New York has never lacked places to be seen. What it has fewer of are places where you can’t be photographed. That is the pitch for Lady Delilah, the first New York venue from Los Angeles hospitality company The h.wood Group, which was set to open Tuesday, Nov. 3, below 353 West 14th Street in the Meatpacking District.
The room is the fifth in the Delilah line, after Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami and Dallas. It is also the group’s most direct bid yet for a city that has seen many Los Angeles imports come and go. Reservations went live in late October, according to Markets of Tomorrow, and Eater New York reported that the club would open Tuesday through Sunday from 5 p.m., with bookings through OpenTable.
The room
Haute Living describes a 10,000-square-foot underground space designed as an Art Deco supper club. Guests enter through an arched entrance lined in subway tile. There are two private dining rooms, and a stage with live entertainment every night. Markets of Tomorrow reports that the main dining room turns into a dance floor as the night goes on, which is how Delilah has worked elsewhere: dinner first, then a party.
The kitchen is run by Michael Teich, h.wood’s culinary director, who is serving an American bistro menu alongside bottle service. The founders are clear that the room is the main event. In a statement quoted by Haute Living, they said the club “celebrates the theatrical romance of the past, where eating, drinking and dancing come together effortlessly.”
The rule
Delilah’s reputation rests on its no-photos policy, which Eater says will apply in New York too. The Los Angeles original became known as a place where Beyoncé and Jay-Z, the Jenner sisters and Drake could have dinner without ending up on Instagram. In a city where phones come out for almost every meal, a host who asks you to put yours away is either a killjoy or offering something rare, depending on who is at the next table.
In a new interview with Observer, co-founders John Terzian and Brian Toll described privacy as part of the design. They talked about a “strict no-photos policy and providing discreet entrances, exits and seating.” That is a business model as much as a house rule. Famous guests bring in the paying ones, and famous guests come back only if they are left alone.
Why New York, and why now
Terzian and Toll founded h.wood in 2008, and the group now runs about 15 concepts, according to Observer. The New York opening has been a long time coming. “New York is the epicenter of the restaurant world,” the founders told the outlet. “It had to be a major move.” In their statement to Haute Living they added: “New York has always been at the center of culture.”
The group has tried New York before, in a way. Eater notes that it ran a summer residency in Montauk. But a permanent room in Manhattan is a different test. The audience is bigger and more skeptical, and it has plenty of other choices.
The money behind the expansion is new. In September 2025, h.wood announced a majority investment from DIAFA, a newly formed luxury hospitality company based in Abu Dhabi. The deal valued the group in the nine figures, and the release projected a valuation of half a billion dollars. Goldman Sachs advised h.wood on the deal. In the Observer interview, the founders said DIAFA has “given us extreme global strategic value.” Lady Delilah is the first big opening since that investment, and the first evidence of what the new owners plan to do with the brand.
The lease
The real estate side follows a familiar Meatpacking pattern. In April, Commercial Observer reported that h.wood had signed for about 9,000 square feet on the lower level of 351 West 14th Street. The figures and the exact address differ a little from the marketing materials, as they often do between lease filings and launch. Chris DeCrosta of GoodSpace represented the landlord. Jason Greenstone of Cushman & Wakefield and Matthew Seigel of Lantern Co. represented the tenant. Markets of Tomorrow puts the term at 15 years and names Tavros Holdings as the landlord.
The neighborhood has seen this before. Meatpacking went from meat lockers to nightclubs, then to fashion flagships and office towers, and in recent years it has filled up again with places that let diners stay into the night. A 15-year lease on a below-grade room with a dance floor is a long-term bet that the neighborhood’s nightlife is here to stay.
What it will be like
Nobody at this magazine has eaten there. The club has not opened, and this is not a review. What the group has said publicly gives a fair outline: a bistro menu, bottle service, a stage every night, and a dining room that becomes a dance floor. The phones stay in pockets. What Delilah sells, by its founders’ own account, is the atmosphere and the privacy more than the meal.
Whether New York will take to that is the real question. The city has a long history of clubs that sold exclusivity, from the Stork Club to the hotel lounges of the 2000s. Most of the successful ones eventually got the rich and famous to come back, and to put their phones away. For h.wood, New York is also a test of whether a formula built in Los Angeles, where much of the entertainment business lives within a few miles, works in a city where famous people are spread across five boroughs and are used to being left alone on the sidewalk. Lady Delilah is betting it can do the same.
Featured image: 350 West 14th Street at Hudson Street and Ninth Avenue in the Meatpacking District, across West 14th Street from Lady Delilah's address at No. 353, 2022. Photo by Tdorante10 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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