Day 339…
We are solidly in the middle of the deepest part of winter. This is exactly why my in-laws spend the season in Florida.
Cold and gray with a chance of a little snow later on, we are still a long way away from spring with little besides that point far into the future to look forward to. Going outside requires a girding of the loins and a whole ceremony of wrapping up in enough layers to keep warm. Just putting my boots on sometimes feels like a monumental effort.
The streets of the city are full of people looking for something to do.
Happily, the snow has been mostly cleared from the streets and the sidewalks, but it is still cold enough that it remains on the ground throughout the city’s parks. Every day that I leave the apartment, I pass families with kids heading towards Central Park. Inside the park. Within its low walls, every hill is covered with people.
Blanketed in white under cloudy skies, the park, itself, looks like a faded and blotchy photograph from the beginning of the last century. Brownish gray trees and lampposts, fences and rocky outcrops are the only breaks in the endless expanse. With the kids and their families, however, come bright speckled blotches. Their coats and plastic sleds are so vividly colored that they are visible from extremely far away because the contrast is so great. It makes the park look like it is frosted with vanilla icing and decorated with rainbow sprinkles - or hundreds and thousands for my friends in Britain and her colonies.
Anyone who has walked the streets of the city has long gotten used to seeing the enclosures that restaurants have put up outside on the street.
Yesterday, restrictions were relaxed so that indoor dining at up to 25% capacity can resume. Despite the official permission to proceed, there are still many people who won’t do it.
Some restaurants have chosen to build what basically look like old-time train cars divided into a series of separate compartments. You and the people you are with end up in an enclosed space, but you are separated by either wooden or plastic walls from everybody else.
Other places have chosen, instead, to build an open enclosure putting up a roof and surrounding the tables on three sides with walls, leaving the fourth side, the one facing the sidewalk and the front of the actual brick and mortar building, completely open. In those, diners can safely eat together with strangers, albeit at a distance. Heaters either to the side or above the tables keep diners somewhat warmer than they would be if they were just sitting outside in the snow.
In recent weeks, it seems like some restaurants have discovered that the reddish-orange light that comes from the heaters looks far more inviting on cold days that just normal lighting. I am starting to see enclosures where the usual run-of-the-mill lightbulbs have been replaced by reddish-orange ones. They don’t provide any additional heat, but even from a distance they make their dining areas look like a little warm and inviting oasis out on the bleak city streets.
There are still restaurants who seem to have missed the point completely and have put up enclosures that are not divided inside and have all four walls in place. I have no idea why the city has allowed those kinds of enclosure to remain in use. Four walls and a roof, no matter what they are made of, are the definition of indoor dining. The whole point of all of this outdoor dining is to encourage air circulation. Enclosures like that thwart that goal completely.
People are eating in all three kinds of enclosures. As I walk, I pass completely enclosed places that are full and warmly inviting open places that are empty. I also come upon bustling open-air places and completely vacant enclosed spots.
I’ve never really understood why some restaurants are successful and some aren’t.
When I lived in Hell’s Kitchen there was a building with a restaurant space fronting the street about five doors down. Nothing lasted in the space for longer than a month or two. It didn’t matter whether it was a place for gourmet food or a themed bar, after a few weeks with nobody there, whatever it was would close and a month or two later a new one would open. Two or three times a year, it would change hands and somebody else would give it a shot.
At one point, somebody decided to open up an Irish sports bar and we laughed. We laughed because the neighborhood was already full of Irish sports bars. As it was preparing to open, we were already talking about what would be there next.
That was at least seven or eight years ago and, much to our surprise, it’s still there. It was popular and packed from the day it opened. After years of never seeing a soul in any iteration of the space, suddenly there was always a crowd inside and out on the street in front of it.
Investors will tell you that the only thing that is riskier than investing in a Broadway show is investing in a new restaurant. Like Broadway shows, almost all of them close, losing their entire investment. When they hit, though, they hit.
In the 1950’s Joe Allen started working as a bartender at P.J. Clarke’s on the Upper East Side. In the 60’s, he opened up a place of his own on 46th Street that he named after himself. At the time, the entire area was somewhat derelict.
From the beginning, Joe Allen’s Restaurant attracted actors and others who were working in theatres nearby. It hit.
