This is Casa Cruz, the most expensive restaurant in New York: 475,000 euros to eat between 'warhols' and 'boteros'

Casa Cruz's menu prices are reasonably cheap if you take into account that it is the new hotspot in one of the most elite neighborhoods of one of the most expensive cities in the world.

The grilled wagyu beef picaña accompanied with roasted carrots and charcoal sweet potato costs 82 dollars (78 euros), while the grilled veal chop with potatoes is around 81 dollars (77 euros).

But the bill goes up stratospherically if you want to taste chef Bill Brasile's dishes in one of Casa Cruz's private dining rooms, halfway between a restaurant and a club.

Its 99 members have paid between 240,000 and 475,000 euros for a membership that gives them access to lunch or dinner in the reserved rooms, decorated with works by Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Keith Haring and Fernando Botero.

New York millionaires have been fascinated with this type of club for 20 years.

Since the opening of Soho House in 2003, these places that promise exclusivity and privacy have not stopped proliferating.

There's The Core Club and The Aman, in Midtown;

Neue House, in Greenwich Village;

Zero Bond, in NoHo;

Casa Cipriani, in Lower Manhattan, and Fasano, on Fifth Avenue.

Most of them charge between 3,800 and 4,800 euros in annual fees, but Casa Cruz is different.

Technically it is not a club, but a restaurant serving South American and Mediterranean cuisine —"between the Argentine Pampas and Positano", as defined by

— with a hundred partners who have paid between a quarter and half a million euros to feel like lords and masters in a hundred-year-old six-story mansion on the Upper East Side.

The dining room, bar and meeting rooms in the VIP areas are intoxicatingly glamorous.

Some rooms are covered in Brazilian cherry panels and copper details, others are upholstered in green corduroy.

There are marble fireplaces and chinoiserie drapes.

The waiters wear uniforms created by New Zealand designer Emilia Wickstead, a favorite of Kate Middleton.

Club facade, on the Upper East Side of New York.Weston Wells

Steve Cuozzo, a columnist for the

, has described these places reserved for a privileged few as "a cancer in the city."

Do the rich in New York need more clubs?

According to Juan Santa Cruz (Santiago de Chile, 51 years old), founder of Casa Cruz, the answer is yes.

“The pandemic has had to do with this.

There are people who have realized that they want to be with others like them, ”he says in conversation with

.

“My club is small, just 99 members and their families.

But all of them are very interesting, ”he adds, without wanting to give names (the inauguration was attended by members of dynasties such as Guinness, Santo Domingo and Niarchos).

There is no money in the world to become member number 100. "We don't admit anyone else, there are no more places," says the hotelier, who insists that the main restaurant, for 66 diners, is open to the public, assuming that you can get a reservation (there is a waiting list).

Juan Santa Cruz seems to fully understand what the rich want.

Perhaps because he has grown up among them.

His father was a Chilean landowner, his great-grandfather and great-uncle were ambassadors to the United Kingdom, and his aunt Lucía Santa Cruz was a friend of the current King Carlos III.

“I studied Finance and Economics in Boston.

In 1995, when I graduated, I moved to New York and worked on Wall Street for five years.

Then, in 2000, I moved to Buenos Aires to work in an investment fund”, he explains.

In 2002, when the economic crisis broke out in that country, he took a sabbatical to think about what he wanted to do with his life.

He was 29 years old.

“I said to myself: 'Why don't I invent a job that doesn't feel like a job?'

I like beautiful places, interesting people, delicious food and good wines.

A restaurant has all that,

A Casa Cruz dining room on the third floor of the mansion.Weston Wells

In 2004 he opened the first Casa Cruz in Buenos Aires.

A decade later, in 2015, she inaugurated the English version in a Victorian building in Notting Hill, London.

He is now a favorite of stars like Elton John, Mick Jagger and Prince Harry.

What is the secret of his success?

"No idea.

I guess people find intimacy and feel at home,” he says.

In November 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, British singer Rita Ora broke confinement rules to celebrate her 30th birthday at the restaurant.

Six years ago, the businessman brought his kitchen to the New York neighborhood of TriBeCa with a pop-up restaurant.

The

was going to be open for 16 nights, but in the end it served dinners for three months.

“Then everyone told me that I had to open a location in Lower Manhattan.

But I like to go against it, so I started looking uptown,” he says.

Looking for properties in that area, he came across a mansion on 61st Street, between Park Avenue and Madison, an early 20th-century Beaux Arts mansion designed by famed architect CPH Gilbert.

The restaurant on the fifth floor of Casa Cruz, decorated with silk panels made by Colombian designer Johanna Ortiz.Weston Wells

Santa Cruz and his partner, Charlotte Santo Domingo, daughter of the Duke of Wellington, were in charge of choosing every detail of the restaurant: the interior design, the lighting, the crockery, the table linen.

“We even chose the music and the smells,” she notes.

It took five years to see his dream come true.

“The pandemic caught us and the works were delayed.

While we were working on the project, I was watching New Yorkers flee the city fleeing covid.

I came to think: 'No one is going to return'.

But real New Yorkers are back."

The inauguration, last September, was a success.

Vogue named Casa Cruz "the most glamorous new restaurant" in the city.

“New York is constantly changing, but it is always the same.

It continues to be the most important city in the most important country in the world”, concludes Santa Cruz.

"A very important businessman recently warned me: 'Never bet against New York because New York always wins.'