The crowds began to thin out, and by the mid-'80s, when I got there, Elaine's was pretty much over. "The once queen of New York's glitterati has practically slipped out of sight," announced one of the local tabloids at the time.
It would be years before things started to look up again. In July of 1992, the Democratic party held its presidential convention in New York, and the event marked the comeback Elaine had been waiting for. In the years just prior, the restaurant had slowly begun to show some life. Young editors from New York and Rolling Stone started frequenting the bar, and writers from The New York Post and the Daily News followed. It wasn't quite the illustrious club it had been in the '60s, but it appeared that history might repeat itself.
The week of the convention, Elaine's was full of journalists of every stripe, and celebrity boosters jammed the tables. I can remember the humid night Bill Clinton was nominated as the party's candidate. The city had decided to repave Second Avenue, and even though limousines and taxis had to drop the patrons off blocks away, the joint was completely packed. At one point I looked out the window as a large yellow machine with flashing lights crawled past, spreading new tar on the road. Steam rose from the street and men in yellow vulcanized suits with hoods and goggles walked alongside the hulking mass in a scene straight out of The Terminator. As I watched, a large, muscular man emerged from the vapors and approached the door. Sure enough, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, coming to join the revelers. I remember thinking then that the Terminator and Elaine—who was sitting at Table 4, surrounded by power brokers and the press—had at least one thing in common: Neither of them can be killed.
Today Elaine's is back on top, with the phone ringing off the hook and tables as hard to get as they were back in the glory days. The funny thing is, for all the hype surrounding the place, Elaine still runs it like a corner candy store. When I stopped by to visit on a recent afternoon, everything was just as I'd remembered it. The old National register sat on the back bar, where that night the cashier would record every check by hand, and Elaine sat perched on a stool in her gaudy dress and sparkly shoes, her short legs dangling inches from the floor.
And as sunlight coursed through the windows, bathing the Spanish-tile floor and the frescoed walls lined with the books of her famous clientele, I thought about the days when she'd sit there and meet her purveyors one by one. The hippie vegetable man, the butcher with a leg of veal slung over his shoulder, the fishmonger, the dessert lady—as each one approached, she would push her thick-rimmed glasses to her forehead and lower her freckle-flecked face to scrutinize their wares. Then she'd dip her hand into the black pocketbook she kept on the stool beside her and pull out a wad of bills. "All I ever wanted," she told me that afternoon, "was to run a nice little restaurant."
Elaine's
1703 Second Avenue
New York, New York
212-534-8103
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