Host Hospitality Creating Buzz, Expands into Chelsea with Georgie’s

Only open since June, Georgie’s is one of the newest hot spots in Chelsea and it already feels like it’s been there forever.

In a fiercely competitive industry in which 60 percent of new restaurant’s go under before their one-year anniversary, the parent company, Host Hospitality, has been defying the odds since its founding in 2021.

The space was formerly an outpost of Seamore’s on Eighth Avenue, a chain which closed all of its outlets citywide in early 2025. The space remained unoccupied until snatched up by Host Hospitality which also owns a half dozen other equally hot restaurants: Café Maud (East Village and Upper East Side), Jackdaw (East Village), Odd Sister (Soho), The Rhymer’s Club (East Village) and The Domino Room, (Upper East Side) all named with Irish poet W.B. Yeats as their influence.

“The world is full of magic things,” Yeats once said, a sentiment the owners seek to capture inside their newest restaurant. They say their main goal is to create a comfortable, accessible, accommodating respite for the neighborhood, a place where the food is great and the drinks are fire, but mostly you just want to be there because it feels good.

The team behind it is from Ireland; it includes co-owners Ronan Carter and Paul McDaid from the small town of Sligo in the wild western Irish countryside. Alongside Curt Heugel, one of the city’s most respected restaurateurs who founded LDV Hospitality in 2008 and went on to create Host, they chose Chelsea for their latest venture after getting rave reviews for their other restaurants from the East Village to the Upper East Side.

“It’s one of New York’s great neighborhoods, but we felt it was missing an approachable, all-day gathering place,” explained Carter. “We saw an opportunity to create something that sits between a restaurant and a bar, a place where people can start their day with coffee, come back for lunch or dinner, and stay for cocktails in the evening.”

“Georgie’s is designed to be a true neighborhood spot, and we’re excited to bring that to Chelsea” said Carter. As for the transition from Seamore’s to Georgie’s, they said it cost “too much!”

Industry experts say the cost of opening a new restaurant in Manhattan starts in the mid-six figures--“add a zero,” quipped Carter, when questioned about the investment--and can easily top $1 million.

The State Liquor Authority, which issued the liquor license on May 5, actually lists six principals: Patrick Cremin, Curt Huegel, Darragh Coates, Alair Dos Reis, Timothy Hansberry, and Joshua Bierman.

Getting the liquor license took “too long!” the owners said. But aside from the usual bureaucratic hurdles when opening a new restaurant, Georgie’s has hit the ground running.

As with several of its other restaurants, there is a connection to Yeats, the legendary Irish bard. The name of this restaurant actually derives from Georgie Lees-Hyde, Yeats’ wife.

With the aftermath of World Cup fever awakening new interest in soccer in the United States, the owners felt Georgie’s name also could be used to into the name George Best, a hard partying man deemed the best footballer (soccer for us Yanks) in Irish history. Best died in 2005 and hadthe international airport in Belfast, Northern Ireland named for him the following year.

While the George Best addition might have been a serendipitous afterthought, a famous George Best quote does adorns servers’ tee-shirts: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds (slang for young women) and fast cars, the rest I just squandered.”

The restaurant has some buzzy cocktails created by Aurele Berdoz, who has masterminded all the beverage programs for the group. The drinks skew punchy with unexpected snaps of heat, or herbal oddities like wormwood and tumeric. As for the “birds,” (gentlemen and everything in between get treated with equal graciousness in the convivial dining room, painted with sumptuous glossy green and bronze accents.

The menu is the work of chef Alessandro Urbisci, of Italian heritage but American born. He has created a homey but refined menu spanning breakfast though late dinner (the kitchen closes at midnight), that transitions seamlessly from hearty brunch options like steak and eggs to avo toast, customizable pancakes and a veg-laden burrito into more refined dinner options.

A full rosters of pizzas put Urbisci’s ethnicity on display, and are baked in a screaming hot electric oven to obtain a perfect chew and char on the crust, although he claims “it’s all about the dough!” Regardless, it rivals New York’s best. A variety of salads and bowls provide greenery, and sandwiches range from a Buffalo Chicken Wrap to a drool-worthy burger with caramelized onions, aged cheddar and parmesan aioli. Some early favorites are the spoon-tender Stout Glazed Steak skewers, a zesty Miso Greens Bowl and two crab options featuring jumbo lump: fritters light and crispy with a snappy pepperoncini aioli, and one of Urbisci’s favorite, a crab spaghetti at once delicate and decadent, spiked with chili and citrus.

Desserts, either a nutty dulce de leche cheesecake or a chocolate crème brûlée are easily shareable, or will otherwise satisfy even the most voracious sweet tooth. They’re sized to fuel you through the extensive hours you’re welcome to hang around at Georgie’s. Or revisit Berdoz’s cocktail menu with one of his fruitier concoctions like the Tropic Theory or the Supersplit, that will conjure up a very adult version of your childhood creamsicle. And even if the kitchen closes before you’re ready to leave, the drinks continue well into the night at Downstairs at Georgie’s, an easy staircase-descent into their subterranean speakeasy-style lounge, complete with a deejay on Fridays and Saturdays, and plenty of room to boogie. The silly Cabaret License was repealed in 2017, so while the lounge space is intended as an “elevated cocktail bar with seated service,” the all around vibe at Georgie’s is so kinetic that it might be harder to just stay put. Although the goal is to let everyone enjoy themselves however they please, making Georgie’s one of the best little additions to Chelsea in a long time. Georgie’s Chelsea at 161 Eighth Ave. is open to 2 a.m. on weeknights, and 3 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. It opens at 8 a.m. for brunch on Saturday and Sunday.