Old Schrafft's Building Destroyed

A reader wrote in in dismay last week to report that workmen were tearing down a one-story structure at 155 E. 79th Street between Lexington and Third that used to be an outpost of the once prominent New York eatery chain Schrafft's. He sent the above photo, which—sadly—was taken after the structure was on its way out.

"This was a charming one story building, set between two residential buildings, that was a kind of white stone, art-deco castle," he wrote. "It was, I believe, built to be a Schrafft's, but had been an antique shop for many years. You can see it as a Schrafft's in the opening shot of the 1959 Doris Day film 'Please Don't Eat The Daisies.'... This little treasure should have been preserved."

Elliott Galeries, the antique shop of which he spoke, announced on its website that it had moved to Brooklyn. According to the site, Elliott moved into the space in 1979. Here's a picture of the lovely little building when Elliott possessed it:

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Who Shops at Park East Kosher

As a dedicated defender of unique New York, I am not one to knock indy NYC businesses. And certainly not one to knock old indy NYC businesses. And certainly, certainly not one to rap old, ethnic, indy NYC businesses.

But I have to say: Park East Kosher Butchers exasperates me.

The butcher and grocery was founded more than fifty years ago on Madison Avenue, and moved to Second Avenue near 85th Street a decade ago. It is one of the last surviving kosher butchers in Manhattan. It is family owned, and the connection between the staff and the customers is impressive. Regular clientele are called by their name as they totter it. (Many of the regulars are elderly.) "How are you, Mrs. C?" someone will call. "Same as usual, Mrs. K?"

Whoever Mrs. C and Mrs. K are, however, they must be rich. And not just because they live on the Upper East Side; lots of people of various incomes have hung on in this area by their fingernails for years. They're rich because they shop at Park East Kosher! In the annals of exorbitant pricing, I know of few stores that match Park East in gaul. A piece of kosher meat bought in this shop will run you anywhere from twenty-five to one hundred percent more than it will in any other kosher meat market in town. I know this because I regularly buy kosher meat and know how much it costs. Every time I walk into Park East, full of good will and willing to buy, I walk out empty-handed and angry. You can't look at the prices without feeling you're being gouged. A simple eight-pack of Empire kosher turkey hot dogs that costs $2.50 or so anywhere else in town will cost you $4 here.

So who puts up with such prices? Well, the wealthy. My most memorable experience with Park East involved a Brooklyn acquaintance. This person did not want for anything. They had a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and a summer house on the Long Island Sound. Eating kosher in Brooklyn, they had any number of choices where to shop. Aside from Fairway and Trader Joe's, there are the countless kosher butchers in Borough Park and Williamsburg and Crown Heights. Yet this person drove specifically to Park East for their kosher meat needs. I guess if you can afford it...

Lost City Asks "Who Goes to Lexington Candy Shop?"

If I lived in the neighborhood, I'd go to Lexington Candy Shop three times a weeks. As it is, I live about an hour's subway ride away. But still, I'm glad it's there, and that there is still a living yardstick in the city for how shakes, malteds, Cokes, lime rickeys and million other soda fountain staples are supposed to taste.

Here's my Eater "Who Goes There?" column:

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Lascoff Drugs Closes After a 113 Years

I thought upper Lexington Avenue had a special force field surrounding it (i.e.—influential rich people) that allowed an inordinate number of old businesses to survive. But, alas, I was wrong. If the bluebloods couldn't save the iconic Upper East Side pharmacy Lascoff Drugs, what can they save?

Lascoff closed last July after 113 years in business. I don't know how I missed that. I guess lately I've unconsciously learned to avert my eyes when beautiful landmarks shutter. I just can't bear the pain. 

Lascoff, along with Bigelow and one or two others, was one of New York's great, classic pharmacies. It opened in 1899, when McKinley was President, and was the first licensed pharmacy in New York State, according to the New York Times. It was a store so majestic and solemn, you felt like you were entering a church when you went in. High ceilings, high shelving, a balcony, ancient Pharmacuetical relics, and silence. No music. You could find many old and classic brands there that you couldn't locate elsewhere. And the vertical sign on the corner building was one of the grandest in the city. 

