Philippe Chow Moves to Fifth Avenue, and Midtown May Never Be the Same
After more than two decades on the Upper East Side, New York’s most theatrical Chinese restaurant trades one iconic address for another, and brings every bit of the drama with it
There’s a version of this story where a beloved restaurant moves after 20 years and everything that made it special quietly evaporates somewhere between the old address and the new one. The regulars drift away. The magic doesn’t survive the boxes and bubble wrap. It happens more than anyone likes to admit. Philippe Chow, which opens its new Fifth Avenue flagship at 10 East 52nd Street today, seems determined to prove that version wrong.
The restaurant has been a fixture of New York’s finer dining landscape since it first opened on East 60th Street, where it spent more than two decades building a reputation that is genuinely hard to categorize. It’s a fine-dining destination that somehow also qualifies as a scene. It’s a place serious enough to host power dinners and loose enough to end the night with a flambéed Cotton Candy Baked Alaska, which arrives tableside in what can only be described as a deliberate spectacle. The food is rooted in modern Beijing cuisine, and the whole vibe is, well, Philippe Chow.
The new location sits at what the restaurant calls “Luxury Row,” which I’d normally roll my eyes at, except that it’s not really wrong. The corner of 52nd and Fifth is surrounded by heritage retailers, high-end hotels, and the kind of storefronts that make tourists stop and take photos. It’s a conspicuous neighborhood for a conspicuous restaurant, and in that sense, the fit is pretty natural.
Design firm //3877, based in Washington D.C., handled the interiors, and they did not take the assignment lightly. The two-story space features velvet and sheer fabrics, gold beading, polished black marble, brushed brass, crocodile leather, leopard-plush carpet, and a sculptural brass-clad staircase that greets guests on arrival. A dramatically long 20-seat bar anchors the first floor. If that list sounds like a lot, it is, and it’s mostly intentional. The mood the restaurant is after is somewhere between a glamorous 1970s supper club and a very well-funded dream sequence, and the space pulls it off with more confidence than restraint.
The menu isn’t reinventing anything, which is exactly the point. Chef Philippe Chow’s Whole Peking Duck, slow-roasted to order and carved tableside, remains the centerpiece, the kind of dish that stops conversations at neighboring tables. Long-running favorites like the Green Prawns, Salt and Pepper Lobster, Kung Pao Chicken, and Chicken Satay with house peanut sauce are all present and accounted for. There’s also Moët & Satay, a four-course prix fixe experience paired with Moët & Chandon Champagne, which tells you a fair amount about the restaurant’s general disposition toward an evening out.
General Manager Edis Julevic, who has been with Philippe Chow since the early days, is leading the dining room alongside much of the same team, which matters more than it might sound. A lot of what makes Philippe Chow feel like Philippe Chow lives in the staff, in the white-jacketed service, and the specific rhythm of the room that regulars have come to rely on. Moving that to a new address without losing it is the real trick, and Julevic seems clear-eyed about it. “Guests come to Philippe Chow because it always feels familiar yet very exciting,” he said. “They’ll see the same team, the same smiles.”
The new building spans three full levels, giving the restaurant significantly more room to work with than before. The main floor can be reserved as a private dining room. The second floor handles everything from intimate dinners to fashion show productions. There’s also a Private Wine Cellar tucked away for very small gatherings, accessible through a discreet separate entrance, which is the kind of detail that will appeal to a certain kind of guest, and they know exactly who they are.
Over the years, Philippe Chow has found its way into rap lyrics and celebrity gossip columns without ever seeming to chase either, which is a harder balance to maintain than it looks. The crowd that shows up on any given night tends to be a mix of regulars who’ve been coming for a decade, visitors who booked weeks in advance, and industry people who show up late after something else and stay later than they planned. The new address, with its Midtown location and expanded event space, probably broadens that range rather than narrows it.
Coming soon is Nǐ Hǎo, a private concierge program for the brand’s most loyal guests, which translates from Mandarin as “hello.” It’s a small detail, but it says something about where the restaurant sees itself heading: bigger footprint, same warmth, same sense that the people walking through the door actually matter. Whether Fifth Avenue proves as good a home as 60th Street remains to be seen, but the early signs suggest Philippe Chow didn’t move so much as it upgraded. Which is, honestly, a very Philippe Chow thing to do.
THE DETAILS
Where: 10 East 52nd Street, New York, NY 10022
Hours: Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. · Saturday and Sunday, 4:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Reservations: (212) 644–8885 · philippechow.com
Private dining inquiries: (212) 459–0270
Don’t miss: Whole Peking Duck, Cotton Candy Baked Alaska, Lychee Martini
