Eating Away at Quintessential New York

Is it only in New York that restaurants and restaurateurs get obituaries?  When Gino A. Circiello, died in December of 2001, his obituary in the New York Times (18-column inches not including the two-column wide photograph) included a quote from a 1974 review of his restaurant by John Canaday.  After advancing the theory that in New York restaurants “food is secondary to experience,” he wrote of Gino:  “If I could pick a single one as the quintessential New York restaurant, it would have to be Gino’s.” On May 18, the New York Times ran an “obituary” for Gino the restaurant.  It closes for good a week from today, Saturday May 29^th.

Gino, on Lexington Avenue a block north and across the street from Bloomingdale’s, has been around for over 60 years—making it a older than our Landmarks Law.  Perhaps some of the early advocates for the law ate there.  Certainly in the last two decades much preservation business has been done at its tables.  Surrounded by its “background of leaping zebras on tomato-red wallpaper” architects, actors, lawyers, politicians, elected officials, preservationists, philanthropists, ladies who lunch, businessmen who drink their lunch, and known and unknown celebrities have feasted on its pasta trying to identify the ingredients in its secreto saunce.

While the New York Times was eulogizing Gino, The New York Observer focused on the demise of another New York eatery, the Empire Diner.  Younger than Gino—only 34—the Empire Diner was still old enough to be a New York City Landmark.  Whether it be high rents, labor costs, generational changes, or a host of other factors, New York’s core of historic restaurants continues to decline. On the East Side Gino follows the loss of Madame Romaine’s (who can forget those omelet’s?), the Right Bank (after over 40 years in business) and further up the Avenue, the Madison Pub.  More widely lamented losses include Luchow’s,  after a worthy preservation effort led by Jack Taylor, Mamma Leone’s (at 90 plus years of age) and the Coach House in Greenwich Village (after 40 plus years).  Add your favorite lost restaurant to this emerging necrology.

With most New York City restaurants coming and going as quickly as fashions change, when a restaurant survives for multiple decades it really becomes a cherished piece of the neighborhood, and in cases like Gino, of the larger city. Restaurants are another thread in the fabric of our city that contribute to its quality of life.  As when any thread in a fabric is lost, the garment becomes weaker. New York is lucky to have a Landmarks Law and a level of preservation activism that has preserved many of these different types of threads but alas not historic restaurants.

Is there anything to do but lament the passing of these historic restaurants? Our landmarks law does not protect use.  As much as Gino’s zebras are beloved, that interior is a far cry from the landmark-protected interior of the Four Seasons (designated on October 3, 1989).  Cultural value certainly counts in the landmark arena but if that line of reasoning wasn’t persuasive enough to save Luchow’s it hardly provides a rallying cry for the likes of Gino.  Even if use could be designated (and don’t read this as a trial balloon for such a notion) the hardship provision of the law might produce the same outcomes we are witnessing today.  As we think about the things in the city that we love but still have no real tools to protect, historic restaurants are high on that list.  Perhaps a future generation of preservationists will figure it out.

For the present, if such urban treasures are to have a future, the answer is likely to lie in some creative entrepreneurial thinking. There are examples in small communities where citizens have pooled resources to buy and keep operative such institutions as a beloved local hardware store.  Is there some form of ownership that would allow the many who value the “other bottom line” of such businesses—the social contribution they make to the lifeblood of the city—to pool their resources to save them? Where is that socially conscious, brilliantly creative, MBA when you need them?

The lovers of Gino have a few more days to try and uncover the secret of its secreto saunce.  Preservationists will need much longer to uncover the the secret of saving such places.

To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart as he says good bye to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, at least for some of us,  “We’ll always have Gino.”