The enterprise was founded by J. Leon Lascoff. He was born in Vilna, then in Russian Poland, and came to New York in 1892. His first drug store was at Lex and 83rd. He then moved across the street and then, in 1931, moved to 82nd and Lex—Lascoff's final location. He died in 1936. His son Frederick took over the business and ran it until his death in 1970. During Fred's time, the store had a reputation for odd cures. It sold leeches to boxers and catnip oil to lion hunters. He once sold a mixture of phenol, valerian, asafetida and iodoform to a colleague who had complained that his own pharmacy didn't smell enough like a drug store. 

After Frederick died, the business fell out of the family. It was purchased by Phil and Susan Ragusa. I assume they were still running it when it closed.

The Miracle of 86th Street

For reasons I do not understand, the intersection of 86th Street and Lexington has managed to fend off the plague of crappy, modern, anonymous Cemusa newsstands that have swept the city in the last three years, thanks to Bloomberg signing a contract with an urban architecture firm—in Spain.

There are three newsstands at this crossroads, and each of them is gloriously old school. Messy, real, gritty and very New York. The rest of the intersection is awful—modern apartment and office towers and chain stores (Game Stop, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, H & M) everywhere. (There used to be a wonderful little donut shop on the southeast corner which I still mourn.) But the newsstands almost save it.

Deli Skyline

Sometimes delis can surprise you. A lot are interchangeable. But fairly often, proud owners do a little something decor- or merchandise-wise to set their business apart.

I happened on with narrow deli on Lexington on the Upper East Side that has an entire Midtown Manhattan skyline made out of tile on the wall. It's impossible to take the whole thing in at once (let alone photograph it) because much of it is blocked by the salad bar. Because of this, I doubt that many of the deli customers actually notice it.

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The Hidden Plumber

The sign at 1390 Second Avenue says Klausner Supply. But you look at the display in the storefront window and there are no plumbing fixtures. Just a lot of frou-frou pillows and drapes and other accoutrements of interior design.

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A Good Sign: David's Barber Shop

You know those ridiculously bad illustrations that some old school barbers and dry cleaners have in their windows, the 1970s-style, everybody-has-feathered-blown-dried-hair pictures that illustrate various cuts, and cleaning and tailoring opportunities? Well, David's Barber Shop on the Upper East Side has one as its permanent sign! Is it me, or does the man look even prettier than the girl?

Strangest Dentist's Office in New York

Every time I pass by the address of dentist Richard Chiang D.D.S, on upper First Avenue, I'm tempted to knock on the door and ask, "What the hell kind of office is this?"

It looks like a tiny house of detention to me, a bunker; a battered old wooden door, a window covered with bars, a dirty wall of white bricks. It's the oddest frontage. I seriously doubt if anything goes on inside. But I love the joint's weirdness, sitting there in the middle of a busy block not doing much of anything.

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A Good Sign: Goldberger's Pharmacy

I usually only see the Goldberger's sign in the daytime. Yesterday, I got lucky and caught the Upper East Side landmark in all its lit-up glory.

I also like this inset display window on the north side of the store. Such windows, which do not look into the store, but are truly display windows, are relative rarities these days.

Last Night at Elaine's

I didn't make it for the last night at Elaine's, the Upper East Side boite that closed for good on Thursday, May 26, but a reader, who was a regular, did. And he sent pictures.

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Elaine's to Close in May

This one doesn't hurt me as much as yesterday's news that Joe's Superette has closing. I was never a regular at Elaine's, and probably wouldn't have been accepted if I had tried to be. Also, no one much expected it to last long after Elaine died last year. But it was a landmark, and the kind of place that could only crop up in New York. Too bad its famous clientele wasn't as faithful to Elaine's memory as they had been to her.

Six months after the death of its legendary proprietor, Elaine’s restaurant will close its doors next week.

