Outside the Four Walls: Delilah, Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Return of the Supper Club
The h.wood Group brings its dinner-and-a-show supper club to Montauk with Chase Sapphire Reserve and previews Lady Delilah, its first permanent New York room
Delilah is a supper club, dinner and a show under one roof, with rooms in Los Angeles, Miami and beyond. This summer, The h.wood Group has brought the concept to Montauk for a two-weekend pop-up with Chase Sapphire Reserve, its second summer out on the East End.
John Terzian, who co-founded h.wood with Brian Toll two decades ago, treats last year as the trial run. “Last summer was the first, getting our bearings on throwing an event in general, let alone a pop-up in specifically Montauk and Hamptons,” he says. “Our whole thing is bringing out people, plus attracting the right locals that come in our New York crowd, so we needed to get ahead of the marketing the right way.” What last year taught him was mostly about programming. “Last year helped teach us the type of programming to do that attracts the right people here. Each time, you just feel like you get better at that.”
Milo Frank, who works alongside him at the h.wood Group, frames Montauk as a preview of what’s coming. “What we offer is something unique to Montauk and to New York City coming up, and this is a great teaser,” Frank says. “Delilah’s true dinner-and-a-show experience is something different, and people are very drawn to that, especially out here. Delilah fits that niche in many ways.”
Look Back to Move Forward
The supper club is a deliberately old-fashioned idea, and Terzian isn’t bothered by running a maximalist room while everyone else chases minimalism. “The best way to look forward to the future is to also look at past history,” he says. He means it literally. “For so many decades—the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, even versions in the ’50s—the true supper club, with some version of maximalism, was actually what was going on and what worked. The combo of socializing, dining and live music, that’s truly what we’re doing.” Somewhere after that, he says, the format fell out of favor. “At the end of the day we provide that homage to that old-school feel that everyone gravitates to.”
The rest, he says, is instinct and staying put. “When you don’t try to force things—myself and my partners and the h.wood group, what we started—we’ve never really wavered on how and who we are. It’s been 20 years for our very first place. That’s key. When you’re really true to your soul, that resonates with people.”
Frank puts the appeal more plainly. “Our product is luxury, opulence,” he says. “People love to dress up and they love to feel like they’re living in a different era. That’s what Delilah really is, that Gatsby.” He points to one night in particular. “We’ve done the film Babylon, we had their premiere party at Delilah with their band,” Frank says, of the Damien Chazelle film about old Hollywood excess. “It’s about dressing up and feeling that luxury feeling you walk into a Delilah, in any city.”
Keeping It Delilah, City to City
Every location has to feel specific without losing the brand, and Terzian says the trick is watching rather than forcing. “The key is observing, seeing what works and doesn’t work, and not trying to fit things,” he says. “Staying true to the brand is key.” Montauk taught him when to lean party and when to lean supper club. “On bigger nights, with a handful of bigger performers, we realized it’s probably smarter to make more of a party, ‘hey, this is the night,’ so that’s what we’re doing Saturday nights, for example. And then the more supper-clubby nights, when you have the live singers, you go from the dining into that experience.” The look follows the same logic. “As far as aesthetics, it’s picking and choosing what resonates most with the brand overall, but also matching the environment so you’re not forcing things. That’s really what we’ve done best.”
The Band Comes First
Ask Terzian how he books a Delilah stage and he warns you the real answer takes an hour. His theory starts with what he won’t do. “Anyone can go do obvious big DJ,” he says. “We have really tried to stay true to the fact that it’s live music, live singer, band. Everything we do, whether we have a DJ, a new performer or old performer, is with the band, whether it’s the Delilah band or their own band, in the Delilah fashion.”
The other thing he watches is timing. “We keep our finger on the combo of established and rising stars,” he says. “It’s really important for us to always have an eye to musicians that are doing their thing and are on the verge. We’ve done a really good job over the years of having breaking stars, having stars with comebacks, having top stars on top, it’s that combo.” The bookings he’s proudest of are the odd pairings. “You combine a DJ, a live song, two different genres that maybe don’t make sense to most people, but they have songs together, a tie-in, and all of a sudden you have that night and people go, ‘this is really cool.’ That’s what we try to present.”
