Elaine Kaufman, and the New York Restaurant She Made
What was it about ELAINE KAUFMAN that made so many people love her and her New York City bar and Italian restaurant? It wasn’t just the food. Even her most loyal customers and devoted friends would admit you could get better food elsewhere.
It was something about Elaine herself, and the ambiance she created.
In 1963, Elaine was a hard-working, chain-smoking 34-year-old from a Russian-Jewish immigrant family in the Bronx. She paid $11,000 to buy a somber-looking Austro-Hungarian bar, at 1703 Second Avenue, near 88th Street on the East Side of Manhattan, and decided to add a restaurant to it.
As a young woman, she’d worked at Woolworth’s, and had fond memories of working at a second-hand bookstore on 42nd Street — but she’d gravitated toward restaurants, working first as a waitress, then managing a restaurant at Bleecker and Thompson Streets in Greenwich Village, for an engaging man named Alfredo Viazzi.
Manhattan was a very special part of New York City, she believed. It drew people from all over the world, in a way the outer boroughs did not. She was proud of how many talented, worldly people were in Manhattan — but she also knew Manhattan drew a lot of phony sophisticates.
She wanted Elaine’s to be like one of those old Greenwich Village restaurants of the 1950’s: a simple, unpretentious place with a big heart. Checkered tablecloths, soft lighting and pungent aromas. She didn’t worry about having an extensive menu but the pasta dishes had to be tasty, the veal chops moist and tender, and the portions generous. Fried calamari was a specialty.
In 1963, Second Avenue and 88th Street was an unfashionable German Irish neighborhood. Regulars from the old bar looked skeptically, or disdainfully, at the new place. There were very few new customers. Preparing meals for a restaurant that was two-thirds empty was painful but Elaine never lost confidence. She stayed open seven days a week, and worked hard, day after day, making her pasta dishes and veal parmigiana, and squid salad, calamari and fried zucchini.
Jack Richardson was the first writer who took a shine to Elaine’s. Richardson was a playwright with a philosophy degree from Columbia, and a gift for writing existential dramas. But Elaine could see the man lacked common sense.
Richardson was writing a book about gambling, and to do his research properly he felt he should gamble a good deal himself. Consequently, he was chronically low on funds. He could see that Elaine was, too.
Jack got to talking to Elaine and decided to give her the benefit of his advice. “Elaine,” he said “You need some sensitive types in here.”
‘You mean homosexuals?’ said Elaine. (She used a nastier word.)
“No, writers.” said Jack Richardson. “What would you say to some steady customers who don’t have to get up in the morning and therefore can be plied with drinks until closing time? Who will eat anything put in front of them — and enjoy it?
Richardson saw a flicker of interest in Elaine’s eyes.
“Do they spend?” she asked, dubiously.
“An indifference to money is the hallmark of the profession,” replied Richardson proudly.
“Okay,” said Elaine. “Bring me a dozen.”
So Jack Richardson began talking up the place and bringing in writers. Nelson Algren, Frank Conroy, Gay Talese, and Tennessee Williams all loved Elaine’s. They enjoyed this big cheerful woman who wore large eyeglasses, and walked the place, making sure people had what they needed. Jack Richardson’s book about gambling wasn’t published until 1980 but he spent 15 good years at Elaine’s. He loved the mood there, the atmosphere.
George Plimpton was a free spirit who made Elaine’s almost a second home.
A few show business people heard about Elaine’s and started coming: Woody Allen went religiously and filmed the opening scene in his film “Manhattan” at Elaine’s. Prominent politicians, policemen, actors and athletes all came. Elaine loved the New York Yankees and doted on any Yankee who came to eat at her place.
Elaine knew how to respect minor celebrities in a friendly, casual way. She also knew how to protect them from tourists, strangers, and hangers on. The fact that she was NOT nice to everyone made her kindness stand out when it was directed at you. Maybe that was the special ingredient: selective kindness.
For a big woman, she moved fast, and she used her bulk to advantage when there was some sort of dispute. Once she got into fisticuffs with a man from Texas. What the hell, these things blow over quickly. She saw nothing wrong with exchanging blows now and then, so long as you don’t hold a grudge.
One night, Ron Galella, the king of the paparazzi, staked out the sidewalk just outside the front entrance of Elaine’s. Galella was thrilled because Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, Liv Ullman and Cheryl Tiegs were all in the restaurant. He planned to snap a picture or two of each of them, as they left. An A-list actor, two A-list actresses and a sexy model: it was perfect tabloid material.
Jackie Onassis took out a restraining order against Galella when he hounded her and her children in Central Park. Elaine took the more direct approach when she saw Galella lurking outside Elaine’s.
