The Yacht Club is NYC’s restaurant of the summer

Summer isn’t over yet — and the restaurant of the season has just set sail.

The maritime-mad Crew restaurant group has just launched the Yacht Club on the tenth floor of the mighty Starrett-Lehigh Building, which overlooks the Hudson River.

The 20,000 square-foot restaurant is easily the most elaborate venue from Crew’s captains, the brothers Alex, 49, and Miles Pincus, 46. Most of their ten other Big Apple cafes and bars are open-air — either in the water, like the insanely popular Grand Banks oyster boat in Tribeca, or at river-fronting locations like Island Oyster on Governors Island. (Small, underground Holywater in Tribeca is the only landlocked venue.)  

While the Yacht Club has abundant outdoor space on two levels, it also boasts a 5,000-square-foot main dining room indoors — and Crew’s most ambitious menu to date.

Although Manhattan’s Hudson River waterfront has more than a few open-air cafes and watering holes, none can challenge Yacht Club’s scale.

“I’d say we’re healthily anxious and also excited” about the new direction, Alex Pincus told me with a laugh.

Ths Yacht Club made a splash with boldfacers, including Christopher Meloni and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and a slew of creative types and influencers at a party last week. It opened to the public Monday night, adding a “cool factor” to Starrett-Lehigh, a landmarked, streamlined-style, 1930s monolith between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues.

The horizontal skyscraper contains more than two million square feet of offices — it’s home to the headquarters of Ralph Lauren and serves as a base for New York Fashion Week — but it didn’t have much for the general public, save for Marcus Samuelsson’s Hav + Mar restaurant on the Eleventh Avenue side.

The Yacht Club changes that at a stroke. Its views of the river, the Downtown Manhattan skyline and the New Jersey coast are worth the trip alone. It’s especially stirring at twilight when the setting sun alights the High Line buildings and towering One World Trade Center with shifting shades of silver and gold.

Alex, an architect by training, designed the comfortable dining room in collaboration with Eric Cheon of North 45 Project. Large circular booths in nautical blue, buoy-like columns and panoramic windows make a suitable setting for a seafood-focused lineup of sustainable species including sweet “Sailor Baby” oysters — named for Alex’s young  son and custom-grown by oyster wizard Will Peckham in Peconic Bay.

I enjoyed skillfully seared Montauk tilefish ($38), honey- and herb-inflected crawfish sausage en croute ($19) that resembled pigs in blankets, and sensationally sweet-and-spicy oysters chargrilled with Creole butter and Parmesan cheese ($21).

The alfresco Lido Deck boasts cute mini-cabanas and lawn chairs and serves a more simple menu. A second outdoor level is set to open in September. If the setting isn’t intoxicating enough, a cocktail menu by beverage director and sommelier Anthony Gochal will do the trick with colorful martinis, negronis and tropical libations.

Sailor, Alex’s third child, is now almost two-years-old. He was born twenty-four hours before dad and Miles pitched their concept to Starrett-Lehigh owner RXR, which wanted to bring public energy to the tenth floor.

“It was a busy few days,” Alex said with a chuckle.

From that point on, RXR “worked very fast to build the venue,” which the brothers operate under a management agreement.

Since its founding in 2014, Crew has become a force on the New York food scene, with 1,000 seats, 550 employees and a dominant role in maritime-themed dining. Kerry Heffernan, a former chef at Eleven Madison Park, has served as the culinary director for ten years, while Andres Grundy, an alumnus of L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon and Raoul’s, runs the kitchen at the Yacht Club.

Alex said, “For years we’ve worked out of the galleys of historic ships. Now, with a world-class kitchen and a proper dining room, we have the tools to create food people truly celebrate, ten stories above sea level.”