A Partner That Means It
The Montauk run happens because Chase Sapphire Reserve is behind it, and Terzian is direct about why that works. “Chase Sapphire is probably one of the best partners I’ve had for one main reason: there’s a lot of trust. They really get it,” he says. He’s heard the opposite pitch plenty of times. “A lot of businesses try to say we want to get more involved in culture, both in music and entertainment, but they don’t really mean it. They have their own agenda.” Chase, he says, was the exception. “Chase Sapphire has been really amazing with us personally, and they really meant it. Being at the forefront of this music and entertainment culture, for their cardholders and new cardholders, gives a really nice experience.”
The bank sees the same partnership from its side. “The best partnerships are the ones where one plus one equals three,” says Andrew Steinthall, JPMorganChase’s Head of Talent Partnerships and Culture, who credits both Sapphire Reserve and Delilah with “sweating all the experiential details on the curation and the execution.” The Montauk weekend bore it out: a pop-up on the historic dock, one of the country’s best burgers from Red Hook Tavern, Nicole Scherzinger running through Pussycat Dolls hits, and Mark Ronson behind the decks to close it out. For Chase, it also made a cardmember benefit like Exclusive Tables tangible. “Instead of just telling people they have access to these incredible restaurants, we can create an experience where they actually see and feel that value firsthand,” Steinthall says.
That selectivity is the whole reason the partnership exists. “For Delilah we’re extremely specific. We do not attach or do anything unless it tells a real story, it can make a difference and it’s also a strong relationship,” Terzian says. With Chase Sapphire, “they wanted to be at the forefront of music culture and really push the boundaries for their cardholders. That’s music to my ears.” He watches the rest of what they do, too. “They have a really smart campaign with everything they’re doing, the talent they’re bringing in. I look and watch all of that.”
The same filter explains how rarely Delilah’s name shows up anywhere else. “We’re very specific and honestly very rare,” he says. “818 is one, and Coachella. We’ve been a pioneer of Coachella pop-up events; we started there 14 years ago.” Even those come down to relationships. “The only reason we attach [to 818] is we have a strong relationship with Kendall personally, plus business. It stays in that box, the VIP lounge and their strong relationship. Otherwise we don’t attach the name or brand.”
There’s an audience benefit that’s more immediate. “They have amazing people that are part of their cardholder platform,” he says. “I don’t think too many people are combining like this.” But for Terzian, the bigger value is structural, a matter of how h.wood grows at all. “The way Brian and I built h.wood, we always said with hospitality you really win by being outside the four walls,” he says. “We have a restaurant, right. The only way you can have a massive difference is when you’re doing things like this. We’re in Montauk for two weeks. We wouldn’t be able to do that without a partner like Chase Sapphire.” The reach surprises him more than anything. “Almost monthly, I have a new person [with] no knowledge of Delilah or who we are, that as a result of the Chase Sapphire partnership, comes to me about what we’re doing.” He keeps coming back to the same idea. “We’re in the people business, all of us, Chase Sapphire too. The more we’re out there and the more we’re in people’s lives, the more we’re winning. Who else is providing experiences like this? I don’t know anyone else.”
Lady Delilah
Terzian calls Montauk a rehearsal, a preview and its own event all at once. “Yes it’s in New York, the right local people, it’s all the same fabric, but this pop-up is a really specific thing,” Terzian says. What it’s building toward is permanent. “With New York, we’ve made the decision to do a unique, one-of-a-kind, which is going to be called Lady Delilah.”
A permanent New York room, he says, can’t be a copy of the others. “When you start expanding as a restaurant, for us it’s very important—and I’m an extremely hands-on operator—to maintain luxury and the extreme touch in hospitality,” he says. “I always said when we enter New York permanently, it has to be an over-the-top thing.” He’s clear about where the company comes from. “We’re an LA-based group, I make no bones about that. However, I have deep, deep ties to New York; my closest friends and family all live and breathe in New York.” That’s why the copy-paste approach was never on the table. “You don’t want a cookie-cutter chain of a place, especially when you’re a luxury type of thing.” Lady Delilah, he says, will be its own thing top to bottom. “There’s live band, dancers, restaurant first, high level. The entire aesthetic is completely unique, the name is unique. At the end of the day, all we try to do is keep trying to get great unique experiences to guests.”
Chase Sapphire Reserve cardmembers get exclusive reservation access to h.wood restaurants across the country through Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables on OpenTable.
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