On Tuesday, Elaine’s longtime manager, who inherited the restaurant from Elaine Kaufman, said that the business was no longer viable. She said that Elaine’s last night would be May 26. The last last call will come around 4 the following morning.

“The truth is, there is no Elaine’s without Elaine,” the manager, Diane Becker, said. She added, “The business is just not there without Elaine.”

A spokeswoman for Ms. Becker said she would put the two buildings on Second Avenue that house the restaurant on the market.

“I’m enormously proud of the waiters, the bartenders and the entire staff who have worked so hard with me to keep the place open and going since Elaine’s passing in December,” she said, “but it’s simply not a viable situation.”

It was an announcement that anxious regulars had dreaded as Ms. Kaufman’s on-and-off health problems had become more of a preoccupation around Elaine’s checkered-tablecloth tables.

Ms. Kaufman, who was 81 when she died on Dec. 3 of complications from emphysema, left the restaurant and most of her estate to Ms. Becker. That included two adjoining five-story buildings on Second Avenue — the restaurant has occupied the ground floor of the two buildings for more than 40 years — and Ms. Kaufman’s co-op apartment a few blocks away.

Ms. Kaufman’s will directed Ms. Becker to sell the apartment and to spend the money on estate taxes and four bequests totaling $230,000. But the apartment remains on the market. The original asking price of $2.95 million has been reduced to $2.75 million.

Ms. Becker had worked for Ms. Kaufman since the mid-1980s and had said repeatedly that the restaurant would keep going. “The only missing link is Elaine,” she said in January.

But Elaine’s had become an anomaly, a single-owner restaurant in an age of deep-pocketed investors and celebrity chefs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud.

In recent months, the restaurant appeared only empty, even on prime weekend dining nights.

Donohue's Steak House Felled by DOH

I was just talking last night with a Upper East Side-dwelling friend of mine about the wonderful unchanging character of upper Lexington Avenue, mentioning such stalwarts as the Lexington Candy Shop and Donohue's Steak House.

And today I wake up to the awful news that Donohue's has been shut down by the DOH. Hopefully, they will clean up and reopen soon. Love that place. Here's my "Who Goes There?" column from two years back.

A Good Sign: Bloomingdale's

It's obvious, I know. But, for some reason (probably because it's obvious), I've never set it aside for distinction. So here it is. Hard to deny the Art Deco triumph of these awnings.

Home of the Gold Fish Bowl Iced Coffee

I've never written about Serendipity, even though it's a local business, very sui generis, half a century old, and would seem to be a perfect fit for Lost City. Maybe because the gauche, ice cream sundae palace kinda sets my teeth on edge, what with it's chandeliers and riot of dolls and kitschy decor inside designed to make a 12-year-old girl break out in pink and purple spots and go spastic with delight. (Check out it's ridiculously purple "history," complete with—yikes!—a picture of Sarah Palin.)

Still, it's odd enough to have a certain appeal. I was forced to go recently when I suggested it as a place my niece would like, and my sister took me up on the idea. The best, and weirdest part, is the ghoulish hostess, who looked like Morticia's sister, and whom I assumed is part of the family that owns the place. Why else would she be allowed at the front of house, where she could scare all the little children. Another cool thing: the big, cast-iron metal clock inside was salvaged from a local butcher that went out of business years ago.

Like Junior's and the Carnegie Deli, everything on the menu is huge. Christ, the menus themselves are huge. I knew this to be the case with the grossly oversized sundaes. But I've never before been served an ice coffee big enough for a fish to swim in. Even my Goth niece was impressed with that.

Lost City Asks "Who Goes to Quatorze Bis?"

I said in my farewell to the blogging life two weeks ago that I would continue to write the "Who Goes There?" column for Eater. Well, I meant what I said, and a said what I meant. And I'll post links to the column here every fortnight, as the columns go up. I went to the well-heeled French bistro Quatorze Bis this week. Unfortunately, it kinda reminded me of a lot of the reasons I shut Lost City down. Here's the link.

Noooooooooooooo!

