Asking your boss out for drinks is risky. Inviting them to a speakeasy with a secret bookshelf entrance? Now that’s just good career strategy.
At least, that was my gamble visiting Vanni’s, the new jazz lounge inside the Inn on Broadway.
With two kids, visiting a bar that’s open only three days a week requires intense planning. So when researching this article, I did what any logical millennial would do—left my husband at home, abandoned the fantasy of finding a sitter, and asked my boss if she wanted to grab a drink after work.
We have a good relationship, which helped. But I also had zero idea if I was about to look like the coolest coworker alive or lead her to a total dud.
I pulled into the Inn on Broadway, a historic building with a dark wood- paneled lobby. Beyond the foyer, the older hotel felt unchanged since the Bush era. (Either Bush.)
Expectations: officially lowered.
I popped my head into Gio’s Prime 26—the restaurant that replaced Tournedos—and asked the hostess where the jazz lounge was. She waved us toward a very unassuming carpeted stairwell. You’ve likely walked down 100 of them in your life without a second thought. But then we hit a landing with a man sitting in a chair next to a very large bookshelf.
From what I knew of Vanni’s, we needed to pull the right book to enter. What followed was the playful—and slightly frantic—dance of yanking every spine off that shelf until we found it.
No, I’m not going to tell you which one. It’s part of the fun, and also, I don’t want to ruin your own bookshelf flailing.
The door swung open.
We walked into one of the most beautiful lounges I’ve ever seen. Despite it being 5 p.m. on a Thursday, the space was dimly lit but warm—all brushed brass accents and textures that shouted velvet and elegance.
We were the first people there, so we had our pick of seats. A band was setting up: saxophone, guitar, drums, piano. I’d heard Vanni’s featured live jazz, but I was honestly expecting a girl in a sparkly dress crooning into a keyboard. This was a full ensemble.
The plan: talk work over drinks and snacks. Instead, we ended up sharing a life check-in where I confessed my growing obsession with winter hiking, and she revealed her newfound passion for making tortillas.
We stayed for nearly two hours.
That surprise is what the Inn on Broadway is betting on: You’ll walk in with low expectations and leave telling everyone about it. It’s a gamble that feels both new and familiar for a building that’s been taking risks for decades.
Since 1929, the Georgian Revival building at 26 Broadway has been where Rochester’s elite went to be seen—first as the members-only University Club, then as Tournedos Steakhouse starting in 2000.
The New York–style steakhouse was ahead of its time. It was (and still is) one of the only restaurants in upstate New York doing in-house dry-aging, with a 350-bottle wine list and a certified sommelier. Chocolate truffles arrived with your check. Servers cleared crumbs between courses. A decade ago, their average entrée price was rumored to be the second-highest in Rochester fine dining—$75 for a Wagyu ribeye in a city where people still debated whether garbage plates counted as cuisine.
And then everyone caught up. By 2014, Char, Black and Blue, and Max’s arrived. Today, Redd Wood and Patron Saint sling cuts past $100. Suddenly, $75 Wagyu feels quaint.
So in a changing landscape, what do you do when you’re the restaurant that invented the game, but everyone else showed up with better lighting and a social media strategy? Start over—sort of.
When ownership changed last year, Tournedos became Gio’s Prime 26 named for building owner Giovanni LiDestri (also the chairman of LiDestri Foods) and the street address. General manager Laura Eldridge says they’re making gradual updates—paint, floors, menu tweaks—without closing for a major overhaul because you can’t close a steakhouse in a hotel for three months.
While change is slow, the vision is clear.
“We don’t want to be a spot just for Valentine’s Day,” Eldridge says. “Come have a burger and a cocktail for happy hour.”
A burger. At a steakhouse that used to charge $75 for Wagyu.
But also—it’s a half-pound patty topped with crispy pork belly, cheddar, lettuce, and tomato—and it costs $25, which tracks for a place still figuring out whether it’s approachable or aspirational.
The classic creamed spinach ($12) and twenty-ounce dry-aged rib steak ($87) remain, but now there’s a tomahawk pork chop ($49) with caramelized Japanese sweet potatoes and apple brandy purée.
It’s still a work in progress. The reviews reflect that—slow service, the occasional existential crisis from diners who want the old Tournedos back. Still, Eldridge isn’t pretending otherwise. Everyone knows the place is in transition.
Meanwhile, Vanni’s—also named for Giovanni—was their answer to what’s missing in the city’s dining scene. Yes, we have steakhouses and cocktail bars galore, but few venues with live music year-round. To change that, the team took the functioning wine cellar—a private dining room for corporate parties and the occasional small wedding—and transformed it into something that feels like a secret even once you’re inside.
“It’s the fun of finding the right book to get into the jazz lounge and creating an experience,” Eldridge says. “It’s not just, ‘Oh, you’re going to watch live music.’ You have to find it.”
The cocktail menu, which Eldridge developed herself, are classics with a twist that lean into a subtle literary theme.
I ordered the Paper Crane ($17) because I heard it came with a tiny origami crane balanced on a lime wheel (I’m a sucker for gimmicks). The Toki Suntory whisky, combined with Amaro Nonino and Aperol, should have been boozy but somehow wasn’t. It went down smooth and kept pace through two full jazz sets.
The food menu is small plates designed for grazing—though I’ll confess, they ended up replacing my dinner entirely, which wasn’t the plan but also wasn’t a problem.
The beef sliders ($15) arrived as a trio on mini brioche buns. Caramelized onions, deliciously smoky bacon, melted cheddar—the kind of sliders that make you eat faster than socially acceptable because you don’t want to share.
The whipped ricotta ($14) was a completely different vibe: creamy, faintly sweet (perhaps honey), and indulgent in that way you didn’t know you needed until it arrived. It came piped into a wide glass dish normally reserved for an ice cream sundae, which felt right for something this decadent.
And then there was the band.
I’d braced myself for the kind of background noodling that’s pleasant enough. Instead, we got a full quartet: saxophone, piano, drums, guitar. The saxophonist had the kind of stage presence that made you stop mid-sentence and listen. They opened with something bebop-adjacent that I couldn’t name but felt like it belonged in Miles Davis’s arsenal. My boss leaned over during the second song and said, “Okay, this is actually really good.”
Vanni’s takes limited reservations for the VIP seating area—a velvet-roped section stage right of the band that seats up to nine and books out about a week in advance on Gio’s Tock page. Everything else is first-come, first-serve, which Eldridge insists is intentional.
“We want to be approachable for everyone,” Eldridge explains. “It adds to the exclusivity and the appeal of the very small, curated, intimate space. You only have so many people in there, and you gotta wait your turn.”
We arrived at 5 p.m. to an empty room. By 7 p.m., every table was full, couples lined the bar, and the bookshelf entrance had people descending that staircase like they’d discovered Narnia.
I texted my husband on the way to my car, “We should come back to this place. The jazz is great.”
He didn’t reply because our toddler was having a full-blown meltdown.
The Inn on Broadway isn’t trying to compete with the new steakhouses on spectacle or Instagram moments. It’s betting on something slower—the kind of night that turns into four hours without you noticing, the kind of place that makes you text your friends unprompted. Tournedos was ahead of its time once. Maybe Vanni’s will be too.
Vanni’s
26 Broadway
232-3595
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2026 issue of (585).
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