Live Jazz, Bottomless Spritzes and Oysters: Saturday Brunch at Seahorse
Saturday brunch at Seahorse, the seafood restaurant and raw bar inside W New York – Union Square, comes with a live jazz band. The brunch launched on September 12, 2026, and runs every Saturday from noon to 3 pm. It includes bottomless Aperol, Hugo and Amaro spritzes, four oysters and a brunch entrée of your choice. We went for brunch on launch day, as guests of the restaurant.
The hotel added a second brunch the same weekend, at Guardian at The W, its all-season rooftop, which has a retractable roof and wraparound views. Created in partnership with Bowery Meat Company, it runs every Sunday from noon to 3 pm, with an open bar, a DJ, and two New Zealand lamb lollipops and two wagyu cheeseburger sliders for each guest.
Seahorse belongs to Mercer Street Hospitality, the New York group that John McDonald founded in 1993 with the opening of MercBar in SoHo, and which also runs Lure Fishbar and Bowery Meat Company. The restaurant describes its cooking as driven by global influences and Greenmarket produce, anchored by seafood, oysters, crudo and seasonal ingredients sourced steps away.
Live jazz
A live jazz band is part of every Saturday brunch.
The main dining room carries Rhapsody in Blue, a surrealist 40-foot hand-painted mural by the Brooklyn studio En Viu. It shares its title with George Gershwin's composition, first performed at Aeolian Hall in New York in 1924. The mural portrays swirling waves and a festive scene on the East River: a carnival of boats crowded with characters both mythical and ordinary, whose interactions form smaller stories within the piece. Music, dance and swimming unfold to the rhythm of the waves, and the face of Ernest Hemingway emerges in blue tones, a nod to his love of the sea and fishing.
Spritzes and a round of oysters
The oysters come on ice, and the spritzes never stop flowing.
The brunch menu's oyster bar lists four varieties: Beausoleil from Canada's East Coast, light and clean with a mild brininess; Kumamoto from Washington State, plump and sweet with a finish of melon; Shigoku, also from Washington, plump with moderate salinity and a light cucumber finish; and Queens Cup from Prince Edward Island, plump and silky with an earthy, mineral finish.
For anyone who wants something other than a spritz, the brunch menu's cocktail trolley offers a classic Bloody Mary, an Agave Rouge made with Código Blanco tequila, a market bloody mix and pickled vegetables, Champagne mimosas and Bellinis, and a frozen Belvedere martini with black truffle and blue cheese olives.
The entrées
The entrées are brunch classics. Golden baked pancakes come with French butter and blueberry compote, and brioche French toast with seasonal berries and New York State maple syrup.
There are two eggs Benedict: a classic version with Canadian bacon and hollandaise, and a Norwegian one with smoked salmon.
Prime steak and eggs pairs a six-ounce steak with entrecôte sauce and crispy potato, and the shakshuka comes with spiced tomato stew, pastured eggs and toasted sourdough.
The smoked salmon tower comes with bagel crisps, hard-boiled eggs, capers and pickled onion. The menu also lists an omelette frites, with smoked salmon or mushrooms, and avocado toast with heirloom radish, pickled onion and extra virgin olive oil.
The room
The design draws on the city around it: New York's long history of oyster farming and the waters that surround it, the Union Square Greenmarket and its seasonal food, and Union Square itself, with its historic details, its micro-culture and its constantly shifting uses. The restaurant sits on the hotel's ground floor, at the northeast corner of the square.
Rockwell Group designed the restaurant. An archway sequence leads in from the hotel lobby, and the bar has a zinc top and teak paneling. The dining room is anchored by a monumental seafood bar with a tall mirrored display that echoes the seafood towers, and the oyster bar is faced in hand-glazed blue fish-scale tile.
Linear banquettes in deep blue leather and textured tweed, together with Hollywood-style niche seating, surround the bar, and armature lamps of aged bronze with linen shades cast a warm glow over the banquettes. The palette of woods and blues references sailing vessels and the sea.
Visit
Seahorse is at W New York – Union Square, 201 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, on the corner of East 17th Street. The hotel occupies the former headquarters of the Guardian Life Insurance Company, completed in 1911. Saturday brunch can be booked online.
