Blue Ribbon Brasserie

The famed Blue Ribbon Brasserie. Before dinner we stopped at a wine bar on the other side of Soho. The 20-something bartender asked where we were off to, then mentioned she’d never heard of Blue Ribbon, “but it must be good if you’re excited about it!”

Must it? Or does nostalgia get in the way of an objective review? The 2026 World Cup had wrapped up the day before, and those televised games were saturated with ads featuring David Beckham. But how many of the younger generation even know who he is, or how he bent it back in the 1990s?

For those of us who lived in NYC in the ’90s and the aughts/naughts, Blue Ribbon Brasserie and its fried chicken are enshrined in legend. In our late-night bar and shuffleboard days, we would frequently race to make it to Lucky Strike for a steak au poivre before their kitchen closed at 3am, but we always knew that Blue Ribbon would be open even later.

Their fried chicken is still legendary, and Connecticut clams steamed in a wine broth were a fantastic starter, but we found little reason to order the steak. The beef was cooked without pepper and served pre-sliced with a sidecar of overly sweet, almost syrupy sauce. The fries were left unfinished, even with extra brunchers to help out, but the banana split was as good as we remembered.

Don Cheadle walked in as we ordered drinks, and left after a mocktail and salad. Like us, he apparently still knows what Blue Ribbon means to NYC.