Ken Aretsky has been described as “one of New York’s most accomplished restaurateurs of the last thirty years.”

Biography

Aretsky is a graduate of

C.W. Post College LIU Post (formally, the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, and often referred to as C.W. Post) is a private university in Brookville, New York. It is the largest campus of the private Long Island University system. The campus is nam ...

. He has been married three times.

Career highlights

He opened his first restaurant, Truman's, in Roslyn,

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

in 1971. It was inspired by

Maxwell's Plum Maxwell's Plum was a bar at 1181 First Avenue (64th and 1st Avenue) in Manhattan. A 1988 New York Times article described it as a "flamboyant restaurant and singles bar that, more than any place of its kind, symbolized two social revolutions of the ...

. He was president and General Manager of the

21 Club The 21 Club, often simply 21, was a traditional American cuisine restaurant and former prohibition-era speakeasy, located at 21 West 52nd Street in New York City. Prior to its closure in 2020, the club had been active for 90 years, and it had h ...

. Immediately after that, he bought the Christ Cella steakhouse, including the steakhouse. Christ Cellla morphed into Aretsky's Patroon in 2019. Along with Anne Rosenzweig, he owned Arcadia, on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

References

American restaurateurs People from New York City American food industry business executives LIU Post alumni Restaurant founders {{Restaurateur-bio-stub