for the last 20 years,\u201d says Ron Geffner, a former SEC enforcement lawyer who is a founding partner in the firm Sadis & Goldberg. \u201cThey\u2019re inconsistent, in my mind, with the current economic reality of the world \u2014 if I\u202ftake someone to a very, very expensive restaurant, either prospective clients or people I do business with, they might question my value of money.\u201d Here, he knows the staff so well they sometimes choose his order, and he maintains a preferred spot (table No. 16, in a corner that offers a view of the street and host stand).<\/p>\n A plush banquette matches the sand-white walls, but the main appeal is not d\u00e9cor. It\u2019s utility. A private dining room is \u201cperfect for throwing up some slides,\u201d according to one regular. There\u2019s plenty of space between tables and little concern that a sensitive conversation will be overheard. And the food \u2014 coconut shrimp, crab-and-avocado salads, tuna poke bowls \u2014 comes out fast, an important detail for customers with small windows on their calendars. \u201cIf I miss lunch, if I miss it within that 45 minutes, I\u2019m not eating,\u201d says Geffner.<\/p>\n \u201cWe affectionately refer to it as our cafeteria,\u201d Nate Burbank, a vice-president at the reinsurance firm Guy Carpenter, tells me. When I\u2019d asked if he would meet me there, he\u2019d quickly texted back, \u201cI\u2019m always down for more Tommy B\u2019s.\u201d And as we settle in, he offers his view of the midtown lunch landscape. \u201cWe sometimes do the Rock Center circuit. Butter<\/a> sucks. We do Bobby Van\u2019s<\/a>, which just feels tired,\u201d Burbank says. \u201cThis area is such a nexus of midtown, and they do a good job. It\u2019s right by the train, which is good for the people who need to get back to the suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n General manager Christopher McLeod says he often tells his staff that they\u2019re essentially serving two different restaurants \u2014 the weekday lunch crowd and everyone else: \u201cWe have the lunchtime Tommy Bahama in Manhattan and then we have a \u2018regular\u2019 Tommy Bahama dinner time.\u201d McLeod was on the staff when the Fifth Avenue restaurant opened, having also put in time at the company\u2019s restaurants in Texas and Florida. Half-American, half-French, he grew up in Alsace with a family of butchers, bakers, and brasserie owners. Before landing at Tommy Bahama, he was a director of guest relations for Boston\u2019s Ritz-Carlton hotel. \u201cThey have an amazing hospitality school,\u201d he says. Does he apply some of the Ritz\u2019s approach \u2014 a warm welcome, anticipating guest needs, knowing how to read the power players \u2014 to Tommy B\u2019s? \u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019m doing it on purpose, but it is ingrained in me for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n How did a brand best known for golf shirts and beach-chair-market dominance become the default dining option for so many white-collar workers? It may have something to do with changing cultural norms. Jamie Hodari, an executive at real-estate firm CBRE, suggests that a younger generation of workers can be turned off by traditional power hubs. \u201cThere\u2019s something self-effacing about saying, \u2018Let\u2019s do that M&A meeting at Tommy\u2019s,\u2019\u2009\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Douglas Meyer, the regional president of New York City commercial banking for Valley Bank (and one of Crain\u2019s \u201cNotable Leaders in Finance\u201d for 2025) says he has been eating at the Tommy Bahama restaurant since the day it opened in 2012 \u2014 years before it became a destination. At the time, he worked in the same building. \u201cIt was a secret for a little while,\u201d he says wistfully. \u201cThere were days \u2014 I\u2019m laughing at myself \u2014 that I would go for breakfast and then lunch and then happy hour.\u201d He estimates he has been hundreds of times (though breakfast service has been scrapped). And he admits he developed a reputation among his co-workers. \u201cSome of my colleagues, they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re Mr. Tommy Bahama over here,\u2019\u2009\u201d Meyer says. \u201cAnd then my question back is always, \u2018Well, do you ever have a bad time?\u2019 They\u2019re like, \u2018No, no. I\u2019ve never had a bad time, ever.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n Now that word is out, of course, some people in the area have started to avoid Tommy Bahama, a friend who works in midtown says, because they\u2019ll inevitably run into \u201ctoo many\u201d people they know. But McLeod, the GM, isn\u2019t worried. In October, JPMorgan Chase celebrated the grand opening of its new headquarters at 270 Park Avenue<\/a>, a few blocks away. \u201cThey have different restaurants there, but we are going to see a big push,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the January 12, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n