While we've been spending our nights at Butter and Soho House, the space located under the Mercer Hotel has slept away the last five rears in total reclusion. But what a beauty sleep it has been, awakening to an A-List influx of Marisa Tomei, Alex Wang and Blackbook editors making the their way past the two burly guards in over-padded winter coats presiding over the unnamed entrance. If you make it past the doormen located around the corner from the Mercer Hotel, you'll pass through an interior hallway and into a freight elevator that shakes and rattles nervous guests down two floors into an even scarier hallway of mob buckets and HVAC closets leading to the glossy red door entrance. The interior space still features those Pizza Hut-red brick walls with low, exposed ceiling leading to three separate lounges with red vinyl banquettes, circular cocktail tables and red flickering votives. Waitresses work the room in coordinated cocktail attire with oversize bottles of Domaine Ott and Perrier-Jouet, trying to avoid the amateur dancers working the chrome stripper pole while DJs like Mark and Samantha Ronson spin till 4am. 

Last Word

NY’s Mercer reopens its basement VIP lounge for those willing to fight their way through the back door.