Longtime Upper West Sider Kevin Bacon Divulges His Go-To Barney Greengrass Order

Place your bets. Place your bets. Kevin Bacon, an Upper West Side resident since moving to the city in 1976, has just revealed his go-to order at neighborhood favorite Barney Greengrass.

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“This is a place where you go if you really want to feel like a native,” said the Animal House alum while sitting inside Barney Greengrass, a spot we’ve called the quintessential Upper West Side dining experience. “Now, by saying that, I’m sure the place will be inundated with tourists,” he said with a whisper and a laugh to the camera, in a segment with The Infatuation known as Iconic New Yorkers, where legendary locals talk about their favorite spots.

Bacon mentioned that his wife, actress Kyra Sedgwick, was born and raised on the Upper West Side. The two have starred alongside each other in the films Pyrates, a comedy from 1991 about a couple who experience pyrokinesis (the ability to create and control fire) after having sex, and The Woodsman, a drama from 2004 about adjusting to life after being released from prison. They have two children and a farm in Connecticut, where they look after goats, pigs, alpacas, and Shetland ponies. In the midst of it all, though, Bacon regarded Barney Greengrass as “…our neighborhood joint, and it’s always good.”

Bacon says it all comes down to the sturgeon at the iconic eatery at 541 Amsterdam Avenue and West 87th Street. “When I first moved to New York from Philly—1976—this was the stuff that I grew up on. This was the way that I lived in New York, and wanted to picture New York.” On The Kelly Clarkson Show in 2024, Bacon said his budget for an apartment when he came to NYC at the age of 17 was $150. He shared a two-room apartment he referred to as a “flop house” with a complete stranger, but the two have stayed in touch to this day.

His go-to order: a toasted pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese, sturgeon, and tomato, with a side of coleslaw. We also saw a glass of water next to his plate. “I mean, it’s just always great,” he said of Greengrass. “I’m an old guy, so I like the old stuff, and of course, my favorite neighborhood is the Upper West Side. I can’t help it.”

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Always nice to learn another local’s choice in the land of the sturgeon king. In our 2024 best bagel roundup, we spoke with another local legend, Richard Kind. Recently winning a 2025 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series for his role in “Only Murders in the Building“—filmed around the Upper West Side—Kind shared his unique order at Greengrass. “Well, I’m sort of different because I tend to diet a lot. I order the toasted everything bagel with a couple of scoops of tuna and a sliced onion. Plus, a diet Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda.”

Kyra Sedgwick has also revealed one of her favorite Upper West Side eateries, Gennaro, the cozy, old-school Italian restaurant at 665 Amsterdam Avenue between 92nd and 93rd Streets, in our list of the best restaurants on the Upper West Side (last updated in June 2024). You can view Bacon’s Barney Greengrass breakdown here.

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