Polo Lounge — Menu Guide

Sunday Jazz Brunch — $165 (current)

This is the one price the hotel publishes outright, and it's current: the Sunday Jazz Brunch is a $165 per person three-course prix fixe that includes one complimentary beverage, served Sundays 11am–3pm with a jazz trio playing on the patio. If you want the full Polo Lounge experience with no menu anxiety, this is the booking to make. Prices reported as of October 2026, per the hotel's official brunch page.

Breakfast

Reported breakfast prices below come from a third-party menu listing dated around January 2025 (dated) — usable as a rough sense of the range, but likely to have moved since.

Lemon blueberry ricotta pancakes are another reported breakfast signature; their price is unverified.

The McCarthy salad

The room's signature dish: a chopped salad created in the 1940s and named for polo player Neil McCarthy, reportedly unchanged on the menu for decades. A 2020 report put it at about $40 (dated); more recent press (December 2024) says the kitchen turns out roughly 600 a week. For the hotel's 110th anniversary in December 2024, the Polo Lounge offered a $1,912 gold-leaf anniversary edition — finished with lobster, caviar and Dom Pérignon, and served with a take-home Bernardaud bowl. Treat the $40 as a dated reference point and confirm the current price when you book.

Signatures without published prices

The official site publishes no prices for the rest of the lunch and dinner menu, so we describe these without figures — ask when booking rather than trusting old numbers:

• Chocolate soufflé — the famous dessert, arriving on its own little red carpet according to diner reports.
• Dover sole meunière — the classic tableside-feeling fish preparation.
• "Polo"-branded American Wagyu burger — the power-lunch burger.
• Chicken tortilla soup — the California-Italian crossover starter regulars swear by.
• Steak tartare and ahi tuna tartare — the raw-bar pair.
• Old-fashioned chocolate cake — the other dessert worth knowing about.

Dress code & house rules

The Polo Lounge publishes an unusually specific dress code (current, from the official site), so read it before you go:

• Not allowed: baseball hats, beanies, ripped or shredded denim, crop tops, nightwear, swimwear, men's sleeveless shirts, clothing with offensive messages, flip-flops (Birkenstocks included), and sportswear or tracksuits.
• After 4pm: no shorts for men; women may wear tailored non-denim shorts.
• Fine: sweatshirts and hoodies, as long as the hood stays down.
• The code does not apply to children under 12.

Two more house realities: piano accompaniment plays at lunch and dinner daily, and photography is frowned upon inside — this is a room built on celebrity discretion, and the regulars like it that way.

What we'd order

If we had one meal here, this is how we'd play it:

• The non-negotiable: the McCarthy salad. It's the dish the room is famous for, and it's been made the same way for decades.
• At lunch: the Wagyu burger or the chicken tortilla soup — the two signatures that feel most like the room.
• On Sunday: the $165 Jazz Brunch. It's the one price you can plan around, and the patio jazz trio is the experience.
• To finish: the chocolate soufflé — the red-carpet arrival is half the fun.

Planning your visit

• Book the brunch early if that's your plan — Sundays 11am–3pm is the headline reservation of the week.
• Dress to the code. It's specific and enforced; when in doubt, overdress slightly rather than risk the beanie-and-flip-flops rejection.
• Leave the camera in your pocket. Photography is discouraged, and the room rewards discretion.
• Budget blind spots: beyond the $165 brunch, per-dish prices aren't published — ask about current prices when you reserve so the bill holds no surprises.