‘SAVE the joint!” is New York diners’ new war cry. A few months ago, a noisy petition-and-media campaign helped rescue popular West Fourth Street eatery The Place from eviction, and lovers of “Village authenticity” rejoiced.
Now the battle has entered a rougher realm, with two celebrity-magnet uptown joints, both ancient by local standards, in the cross hairs – Theater District bistro Le Madeleine, fighting demolition, and Bloomingdale’s-land fave Gino, facing shutdown over a labor dispute.
Who isn’t rooting for both to pull through? A city without restaurants older than oneself is a city without a culinary soul. Real estate pressures and changing tastes have killed off so many vintage spots that even New Yorkers barely 30 years old are running out of dining venues that predate them.
Of course, some antique eateries deserve to live more than others. It’s easy to be a sentimental slob over places that are atmospheric even if they’re awful – but more about Gino later. More deserving of a miracle is award-winning bistro Le Madeleine (403 W. 43rd St.), which opened in 1979 and faces “illegal” eviction by a landlord who wants to raze the building.
Despite a demolition clause in its lease, it’s fighting back in court “with everything we have,” says owner Tony Edwards, and with a petition drive (lemadeleine.com) and press campaign that splashed last week on eater.com.
Unlike Theater District bistros that are narrow and dark, Le Madeleine is wide and bright with long windows. That’s the problem: A one-story building with 40 feet of sidewalk frontage is a tempting target for a landlord who’d make a bundle selling the lot to a developer for a new hotel or condos.
But its loss would hurt – and not just for the charming ghost signs painted on brick walls, like one for the mysterious “Nougat-Le Sphinx.” Unlike touristy French joints in the West 40s and 50s, where the escargot come out of cans, Le Madeleine’s lavishly seasoned menu by chef Bruce Beaty has more Gallic bistro spirit than some places in Paris.
Could monkfish with green caper-currant purée so exquisitely turned out really be just $20, or sautéed Scottish salmon in herbed pommery mustard vinaigrette be $19? And on the right day or night, you might see Sarah Jessica Parker or Robert De Niro enjoying them, too.
Meanwhile, World War II-vintage Italian spot Gino (780 Lexington Ave.), a favorite of Gay Talese and Woody Allen, says it will close Tuesday because of a union problem that’s hard to sort out. A waiter told me, “In the kitchen, the people, they cross the border without papers, but now they say pay them like they pay us.”
Last week, the New York Observer ran an editorial headlined “Let Gino’s Live!” and cited it as among “those places that make this city unlike any other on the planet.”
Ahem – Gino is among those places that disgrace not only Italian, but good American-Italian cuisine, as well. At Gino, “al dente” apparently means “boiled to a near-liquid state.”
Even with inedible vegetables and a “wine-wine-wine-wine” list that does not list vintages, Gino has one thing going for it: walls in brighter red than industrial-strength tomato sauce, festooned with prancing zebras that hark back to 1945.
Sometimes the idea of a thing matters more than the thing itself. The idea of Gino – cozy, Truman-era Manhattan, through a red-sauce lens – is enough to root for it. But I’d root harder if it showed any interest in feeding us decent pasta to go with nostalgia.