[Urban planner and community activist] Jane Jacobs wrote a great book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities, where she talked about Robert Moses. And one of the things she talked about was the world of a tenement in New York, where you had shops on the street and apartments on the second level. You literally had eyes on the street, people who were looking at the kids who made trouble, and people always managed to say C’mon, what are you doing? But when people move to these projects you have no eyes on the street. It’s an empty environment.
NM: Your restaurant hasn’t really changed much at all, in all these years.
FM: It’s a design from 1949. This table is original. The Formica on the counters. What I added was the banquette, the mirror in back of the light. But the mirror on this wall was added during the shooting of a film; they asked if I wanted them to take it down, to bring it back to the original. And I said no.
See that map over there? It’s the map of Liechtenstein, in memoriam of Roy Lichtenstein. Only a few people know that. He used to come every day, and he sat in this booth, during the week for lunch, with a crew. I miss him.
NM: What do you think about for the future? Will you go on like this forever?
FM: We’re trying to work on a book. I hope it works out. The menu itself we’ve hardly changed. It’s huge, one of the largest menus. The difficulty to add something is that you have to subtract something; so we struggled. We looked at the numbers and said we’ll subtract the lentil salad. Then so many people said to me, “I love the lentil salad.” So… I can’t do it. I can’t add anything more.
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