What It’s Like to Dine at Centurion New York, AmEx’s Black Card Clubhouse

Opened in mid-March, Centurion New York is effectively a dining club for those with the coveted black card. It occupies the 17,000-square-foot 55th floor of the glossy new One Vanderbilt skyscraper, towering over Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal. The constantly evolving menu is by Daniel Boulud, and the food delivers enough drama and decadence to pull your attention away from the knockout city views — a panoramic rarity in Midtown dining, unless you count a bar mitzvah at the Rainbow Room.

There’s the hand-chopped Imperial Wagyu tartare, prepared tableside on a matte black trolley, augmented with just one drop of Portuguese piri-piri for heat. There’s a heart of palm salad heaped with rosettes of shaved tête de moine cheese. Throw in some pasta with uni, truffled pomme purée and more wagyu, this time custom-blended for a burger that’s piled with bacon on a house-made potato bun.

At least, that was on offer at lunch on a recent weekday — served to a crowd of roughly three dozen cardholders, almost all men. “We know that the two things our cardmembers value the most are access and exclusivity,” says Elizabeth Crosta, vice president of communications at American Express Co.

Those are two things that matter to regular, non-black-card-toting New Yorkers, too, and the company says it makes a small number of tables available each day on Resy — bookable 30 days in advance, with a wish and a prayer. (I’ve been checking for weeks and never seen a slot.)

American Express’s business at One Vanderbilt, where commercial rents have possibly broken city records at $322 per square foot, is not in squeezing good margins from luxurious ingredients. Sure, one could splurge on $10,125 bottles of Domaine Coche-Dury Corton Charlemagne white Burgundy or toast colleagues with $2,281 pours of Louis XIII cognac, but the mains on my lunch menu went for $20 to $60, and cocktails started at $19. The real experiment is about adding value and allure to a powerful piece of stainless steel (not plastic!), both for people who own it and people who aspire to it.

To wit: There’s a concierge desk within Centurion New York for in-person help rebooking flights, making floral deliveries, securing tickets to hot-right-now museum exhibits and so forth. Everything is easy at this club, and in its earliest days,  bills weren’t even itemized, as a reader of the aviation blog View From The Wing revealed. (I can attest they are now.)

The Big Picture

Centurion New York isn’t American Express’ first urban outpost. Last fall, it opened the little-known Centurion Haus, a speakeasy-style bar tucked behind a hat shop at the Raffles Hotel Singapore. Here in Manhattan, American Express has built something larger scale and more ambitious that it owns and operates independently.

Although Centurion New York is an extension of the brand’s airport lounge business, comparing the two does a disservice; Centurion feels clandestine and glamorous. And if you don’t feel sufficiently VIP for getting in the front door, you can seek out a speakeasy that’s hidden within its confines. The details and even the precise location are kept under lock and key, and American Express declined to confirm its exists.

“With our airport lounges, we’ve been creating havens for our guests for 10 years now,” says Pablo Rivero, vice president and general manager of American Express’s global lounge business. “We’re just translating it to a city setting.” It seems a no-brainer this concept will expand, but no new locations have yet been announced.

The uniform among guests here was uncannily similar to an airport lounge crowd’s, though perhaps a notch fancier: Regardless of gender, nearly everyone wore a navy or linen blazer over a crisp white shirt, with fancy watches but nary a sneaker in sight. Blessedly missing? Laptops.

“We’ve been open three weeks, and we’ve already had several guests make repeat visits,” Crosta said. “That guy over there?” She fixed her gaze on a man in the sea of suits. “He’s been here 10 times since opening.”

Criminally, Centurion New York has reserved its most beautiful space for exclusive functions, like a private opening concert with Sam Smith. Go to one such event and you’ll see a bar that’s face to face with the cupola of the Chrysler Building, so close you can practically make eye contact with its decorative gargoyles. (No, it’s not the speakeasy; that’s separate.)

Even if the dining room is all you see, it’s a vision — undoubtedly the most impressive new place in Manhattan to close a deal. Bartenders in black vests and bow ties shake classic martinis (a “carbon” one is blackened with squid ink) behind a gunmetal gray counter with mirrored back panels that reflect westward views of Hudson Yards and New Jersey. Unless you work in a Midtown skyscraper or head to an observation deck, the views are unparalleled.

How to Get In

Much has been written about what it takes to score a Centurion card. The terms are roughly these: Spend $250,000 per year on your Platinum card, stay in good standing, pay a $10,000 initiation fee plus $5,000 in annual dues. (American Express declined to comment on these numbers.)

If that has previously seemed like a steep price to pay for a credit card — albeit one with famously good concierge service — now it’s a reasonable cost for access to place where you can mingle with New York’s business elite.

Compare it to the city’s other hot-right-now clubs, like Aman New York, just one mile north, which charges a $200,000 initiation fee and $15,000 in annual dues thereafter. For that price, you get access to a handful of high-end restaurants, a stunning indoor-outdoor terrace bar that wraps around the Crown Building, and priority access to a giant wellness center and jazz club. Or the Core Club, also nearby, which can cost anywhere from $30,000 to $118,000 in the first year of membership for top-notch cocktails and fitness offerings. 

Centurion lacks the full suite of amenities that the other clubs charge for. But like its rivals, Centurion aims to deliver on culture. Its events calendar kicked off with that Sam Smith concert; in April there will be a wine dinner featuring northern Rhones led by Boulud, plus a “Fragrance Wellness Journey” in partnership with Diptyque. (Their Santal scent is unmissable throughout the space.)

If the restaurant only takes up about half of the space’s square footage, the rest is largely occupied by multi-purpose rooms that can be reconfigured for any of the above events — or weddings, or Bar Mitzvahs. An exception is the wine tasting room, lined with heavyhitters from Napa and Bordeaux, and the semi-private dining room in the back corner, whose angular, gray-tinted glass chandelier seems to perfectly frame the Chrysler Building’s pinnacle. It’s a shame that these spaces aren’t being utilized at all hours, given how beautiful they are.

The walls in the dining room are arranged gallery-style with paintings and photographs by Nan Goldin and Diane Arbus, among other local names. 

“We know what our cardmembers like,” Crosta told me, a reminder that everything is tailored to customers’ spending patterns. Lunch is a la carte; the aforementioned gemelli pasta with saffron, crab and uni is a silky standout, as are the plump, golf-ball-size sea scallops, which are served with barley and mushrooms. Dinner consists primarily of a tasting menu: $165 for three courses, including curried Maine lobster, a springy canard à l’orange with rhubarb and polenta, and an appetizer of king crab topped with caviar.

The parade of dishes is elegant, but delivered by servers who are unstuffy and cool. Of all the new restaurants I’ve been to in the city lately — including Boulud’s Le Pavillon, directly downstairs — this strikes me as one of the best. I could use more of that piri piri sauce in the tartare, though.

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