Mory's comes back

Bob Handelman

The new Mory's menu features old-fashioned club food like Welsh rarebit, along with newfangled offerings like a warm pear and stilton salad. View full image

Mory’s, that Old Blue bastion of college clubbiness,communal drinking, and (historically) mediocre food, is back from the dead. After years of declining membership and financial strain under a costly labor contract, the club closed in 2008 and fired its employees. Its signature prime rib, Welsh rarebit, and Indian pudding vanished from New Haven.

This summer, Mory’s reopened its doors, boasting a $3.1 million renovation, a new chef, a bar, and much more liberal membership policies. Previously, Mory’s was for Yale students, alumni, and faculty only. The new Mory’s welcomes Yale Rep theatergoers, members of the New Haven Chamber of Commerce, and all university employees, among other groups. Annual dues, which had been rising in recent years, have been lowered. (Students can pay $5 for a membership lasting their whole Yale career.) The goals, says Mory’s president Christopher Getman ’64, are to boost membership and make Mory’s the tradition of a new generation of Yalies. And also: solvency.

The students now have a bar open past nine, the faculty cheaper lunches and fees, the Whiffs a table large enough to seat their whole group, the traditionalists a few Mory’s favorites still on the menu. But will they come? We assembled a crack team of reviewers to scope out the new club. They tell us how the food compares with New Haven’s gourmet scene (and the dining halls), whether the bar is worthy of your birthday party, and how well the decor lives up to the Mory’s of nostalgia.