Ye Old WAVERLY INN
Greenwich Village
New York
This red brick town house was built in the eighteen-thirties. Before being reborn, last year, it was a low-key hangout beloved for its high-rolling Connect Four matches. For years, its denizens have reported sightings of an apparition, which, it is said, wears a top hat and causes fireplace logs to ignite spontaneously. In 1958, an ocelot named Lancelot appeared in the dining room, having supposedly jumped out of a nearby window and crawled through the restaurant’s cellar grate.
Apocrypha abound, as ever—though lately, since the editor in chief of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, and several partners took over, they’re of a less hoary variety. Did Ellen Barkin throw a drink at Ron Perelman? Does the truffled mac and cheese really cost fifty-five bucks? The lack of a functional reservations line would suggest that most of us will never get the chance to find out. But one of the place’s pretensions is that it’s anti-pretense; if you want a table, just walk up and ask. (Not that the famous people are subjected to this ritual.) And, so, sprinkled in amongst the fashionable types—on a chilly recent evening, Jann Wenner drank rosé while the Ralph Laurens supped en famille and Mr. Herrera perused his menu by votive-candle light—are tattooed old-timers and true believers who thrill at Carter’s attempts to resurrect the Don’t-I-know-you-from-somewhere city of Mrs. Astor’s Four Hundred and can tick off every last personage depicted in the room’s magnificent mural, by Edward Sorel. For the layman, the experience feels sort of like being on an airplane: things are fine in coach, but you get the idea they’re having even more fun in first class.
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