“It’s Katz’s of 80 years ago,” owner Jake Dell told PEOPLE. “It is exactly what the store looked like before it became a refrigerator.”
“I would describe it as the Katz’s that most people alive today don’t know,” he said.
Dell said the restaurant was able to move its fridges to another part of the store, prompting the yearlong restoration of the dining room.
“To be able to offer this to our customers to get more people in the restaurant and hopefully lower the lines a little bit is an amazing opportunity and something that we have to take advantage of,” Dell said.
The store has seen increased lines due to TikTok buzz following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dell said The Ludlow Room can now be open for private parties and film shoots. The room is available for private events and has a dedicated cutter to hand-slice meat for guests.
Each pound of meat served at the deli between 1949 and 2026 was weighed on the same freight scale in the now-converted Ludlow Room, according to a press release shared with PEOPLE.
“The reopening marks one of the most significant physical transformations in Katz’s modern history and returns a long-forgotten part of the deli to public life for the first time since the Truman administration,” the release said.
