At The Eighty-Six in Manhattan, exclusivity is the point.

The luxe, 11-table steakhouse is the sort of place that lavishes caviar and aged mimolette cheese on its potatoes, and crows that your market-price duck was raised by one Dr. Joe Jurgielewicz, DVM, in the rural hills of Pennsylvania. Taylor Swift has reportedly dined there in a Miu Miu skirt.

Reservations are a scarce commodity that the restaurant, and New York law, forbid you from selling. “Access is the main asset,” wrote food writer Helen Rosner in a recent New Yorker review of The Eighty-Six. “The product is the door, and what a door!…