Reinvented Historic Star Lounge brings refinement, quiet elegance to midtown
Generally speaking, the idea of a hotel restaurant leaves me cold. Too often, chefs and managers aim for the lowest common denominator, trying to appeal to everyone and in reality pleasing no one.
There’s no reason this should be so. And the team at the Historic Star Lounge, upstairs in the Hyatt House in midtown, is focused on creating an intimate, cuisine-forward experience that stands on its own merits. It’s not a hotel restaurant; it’s a restaurant that happens to be in a hotel.
The restaurant has a head start by virtue of its intrinsic charm. Developer Roger Hume breathed new life into the 1928 former women’s club in 2022.
As you enter the impressive Romanesque Revival facade, the expansive lobby draws you in with soaring, roughly 30-foot ceilings and crackling fireplaces in rooms off to the sides.
Two staircases flank the lobby up to the restaurant. Thankfully, an elevator is also available.
Upstairs, the dining room is anchored on one side by a petite but well-stocked bar. Gold accents and teal velvet upholstery pervade the restaurant, giving the space a cozy, quiet elegance.
Chef Galice Ryan took the reins last May, having previously been at Hook & Ladder for seven years.
“I wanted the opportunity to do something new, and I just happened to go over there for dinner one night, and saw the ambiance of it. It just seemed like a good opportunity to be able to kind of spread my wings,” he said.
Finding Historic Star Lounge wasn’t exactly a coincidence. His girlfriend, Joshlyn Jones, had already emigrated from Hook & Ladder to become the general manager there the previous summer. She set about transforming the restaurant.
Jones hails from Belgium, and has particular views on the importance of key details in hospitality.
“I noticed before that people would set up one day and they wouldn’t have wine glasses. One day it would have only the wine glasses, not the water glasses. I want it all to be the same. I want when you come in, everyone opens their napkin the same way,” she said. She also wanted to change the menu.
“When I got here, there were tacos on the menu. Octopus Baja is on the corner; Centro is a block away. Why are there tacos?” she said.
Chef Ryan was a natural fit. A veteran of the New York dining scene, he wanted to flex his classic techniques to make food that matches the environs of the restaurant. .
“It’s definitely French-leaning. I have an almost exclusively Mediterranean background, and I have been leaning a little bit heavier on the Spanish side and the Italian side of things too,” he said. “You don’t want to go into a dive bar and somebody’s spinning gospel on the jukebox. So the type of food I’m doing here matches the type of setting that we’re in.”
Ryan’s influences are on display in his food. For the steak tartare ($19), Ryan makes his own mayonnaise with a secret ingredient: dashi powder.
“I think it’s better than anything out there,” he said.
He then mixes the mayonnaise with mustard, capers and an unexpected dash of ketchup, and tosses it with the ground beef, served in a ring of deep-fried brioche. A powdering of grated cured egg yolk finishes the dish.
The duck liver mousse ($17) is a classic pâté, a recipe that had been handed down by three chefs before Ryan inherited it. He added one twist to make it unique to the restaurant.
“The bar uses a ton of maraschino cherries, but they don’t have any use for the liquid that’s left over, so I started thickening that with gelatin and using that to cap our duck liver mousse,” he said.
The bar is a big part of the success of the restaurant. It’s a major driver for the restaurant’s business, which affords Ryan the opportunity to experiment and evolve the menu without having to worry about alienating customers. Bar manager Kevin Williams is at the helm.
“I think he’s brought ingredients that people are not so used to seeing in cocktail menus. Like right now we have a cocktail with an ube coconut foam. He also likes to use a lot of cool techniques, like clarifying. And I think we created something that matches the space,” Jones said.
Ryan’s food is impressive by any metric, but it’s flat out remarkable when you see the kitchen. It’s miniscule, with just two burners and a small flat top. To augment his cooking area, Ryan set a wire rack on the back of the flat top to allow a place to rest small saucepots, and on top sits a small Konro charcoal grill.
Efficiency is key in such a small space. The double-cut pork chop ($52) is slow-roasted ahead, and flashed on the grill to warm it and add a smoky note. Ryan cuts the meat off the bone, slicing the leaner parts crosswise, then alternating to cutting lengthwise for the fattier end to create more homogenous bites.
Ryan acknowledges that the restaurant is “a little bit more of a splurge spot,” but encourages customers to approach the menu however they like.
“You can come in and kind of create your own adventure. I’m happy to see guests come in and order entirely off the appetizers with three, four of their friends. But also, there’s people that come in just want to take down main courses by themselves. That’s fine, too,” he said.
“I feel like we have no dead spots on the menu that are things that just have to be there. I think everything we put out there is with intention, and we feel really good about what we’re putting out.”
Historic Star Lounge
Address: 2719 K St., midtown
Hours: 3 p.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 3 p.m.-midnight Friday and Saturday; 3 p.m.-9 p.m. Sundays
Phone: 916-406-4979
Website: historicstarlounge.com
Vegetarian options: Limited to a few small plates
Noise level: Quiet
This story was originally published January 20, 2026 at 1:53 PM.
