Conservatives have made one Upper East Side restaurant a favorite hangout in a deep-blue city. But on Tuesday night, as votes were being counted across the country, the place was pretty quiet, according to a freelance journalist who stopped by.
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The spot is the Beach Cafe, at 1326 Second Avenue on the corner of East 70th Street. New York Magazine called it “the Upper East Side’s Republican Cheers,” and its regulars have leaned into the label. In 2021, Ann Coulter told the magazine the restaurant was “our Elaine’s,” a nod to the shuttered Manhattan hangout once beloved by writers. Roger Stone, who has a burger named after him on the menu, told the magazine he often ate there with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and called the place an “oasis of red in a sea of blue.” Donald Trump Jr. and former Rep. George Santos have also partied there late into the night.The restaurant was around long before it was a political scene. Brothers Tom and Bill White opened it in 1968 with a maritime theme, and Liza Minnelli and Arthur Miller were regulars in its early years, according to a 2017 interview with Socially Sparked News.
On Tuesday, the restaurant was pretty quiet, according to freelance journalist Daniel Bates, who stopped by and posted on X that it felt “sleepy,” with just a few couples eating quiet dinners. A staffer told him the bar had been busy over New York City Marathon weekend, but election night was a different story.
Bates took the empty room as a sign that Republicans weren’t in the mood to go out, since polls showed the party was likely to lose, which they did. The Daily Beast first highlighted Bates’s post about the minimal turnout.
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