The line outside of Jean’s moved quickly for a Friday night. Bouncers unclipped velvet ropes for hordes of Zoomers who said they knew someone who knew someone who had a table. Others hopped on the phone with promoters and begged for help getting in between vape puffs. Protein-maxxing bros and girls in short skirts stepped out of black Cadillacs and, without turning their heads, marched past the glass doors. All the while, the line kept moving.
Surely, you’ve heard of Jean’s. You might’ve seen someone post from the upstairs bistro or downstairs club. Maybe you’ve scrolled past the jumbo chocolate chip cookies or the branded gua sha that Jean’s sent to its most loyal — and most followed — regulars.
Jean’s is a restaurant with a club — some might call it a clubstaurant — on Lafayette Street owned by Max Chodorow, nepo baby to Jeffrey Chodorow, the famed restaurateur behind institutions like China Grill. Ashwin Deshmukh, a “nightclub impresario” involved in buzzy New York City spots like vegetarian haunt Superiority Burger, is also a partner.
Since opening in 2023, Jean’s has established itself as the glitziest hangout for NYC’s cool crowd: Influencers, designers, DJs, writers, and other well-connected partiers. Though snagging a reservation to eat gluten-free mozzarella rings upstairs might be easy, getting into the club below — as I came to find out that Friday evening — is either a shot in the dark or a cake walk. It just depends on who you are, who you know, or what you look like.
When it was our turn to get sized up by the bouncer at around 11 p.m., we were forced to admit that no, we didn’t have a reservation, and no, we weren’t on the guest list.
“I can do a bar tab for $600 for the three of you,” she offered us while twiddling a metal number ticker in her hand. The bouncer was choosy. That’s fine. That is her job and this is mine.
Jean’s has maintained its grip on the minds of NYC’s cool, current partygoers for roughly three years now — an impressive feat for a spot geared toward a generation that’s always ready to hop to the next hot spot.
Hangouts for the glitterati have always been exclusive. Some are a flash in the pan, whereas others — say Studio 54 — become longstanding institutions. When the demand is getting in and the supply is exclusivity, as is the case at Jean’s, the model has proven to work. The question that remains, then, is whether it can or will join the ranks of such historic spots.
Farm-to-Table-to-Bottle-Service
Early coverage on its opening billed Jean’s as a “farm-to-table bistro” where “produce is upfront.” Those descriptors aren’t untrue: Jean’s sources its produce from Chodorow’s farm in Pennsylvania, and dishes like steak au poivre and agnolotti with courgettes are on the menu.
“The food is honestly better than it needs to be,” says J Lee, food critic for Feed Me, a popular Substack for NYC’s food and finance in-crowd, who hosted his wedding ceremony, dinner, and reception across the two floors of Jean’s last year. “I remember I was quite impressed with it the first time I went. It’s all fun food that nobody can really be mad at.”
Now, though, most of its buzz has pivoted downstairs. Many in my orbit of 20-somethings were well aware of the dance club Jean’s, but ignorant of its associated restaurant. How did a hotly anticipated restaurant that made its rounds in NYC’s elite food media publications become almost entirely eclipsed by a downstairs club? What draws Brooklynites to pass over the clubs in Bushwick in exchange for hopping on the L train and taking a chance on getting turned away at the door?
Like the origin story for many of NYC’s buzziest clubs, Jean’s found its way with cool kids via luxury brands and socialite-filled parties. Jimmy Choo and Barbour have hosted branded parties, inviting downtown icons of yore and viral scenesters today — Chloë Sevigny, Martha Stewart, and Emily Ratajkowski, among others — to its club space. On a given weekend night, you might see below-14th Street media personalities like Instagram-popular writer and DJ Alex Delany, Feed Me’s founder Emily Sundberg, and Gutes Guterman, publisher of Byline and The Drunken Canal.
“We felt part of the upper echelon of the downtown scene. The door is hard as hell, but once you get past it, everyone’s family.”
Exclusivity at Jean’s is unabashed. “The line is just for you to wait to talk to us,” the bouncer said after determining us unworthy of entry. Fair play. There’s also an entire page on Resy’s website with former general manager Kahiem Rivera walking the Jean’s-dreamers through the savoir-faire of gaining entry. One suggested workaround is to book a table in the restaurant and inquire the waitstaff about going downstairs. Rivera also advises those without a reservation to “come with a small group, look your best, and try your luck at the door.”
One 20-something who once dined and danced at Jean’s — and requested anonymity for this piece — said its insiders club reputation is the very reason it’s so enticing. If you’ve been, you’ve been.
“It’s a highly coveted reservation and spot,” they said. “We felt part of the upper echelon of the downtown scene. The door is hard as hell, but once you get past it, everyone’s family.”
Jean’s plays into its intrigue with deft marketing stunts and an Instagram following of in-the-know frequenters and curious hopefuls. The clubstaurant sends a blood-red gua sha branded with “Jean’s” in the signature script to its roster of popular regulars, who post and boast the skincare tool.
“The craziest part is they make you want this gua sha so bad,” the 20-something said, who pushed their own company to host an event at Jean’s for yet another chance of getting in. “If you have the gua sha, then you join the elite community.”
Then again, Jean’s isn’t for everyone. “There’s not enough aura here,” one man with salt-and-pepper hair said over the phone as he dipped off the line.
Can ‘Club’ Stand for ‘Cultural Hub?’
In many ways, Jean’s is on track to becoming an institution: It welcomes of-the-moment influencers, it demands a $600 cover from three people looking to party, and it bought a historic Hamptons restaurant for $4.5 million with plans of opening a new outpost out east next summer.
“Jean’s wanted to be more than just a popping club on the weekends,” Lee says. “It wanted to be a cultural meeting place in New York City in a way that feels old-school, that feels like an older generation of New York.”
That nexus of culture harkens back to a time when the media, publishing, and fashion elite ruled the NYC scene. And it’s not just modern media: The old glossies of Condé Nast are also attracted to Jean’s. The New Yorker celebrated its centennial at Jean’s last year, and earlier this year, Vogue’s Anna Wintour hosted Will Welch’s farewell party as he stepped down as global editorial director at GQ.
Lee feels a rush of familiarity and of all-things culture each time he steps in. He bumps into fellow tastemakers on any given visit. “Maybe it’s a writer, maybe an artist, or a fashion designer, but they do a good job of being very hospitable to the people that they think are cultural movers and shakers in the city,” he says.
Can Radical Exclusivity Bide Time?
It appears that, so far, the radically exclusive ethos at Jean’s has not stymied its allure, as evidenced by the near guarantee that city kids will assemble on Lafayette Street each Friday and Saturday night. That guarantee may not last for years to come — in NYC, it’s almost too easy for a spot to lose its “cool” factor. The latest victim of this phenomenon might just be cocktail bar Kind Regards, a previous hot spot in the Lower East Side that shuttered earlier this month.
Jean’s did not respond to VinePair’s multiple requests for comment, nor did former and current employees.
“As much as it has this reputation of being an exclusive, hard-to-get-into club on Friday and Saturday nights, they do a good job of like keeping their finger on the pulse with things that they actually f*ck with,” Lee says. “They do a good job of being hospitable and amenable to like organizations and to people that they think are cool.”
Is hospitality actually hospitality when Jean’s cherry picks certain patrons to be hospitable to? If, for the majority, exclusivity is the sole product, how much staying power can it retain?
“I’m scared to try and get in when I’m not associated with a brand,” the 20-something said. “I’m lucky to have done what I’ve done there. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it again.”
