Friday, November 7, 12:00 noon
Members $60, guests $70

Since its opening in the early 1990s, 44, in Ian Schrager’s Royalton hotel, has been one of the hippest restaurants in the Big Apple. In fact, the Philippe Starck–designed “jewel box” of a space, per Vanity Fair, was at the forefront of the resurgence of hotel dining. The chic rooms are “a place to be seen,” according to the Los Angeles Times, and “Condé Nast’s favorite lunching spot” as described by Laura Bailey in The London Sunday Telegraph. Paper Magazine wrote that “Fashionistas have long made the Royalton’s restaurant, 44, their home.” Yet, even though the restaurant launched the career of Geoffrey Zakarian, people often get caught up in the people watching, and forget about the plate watching. That has all changed since the arrival of Martin Davies, a pedigreed chef from across the Pond who has been working under consulting chef Claude Troisgros. As Zagat wrote, the duo’s “reworking of the New American menu has given this trendy Midtown restaurant a big lift…it pays off with a first-class meal.”

Though barely 30, this is not Davies’s first time working with a Michelin-starred chef. Davies grew up outside of Manchester, but moved to London in his early 20s to apprentice under culinary greats Gordon Ramsey, the Roux Brothers at Le Gavroche, Anton Mosimann at Mosimann’s, and Anton Edelmann at The Savoy Hotel. His next positions were at the Oriental Restaurant at Dorchester Hotel and as executive chef of Asia de Cuba and Tuscan at St. Martin’s Lane Hotel. He moved to New York to work at another Tuscan, the relaunch of Tuscan Steak with Rocco DiSpirito, where he first encountered restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow, Chodorow subsequently tapped Davies for 44, where he has been interpreting Troisgros’s celebrated cuisine for the “chic, beautiful people,” per Zagat.