As a somewhat inside industry joke, he lined the inside of the restaurant with posters from Broadway shows. The joke came from the fact that they were all flops. You don’t get on the wall of Joe Allen’s unless you closed opening night and lost at least a million dollars.
Only one of my shows is up there. The musical of The Red Shoes is right in the corner. For whatever reason, possibly because they were hemorrhaging money, the producers of that show never really made a poster for it. Before we closed, though, they made an extremely limited number of them - about ten - and one of them was for the wall at Joe Allen’s. I am always happy to see it up on the wall when we eat in there.
Joe then opened up a fancier restaurant next door called Orso’s and a wonderful kind of inside-industry speak-easy called Bar Centrale just upstairs between them.
Elaine Stritch ate at Orso’s all the time. I never got the full story from her, but at one time she and Joe Allen were actually engaged to be married. Whatever happened to that relationship, he let Elaine eat there for free for basically the rest of her life. At the end of the run of A Delicate Balance she took everyone in the company that she could still stand out to dinner at Orso’s as a thank you. The party was made up of me, the Company Manager, the Wardrobe Supervisor and her dresser. That was it.
We were seated at a table right in the middle. There was a guy sitting behind me by himself at a table and another guy sitting by himself with his back to us opposite from where I was sitting, but Elaine was the undisputed center of the room.
That night, both Lauren Bacall and Stephanie Powers had come to see the show. As we ate, Elaine told some truly wonderful and utterly salacious stories about Betty Bacall. They’d known each other for decades, had slept with some of the same people, and we heard about all of it. And she wasn’t whispering.
As she was holding forth, Lauren Bacall, herself, walked into the restaurant. Seeing Elaine, she came over to the table and said hello. They chatted for a while the rest of us, of course, looked at her with all of the stories that we’d just heard about her fresh in our minds. After a moment, she introduced her son, who turned out to be the man sitting with his back to us at the table right behind me.
There is no way at all that he hadn’t heard every word out of Elaine’s mouth and Elaine knew it.
So, rather than being in any way chastened by this, she merely changed direction. She continued telling the stories but pretended that, all along, she had been talking about Stephanie Powers. The two of them had known each other for decades as well, so she had some pretty great stories about Stephanie Powers, too.
As she was gossiping about her with us, who, of course, should walk into the restaurant but, Stephanie Powers. She, too, came up to the table and said hello. After a few pleasantries, she introduced her husband who was the man sitting with his back to us at the table across from me. He, too, had heard every word that Elaine had said.
After she left, Elaine shrugged and said, “What can you do?” We all fell out. As quietly as we could. It was one of the most memorable meals I have ever had.
Michael and I have had countless meals in Joe Allen’s and spent countless nights up in Bar Centrale either with friends or by ourselves.
Often, Joe would be sitting at one of the bars. He was a constant fixture there. He lived in an apartment above them. He had the chance to buy the building that his restaurants are in and he did. When he bought them, the area was so depressed that he got them for a very good price.
This summer, they were able to open for business for a few weeks when the 25% indoor dining policy made it cost-effective to do so. When it got colder and the case numbers went up again, though, they closed back down. Because they don’t have to pay rent, they will be able to remain closed as long as necessary and re-open when it is safe to do so.
Joe Allen’s is a genuine Broadway fixture. Certainly, some tourists make their way there, but it really is ours. In Applause, the musical version of All About Eve, Joe Allen’s figures prominently as a location where everybody in the show within the show meets up.
That Joe, himself, will not be there when Broadway finally reopens is tragic. So far, though, the restaurant that bears his name should be there for us to gather in again after our shows.
Yes, the impeachment trial is continuing, but so are the rest of our lives.
While I will likely spend much of today glued to the television, I would much rather go down and have the chopped La Scala salad or a burger at Joe’s. I guess I’ll have to wait until spring.
For as long as I have been here in New York and been a part of our amazing theatrical community, Joe Allen has been there.
Thank you, Joe, for feeding and watering us so spectacularly and giving us the perfect place to unwind after a long day at the office.
RIP Joe Allen.
💕You warmed up my Saturday with that story...can’t wait to meet up at Joe Allen’s ...and hear of more stories, maybe even create some. 💞💫