She opened the door and said, “Beat it, creep! You’re bothering my customers!” When Galella declined to leave, she encouraged movement by throwing a garbage can lid at him — and then a second one. Galella got a picture of the second garbage can lid coming at him — and sold the photo to New York magazine.
Willie Morris, editor of Harper’s magazine, began hanging out at Elaine’s in 1965, and various Harper’s deals with writers were first written down on napkins at Elaine’s. Willie Morris loved the romantic idea of Hemingway writing short stories in cafes; now Morris read manuscripts at a quiet corner table at Elaine’s.
Elaine never thought of her restaurant as a place where writers could write or talk shop; for her it was a place to ESCAPE from writing. Eating was so elemental with her, sending her boys home with a full stomach.
She knew writers were quite intelligent, in a literary sort of way, and she found lovable their curiosity about the world and their childish faith in the power of books. But Elaine felt that, in some very important ways, writers were deficient. They weren’t well-organized enough to have dinner parties, and to cook well, and to remember to eat regular meals, and to make sure they saw their friends on a regular basis. Elaine was sure that writers weren’t very good at these things.
She believed firmly that writers need a place to go, a clubhouse, a hangout — and her restaurant would be that place, and she would be the den mother, and their advisor and protector.
It was also, of course, a public restaurant, open to whomever walked in the door, so there was a caste system. First came her absolute favorite customers, like Jack Richardson and George Plimpton; then her favored customers; and then regular customers; and then the occasional customers, and finally the walk-ins and the tourists.
Her favorites got the best tables. She made no effort to hide that fact. Those she didn’t know or didn’t like got seated in the back. Occasionally, she would even ask a seated group at Table #1 to get up and move to another table so that one of her favorites could have Table #1.
But if one of her favorites didn’t show for a while, Elaine could be a little frosty on their first night back. Or she might call up one of her favorites and say, “Get over here!” They usually came.
Elaine Kaufman had a warm heart, and if she learned that one of her regular customers wasn’t doing well, the “bill” said only “Tip the waiter.” Or she’d have food brought out that a favorite customer hadn’t ordered. If he tried to thank her, she’d say she was just trying to keep the cook busy; the kitchen had been too quiet.
After a while, some customers started getting their mail sent to Elaine’s. Elaine pretended to be annoyed by this, but she loved it. It meant that, for some of her customers, Elaine’s was, indeed, their second home.
If a man had a fight with his wife, or got thrown out by his girlfriend, he knew he could come to Elaine’s, and she’d sympathize. She liked men better than women and almost always took the man’s side in a romantic dispute. It was much harder for females to get into Elaine’s inner circle.
If she liked you, she never hovered around your table late at night, making you feel guilty about sitting for hours without ordering. The restaurant was often open until 2:00 a.m. and a regular could stop in to celebrate after a great night — or to commiserate after a lousy night.
Elaine didn’t sugarcoat things but she was a good listener. She often responded to a sob story by introducing the sad sack to someone else in the restaurant, someone who might help them. She often made two of her regulars feel that she wanted them to like each other, and such was their affection for Elaine that they tried hard to like each other, and usually did. Her people sense was acute.
Even after the restaurant was a big success, and Elaine could easily have closed it on Monday and Tuesdays, she still kept the place open seven days a week.
Writers wanting to show their appreciation to Elaine very often gave her signed, first editions of their books, inscribed with a warm note on the title page. Since many of her writers were fairly well-known, Elaine’s collection of first editions became quite valuable.
She loved to read but had very little time for it; she was always in the restaurant.
In her mid-70’s, Elaine got sick. There were fancy diagnoses — “chronic obstructive pulmonary disease” and “pulmonary hypertension” — but Elaine knew what it was: too many cigarettes.
Still, she objected to Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on cigarette smoking in restaurants. She figured some people need to smoke to relax, and it’s tacky to tell them they can’t smoke in public. They would never have done that in Greenwich Village in 1955.
Elaine died in Manhattan in December of 2010, at the age of 81. Everyone had known she was sick but she had such personal force that her friends were still surprised when she died. She left the restaurant to her most devoted manager, Diane Becker, and Becker spoke bravely of keeping the place open. But less than a year later, she closed it, saying with real sadness, “There is no Elaine’s without Elaine.”
When some items from the restaurant were auctioned, Table #1 and its four chairs went for $8,750 to a devotee of Elaine’s. Another fan paid $4,063 for Elaine’s battered old black cash register. There was no funeral ceremony. Her body was cremated — or, as Elaine called it, “cooked.”
She had spoken of leaving money in her will to endow a chair in literature at Columbia University.
Someone asked, ‘Why?’
Elaine replied, ‘So my writers will have someplace to go.’