The St. Regis New York’s King Cole Bar: the Red Snapper, Parrish’s mural, hours and dress code

Maxfield Parrish painted «Old King Cole» in 1906 for Colonel John Jacob Astor’s hotel on 42nd Street, the Knickerbocker. He hesitated, by the hotel’s account, and agreed when offered what it calls the «kingly sum» of $5,000. The Knickerbocker did not last; the hotel was to become offices, and the mural moved around the city before it reached The St. Regis New York in 1932. The hotel adds that a secret is hidden in the painting, known only to the people behind the bar. A Business Traveller critic writing in July 2025 says the merry king wears Astor’s own face, and suggests asking the bartender for the rest.

The drink came 2 years after the painting. In 1934, the hotel says, Serge Obolensky, a man about town with Russian aristocratic roots, asked the bartender Fernand Petiot for the vodka cocktail he had drunk in Paris. Petiot spiced it with salt, pepper, lemon and Worcestershire sauce, and because «Bloody Mary» was thought too vulgar for the King Cole Bar it was renamed the Red Snapper. The new name did not travel; the drink did, and its 80th birthday was celebrated at the hotel in October 2014. St. Regis has made it the signature of every hotel in the brand, each with its own version: the Santa Maria in Venice, the Canto Mary in Hong Kong, the Capitol Mary in Washington.

Not everyone grants the hotel the invention. The Business Traveller critic places Petiot’s first Bloody Mary in Paris in the 1920s, and the writer of Diner Theory, in August 2025, says Petiot may only have given the drink its name. Both still write about the Red Snapper as the bar’s drink, and Forbes Travel Guide counts the bar among its first Star Bars, a list of 58 hotel bars worldwide, 3 of them in New York, chosen by inspectors who visited each several times; its July 2025 article on the American winners names the King Cole Bar.

The hotel calls its dining «newly relaunched» and its bar «subtly enhanced and reimagined»; the lounge beside it, once Astor Court, has become The Drawing Room, with velvet sofas, plates to share and the same smart casual rule. Business Traveller found a mahogany counter of 10 seats, midnight-blue carpet and plump purple velvet chairs. Diner Theory describes the way in: from the street door you cross an outer room with chandeliers, where the seats are more casual, before reaching the bar at the far end. Its writer was sent to a velvet rope by the entrance to wait for a seat at 5pm on a weekday, paid upwards of $30 for a cocktail, and heard a Sinatra impersonator sing.

Guests in our collection of reviews mostly come for the drink. In July 2026 one had the Red Snapper and called it the perfect drink for the room; in September 2026 another chose an alcohol-free Bloody Mary and a Great Gatsby with ginger beer. A guest in July 2026 praised the bar and a bartender named Adam, and found $1,500 to $2,000 a night for the rooms upstairs hard to justify. In November 2025 a guest recommended going at about 6.30pm for a quieter table before the theatre. The one sharp complaint, in August 2026, was about the food: a guest found it spoiled and was offered no refund.

Bemelmans Bar at The Carlyle has murals by Ludwig Bemelmans, a pianist from 5.30pm and a jazz trio from 9pm, with a cover charge of $25 to $35 a person at a table and $20 to $25 at the bar; it asks guests to leave athletic and casual wear at home.

Peacock Alley at the Waldorf Astoria turns into a cocktail bar when the Grand Clock, made for the 1893 World’s Fair, strikes 5pm.

The Lobby Bar at the Hotel Chelsea stays open daily from 11am to 2am, for hotel guests and neighbours alike.