I've gotten so used to Gino crying wolf so often over the past year that I feel into a false sense of security that the Lexington Avenue standby would never actually close, would always remain open. No so. The heartbreaker from Eater:

Over the past year, stories have surfaced again and again regarding the trouble at Gino, the 65 year-old Upper East Side Italian joint with the oh so famous zebra wall paper. Last February, the owner complained of terrible business. Then it was almostkilled by the union. Then it sat in limbo. Then it was shuttering again. Then it was almost saved. Today comes this from the Post: "Gino is sadly finito. The legendary Upper East Side red-sauce joint is closing its kitchen after 65 years." A call confirms they will close at the end of the month.

What will become of the wallpaper?! What will become of the wooden phone booth? All those old waiters? What will become of New York when the last landmark falls?

Here's all my past coverage of Gino, including a "Who Goes There?" column. There's a lot of it. Gino will actually be the very first of my "Who Goes There?" restaurants to vanish. I never would have believed it.

Hey, Keith McNally! Here's a New York landmark that needs saving. You did it with Minetta Tavern. How about another go? (Graydon Carter, stay away. I want to save Gino, not sully it.)

I goes without saying that I'll be dining at Gino's at least one more time before the zebras gallop off into Manhattan's ongoing sunset.

Gino's to Close on Dec. 31

Say goodbye to this familiar yellow door.

Eater reports that the New York Post reports that the 64 year-old Upper East Side restaurant Gino's will close on Dec. 31. The word came from a union rep. The restaurant has been grappling with its union over a new contract for some time.

Reports surfaced this month that the troubled Gino would be saved as a white-knight buyer rode in to scoop up the joint, famous for its zebra wallpaper and old-school dishes like veal parmigiana and chicken cacciatore.

But Dell'Aguzzo told The Post this week a buyer has not materialized and that the Lexington Avenue eatery will not survive.
Co-owner Salvatore Doria told The Post he couldn't talk about details of the restaurant's problems.

"In a few weeks, we'll know exactly what's the story," he said. "The place is known worldwide. It's a piece of Manhattan. The problem is the economy."

Dell'Aguzzo believes the owners of Gino floated the notion of a buyer so workers would stay on for one last Christmas season before the inevitable closing.

The union and management have been fighting since October, when the workers' contract expired and they balked at a request to pay half their health insurance and pension in a new pact.

Dell'Aguzzo said he was told that because of the economy, the owners wanted to sell but couldn't because of the labor contract.

News that the restaurant is on its deathbed left longtime patrons distraught.

"There's a general sadness and disbelief; it's a great tragedy," said Allen Falcona, 77, a patron since 1957.
"It will have a huge effect upon a lot of customers, who come daily and sometimes twice a day."

I'm glad I took the time to have lunch there last week. Perhaps I will return before Thursday. I can't say. This is hard to take, and hard to believe. Is there any business in New York that New Yorkers truly care enough about to fight for? Or are we all just too defeated at this point.

Two Landmarks Breathe Free

For the longest time, the view of Le Veau d'Or and Gino's, two Upper East Side landmarks, has been obscured by a tangle of unsightly scaffolding which doubtless hurt their business.

But no more. At some point in the recent past the scaffolding came down. Now a blogger can take a clear, unadulterated photo of both old restaurants. It's particularly a treat to see Gino's yellow-and-green sign in all its glorious garishness. Jump, Zebras, jump! Be free!

Gino Makes a Change

Gino, the age-old red sauce joint on upper Lex, is one of those places that doesn't accept credit cards—even though a meal there will probably cost you $60.

But, perhaps feeling the pinch of the times, that has changes. The NY Post reports will begin Gino accepting credit cards.

"Times change," said co-owner Michael Miele. "You have to go forward. Especially the younger generation, they don't carry cash."

Then there's this priceless exchange:

Still, a sense of possibility hangs in the air. [Patron Michael] Barlerin turns to bartender Bruno Blazina.

"The next question I'm going to have is, 'When are you going to start serving [food] at the bar?' "

"That will never happen," responds Blazina.

"Credit cards were never going to happen, Bruno."