Is This the End of Keens As We Know It?

Photo: Shanna Ravindra

Maybe New York is dead after all. Keens, the iconic steakhouse known for the famous mutton chop you talk about ordering before getting steak instead, has been sold for a cool $30 million to Tilman Fertitta, the billionaire owner of Landry’s restaurant group, Crain’s reports. Through Landry’s, Fertitta owns chains such as the illustrious Bubba Gump Shrimp; a portfolio of steakhouse brands including Morton’s, Strip House, and something called Claim Jumper; and is a partner in the Catch restaurant group. Most recently, he’s been in the news as one of the owners of the Corner Store (perhaps you’ve heard of it). It’s all enough to make a person wonder about his company’s plans for the storied steakhouse: Will it remain business as usual, or is Keens about to add a bunch of TikTok bait to its menu in the run-up to a Dallas expansion?

Opened in 1885 by Albert Keen, the restaurant came out of New York’s heart-attack-inducing beefsteak era and remains a favorite of people who are super passionate about living here. (When I asked my friend, a Keens lifer, how she was taking the news, she wrote back, “Every week is a new brand of hell.”) More recently, as in the 1970s, it was bought by George Schwarz, who owned it until his death in 2016. Since then, the restaurant has been owned under Schwarz’s estate and run by general manager Bonnie Jenkins. Landry’s provided a statement to Crain’s, attributed to Jenkins, promising to preserve “the legacy of our historic brand” and “operate and manage” the steakhouse as it has been for the last 140 years.

But can we trust these Texans? Landry’s owns a number of other heritage American brands, including the Rainforest Cafe, as well as another New York institution known as the Palm. (Landry’s bought the steakhouse chain in 2020, a few years after the original location with all those famous caricatures shuttered. Technically, this isn’t Fertitta’s fault, but someone needs to take the blame.)

Look, we don’t expect the Texans to turn Keens into some flagship for the Catch brand, or to start doing “collab dinners” with Corner Store. But for all its fame, Keens has never felt like an exclusive place. No, it isn’t cheap, and reservations have gotten tougher, but it’s always been regular in its way. Already, friends are sharing their fears of a more exclusive, corporate Keens, with a vibe that’s more Meatpacking than mutton.