Opening Realities
Our New Highball Ltd. Bar in Midtown
The dishwasher wasn’t installed properly. We were four days from opening Highball Ltd, our new cocktail bar in Midtown, and the dishwasher (one of the most necessary pieces of kitchen equipment) was sitting there useless. No dishwasher means no functioning kitchen. No kitchen means no food.
If I still had hair, it would all be gray. But in the mid-afternoon, a day and a half prior to our opening party, we got it up and running. Less than 48 hours before food needed to be in front of guests, the kitchen could finally start pr
epping and training. Did we pull it off? Yes we did.
Highball Ltd. is a cocktail bar on the 11th floor of 10 Grand Central, right near Grand Central Terminal. Through a hidden entrance via a freight door on 3rd Avenue, take a service elevator to the 11th floor, and the doors open to a gorgeous Art Deco space with south-facing windows overlooking the city.
Jeff Bell, managing partner of everything under the PDT umbrella, is one of the best bartenders in the business and the creative mind behind the new spot. Given our proximity to Grand Central Terminal, the idea for this concept was to take a play from the era of luxury train travel back in the 1920s and ‘30s. The 20th Century Limited was a big inspiration. We wanted timelessness, classics, polish, but without any fuss. Highballs are having a revival moment right now and we wanted to really lean into it. Just so happens that the word “highball” also overlaps with railway terminology, meaning “permission to proceed.”
We built the place to feature highballs, of course, but also classic cocktails, a serious Japanese whisky program, and a beautiful green marble bar in the middle of the room pouring great Champagne. The food is not an afterthought and is just as elevated. Think lobster roll, oysters, crudité, beef tartare. Not your typical bar snacks.
This one’s different from Kees or our other projects. It’s a partnership with Marx Realty, the building’s landlord. Highball functions as both a tenant amenity for the 10 Grand Central building and a public bar. It’s part of a trend we’re seeing: smart landlords reimagining office buildings as experience destinations, not just square footage. It also helps that this space, which would have otherwise just been another common area, is all of a sudden revenue-generating. There’s also a real market opportunity here for quality like this. Midtown near Grand Central is notoriously underserved for quality cocktails and food. 200K+ office workers in the area, 750K commuters through Grand Central daily. We saw the gap.
My role was to run point on the project management, seeing it through to the opening, overseeing timelines, budgets, and coordinating across teams. My goal was straightforward: an on-time opening, stay under budget, keep our partners happy and our team sane.
As anyone who has opened restaurants or bars knows, everything can be planned to a T, and then reality sets in and the unforeseen things start to pop up. In this case, everything that could lag behind did. Kitchen equipment was delayed in getting installed thanks to the giant snowstorm that shut the city down for a few days. Licenses and permits dragged—they seemingly never come through when you need them to. Our HR person went on paternity leave right as we started hiring. Incredibly happy for him, but it left us scrambling to staff up without our usual process. And the rest of our team was already stretched across Kees and other openings, so everyone was running at capacity before we even started. And then, the dishwasher.
The dishwasher didn’t get installed correctly. Sounds minor, but it wasn’t. Without a functioning dishwasher, the kitchen was severely limited. Because the fixes required plumbers, it meant there were tradespeople in there fixing things and doing what they needed to do, but it also meant we couldn’t be in there (mind you, this is a very tiny “kitchen”—more of a warming catering closet in reality). We couldn’t run at full capacity, couldn’t prep properly, couldn’t test the full menu.
It took time to get plumbers back on site. Then we had to wait for the installation team to return—they were busy juggling their own schedules. By the time we finally had a working dishwasher, we had exactly 1.5 days to operate the kitchen before guests showed up for our opening party.
With all these things compiling, discussions of pushing the opening back were a daily occurrence. Would it have been easier? Absolutely. Give ourselves breathing room, take the pressure off, make it less hectic? Of course. But we committed. So we pushed. And somehow we made it.
We opened on March 13th. Under budget. 150 people at the opening party. Reservations booked solid for the first week. Are there still loose ends to tie up? Yes. A bunch of them. Minor details, small fixes, things we’ll get to. But we checked off the big boxes that matter most.
Openings are not for the faint of heart, and it’s not just the team working on them that gets impacted. On the home front, my wife and I were ships passing in the night for weeks straight. She’s in the city, I’m with the kids. I’m in the city, she’s with the kids. Handing them back and forth, rinse and repeat. She has a demanding career of her own—this wasn’t just me working late while she held down the fort. This was both of us juggling, coordinating, trying to make it all work.
Living the dream, right? “Having it all.” Except “it all” mostly feels like running on fumes and coordinating pickup schedules.
Family logistics get complicated fast. Pickup schedules, dinner plans, bedtime routines. Everything required constant recalibration and we were both running on fumes. Luckily we’re both very supportive of each other when we need to be, we know how to be patient, and we know how to power through. We’re fairly good at understanding that this is temporary, so we push through it and find pockets of enjoyment where we can. Doesn’t make it easy or fun, but it does make me grateful.
Here’s what I’m reminded of every time we do this: Opening a new place, even a lighter lift like Highball, is chaos. Even when it’s going well, it’s hectic. Even when you’re under budget and on time, you’re still stretched thin, still coordinating a hundred moving pieces, still making decisions on the fly.
The personal cost is real and so many in our industry feel it. It’s not just work hours, it’s what you sacrifice at home to make it happen. The late nights, the missed dinners, the logistics dance with your partner, the exhaustion that compounds when you’re trying to be present for your kids while also keeping a project on the rails. Shout-out to all my restaurant people who know this grind.
But when you walk into the space on opening night, and it’s full, and it’s working, and people are having a great time, it’s worth it.
I'm proud of what we built. More importantly, I'm proud of the team that made it happen. The bartenders, kitchen staff, managers who showed up every day and executed under pressure. We delivered for our partners. And I'm really, selfishly, glad to have some breathing room back.
If you’re in NYC, come check out Highball Ltd. 11th floor of 10 Grand Central, near Grand Central Terminal. Open weekdays 5-10pm. Make a reservation on Resy or just walk in. I hope to see you there.
—Dustin
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Here’s a wine we’re pouring by the glass at Highball that I’m really excited about.
Domaine Carrette Saint-Véran “En Combe” 2023
This is white Burgundy from the Mâconnais, just south of the more famous areas. Saint-Véran sits right between Pouilly-Fuissé and Beaujolais, and it’s one of those appellations that punches way above its price point.
Domaine Carrette is a small family producer with about 15 hectares, farming organically, minimal intervention in the cellar. The “En Combe” bottling comes from a single vineyard with clay-limestone soils, which gives the wine both richness and tension.
What I love about this wine: it’s classic white Burgundy character—green apple, lemon peel, wet stone, a touch of salinity—but without the markup. You’re getting Chardonnay that tastes like where it’s from, with energy and precision, for a fraction of what you’d pay for Puligny or Meursault.
It’s a perfect BTG (by-the-glass) wine. Clean, focused, versatile. Works beautifully on its own or with the food (oysters, crudité, lobster roll is a hit with this). It’s the kind of wine that fits the vibe in that it’s classic, polished, no fuss.
If you come to Highball, order it by the glass. If you see it on a list elsewhere, grab it. And if you find it at a shop, buy a few bottles. It’s in that sweet spot of quality and value that makes you look like you know what you’re doing without spending a fortune.
—Dustin