Donohue’s, an NYC Icon, Closes for Good

Orders waiting to be picked up in the kitchen at Donohue’s.
Photo: Marcus Nilsson

After 76 years on Lexington Avenue, Donohue’s will say good-bye tonight. The tributes that have poured in since owner Maureen Donohue-Peters announced, earlier this spring, her plans to close the restaurant have made clear that New York is losing a quietly legendary place whose regulars always understood exactly what they had. We, like many others, at least understood we needed to share one more round of martinis in that room. Marcus said he’d bring his camera.

The three of us first stopped into Donohue’s a couple years ago, at the beginning of a cross-country journey to document America’s steakhouses in all their guises. It was Donohue’s, in fact, that inspired the project’s title: While admiring the Gothic blackletter and sweeping cursive on the oxblood sign out front, we were reminded that steak house was historically two words.

During that visit, Christmas was around the corner. We met bartender Johnny Kelly and took his portrait. “I like making people feel welcome even if they’ve never been here before, like an Irish public house,” he told us that night. “Do I get tired of it? Between us, after 40 years in bars, I can see Florida and the sunset. But it’s been good fun.” We still got the sense that he wasn’t going to retire until the circumstances made the decision for him.

This time, when we stopped in, it was Johnny’s final Saturday shift ever. We approached him with a copy of the book, already open to the spread with his portrait to refresh his memory. It had been a long time, but the precaution proved unnecessary. “My friends,” he said, before letting us know he’d be right back after tending to a few customers at the bar.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon on the day the Knicks would go on to win game five. The bar was already full, but the “dining room in rear,” as the space continues to be advertised in the window, was empty save for a woman sitting on one of the black-leather banquettes alone. There was a nearly finished Bloody Mary and two coffee cups by her side. She paused from working on her laptop to apply some lipstick.

We ordered our drinks, a wedge, and the famous burger. The tables around us began to fill with regulars. Kathleen Hale had perched at the bar since we arrived. She was quick to share two details: her late husband John Lawrence was the first and only journalist to be jailed during Watergate, and the couple ate dinner here until practically the day he died. “John called it our kitchen,” she said. “I remember crying with Maureen at the end of the Donohue’s meal we knew would be his last.”

Meanwhile, Marcus had already been invited into the kitchen by our server, Jake Robbins. The cooks seemed eager to show him around. It filled us with a particular flavor of elation — the exact feeling that had compelled us to continue adding stops to our steak tour, even though we knew our publisher would never grant us the extra pages we kept begging for.