THE FRIDAY SUPPER CLUB

The Friday Supper Club is a late supper each Friday through November in a private room in New York, taken for the night and laid after the theatre hour: members come as they are from the evening, to one course and a savoury, and the table stays until the last of the company leaves.

It exists for the hour after the curtain, which New York once kept in its supper clubs, “a ’destination’ where patrons would spend the whole evening”.

Café Society

A supper club is “a traditional dining establishment that also functions as a social club”. Supper clubs rose in the 1930s and 1940s, some of them out of Prohibition roadhouses, and a guest stayed in one from the cocktail hour through to the entertainment after dinner.

“Café society” is a phrase credited to Maury Henry Biddle Paul, in 1915. In America it came to the fore with the end of Prohibition in December 1933, and it kept to a handful of rooms: the 21 Club, El Morocco, Restaurant Larue and the Stork Club. The 21 Club began in 1922 as a speakeasy in Greenwich Village, kept by Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns, and moved to 21 West 52nd Street late in 1929. It had thirty-seven jockey statues and required a jacket, and it closed in 2020.

The Stork Club, from 1929 to 1965, belonged to Sherman Billingsley, “a former bootlegger from Enid, Oklahoma”, and stood at 3 East 53rd Street from 1934. Its Cub Room was kept by a captain called “Saint Peter”, and Walter Winchell wrote his columns from Table 50. El Morocco opened on 5 October 1931 at 154 East 54th Street, behind blue zebra stripes by Vernon MacFarlane, and was called “one of the most caste-conscious, costly and cloistered night clubs in the world.” It closed in 1970.

Higher up, the Rainbow Room opened on 3 October 1934 on the sixty-fifth floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, with a dress code, Daniel Okrent writes, “that required white tie”, while the Rainbow Grill across the hall was black tie. It is a private event space now, jacket required, and its interior has been a city landmark since 2012. The Copacabana opened at 10 East 60th Street on 10 November 1940. In the Theater District, Sardi’s has been at 234 West 44th Street since 5 March 1927, its walls hung with more than a thousand caricatures of Broadway.

The form crossed the Atlantic and came back changed. The British supper clubs set out to bring “the ambience of the underground New York jazz club” to London, dinner “without the formality of a ball.” The revival is a small club with a set menu, often in rooms “only revealed to the guests when they buy a ticket”, at which guests are “expected to fraternise” with people they have not met.

The Evening

Each Friday through November, in a private room in New York taken for the night. The Court keeps no house of its own.

Supper is laid after the theatre hour.

Members come as they are from the evening.

One course and a savoury.

The table stays until the last of the company leaves.

In 2026 the Fridays fall on 6, 13, 20 and 27 November; the last is the day after Thanksgiving.

What Is Asked

A lounge suit. Nothing is published for a private room; Debrett’s holds the lounge suit “suitable for drinks after work or dinner in a restaurant”, and the Court keeps to it.

Nobody is pitched at the table.

The Places

Sixteen places each Friday.

The sum is stated in the invitation.

The Court’s Opera, Ballet and Philharmonic Evenings are held in the same month.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.