Feinstein's (Regency Hotel)

Feinstein's lived in the Regency Hotel's power-breakfast restaurant, a room that every day had to be turned into a nightclub^{1, 2}. It took two hours to move in the stage and the piano, and two hours to tear it down².

The 150-seat supper club bore the name of the singer and pianist Michael Feinstein, who booked it in partnership with the Tisch family¹. It opened in 1999 with Rosemary Clooney on the bandstand and went on to call itself "The Nightclub of New York"³. Time Out called Feinstein cabaret's crown prince and the room swank, and the A-list came, Chita Rivera, Betty Buckley and Rita Moreno among them⁴. Feinstein later said he never made money in the nightclub business: setting up the room took union crews and cost $150,000 a year².

In July 2012 Playbill reported that Feinstein's would close at the end of the year, and the club said it would move to a new location in 2013 while the hotel underwent a major renovation⁵. It closed on New Year's Eve 2012, after 14 years^{6, 7}. The hotel, open since 1963, shut that December for a 54-week, $125 million renovation and reopened in January 2014⁸.

Feinstein's at the Nikko opened at San Francisco's Hotel Nikko in May 2013, and still has shows listed for October 2026^{9, 10}. Back in New York, Feinstein partnered late in 2013 with Birdland owner Gianni Valenti on a planned midtown club, tentatively named Feinstein's on Broadway¹¹. After the Regency, he said, he wanted a venue that was a perfect setting for the nightclub experience². In 2015 54 Below signed a merger deal with Feinstein and renamed the space Feinstein's/54 Below, a partnership that ended in 2022^{6, 9}.

The Loews Regency is still taking guests at 540 Park Avenue and 61st Street, and its Regency Bar & Grill bills itself as the home of the power breakfast^{5, 12}. Breakfast, it turns out, sets up faster.