It’ll be a helluva long wait between courses at legendary Broadway institution Sardi’s this summer.
The iconic 99-year-old restaurant on West 44th Street — famed for its 1,200 celeb caricatures — is closing up shop for several months after Wednesday night’s service for much-needed renovations and other behind-the-scenes changes.
Its anticipated reopening is in late fall, just in time for its centennial.
So if you want to put in an order of cheese and crackers or a turkey club, or get a drink upstairs from my pal, bartender Jeremy Wagner, hie thee to Midtown pronto.
The break was set in motion by the recent retirement of longtime owner Max Klimavicius, who in March sold his eatery to the Shubert Organization, Broadway’s biggest landlord.
I’m asked a lot whether or not this change-up is a good thing. Well, that old carpet could certainly use a shampoo. But the sale is the best possible outcome.
All of us in New York know how frighteningly easy it is for our favorite spots to be here one day and gone the next. Regulars of Donohue’s on the Upper East Side felt that sting this week.
The Shuberts were already Sardi’s landlords — and frequent customers — and understand its importance to the theater and their business. They’ll be strong stewards of the establishment that just about every person who’s worked on Broadway over the last century has dined and drank in.
The restaurant has had its ups and downs, just as Times Square has. As early as 1946, a Post writer wrote, “With its glittering stars… Sardi’s holds more fascination for people from the hinterlands than real New Yorkers.” Nonetheless it stayed successful and upscale for many years. Men were expected to wear a coat and tie. In the 1950s and 60s, more than a few Post columnists made it their second office.
Then, Sardi’s steeply declined during the 1980s. It had a leaky roof and a pest problem and was getting bad reviews.
But under Klimavicius, the restaurant has rebounded. You can spot Broadway actors, producers, press agents and critics most nights at the upstairs bar. It’s tough to get a seat. A kind of glamor has returned.
You could feel it on opening night of Bernadette Peters’ run in “Hello, Dolly!” at the Shubert in 2018, when a red carpet was rolled across 44th Street just so she could grandly stroll into the afterparty… at Sardi’s.
Here are some delicious Sardi’s tales from the past 100 years.
When Prohibition ended in 1933, and New York got its first beer shipment, the restaurant’s booze supplies were “dwindling rapidly” because of their ravenous customers, the manager told The Post at the time. Lunch business was up by 50%.
One night in 1935 actor Sam Levene challenged Sardi’s first caricaturist, Alex Gard, to draw John Barrymore from memory — on the tablecloth. He did. And Levene bought it from the restaurant.
When a young Elaine Stritch was in the musical “Pal Joey” in 1952, she typically finished onstage at 10:20 p.m., and routinely arrived at Sardi’s by 10:30. She’d then go back to the theater for curtain call at 11.
A customer asked her, “What if you’re out with an attractive man at 11 p.m. Would you leave him to go back to the theater for the final curtain?” “Of course,” Stritch said. “I’ve never met a fellow who could keep me from a bow.”
Speaking of sultry NYC summers, in September 1954, Marilyn Monroe sat in Sardi’s wearing a mink coat given to her as a Christmas gift by her new husband Joe DiMaggio.
“They told me not to bring a mink coat to New York in the summertime,” Monroe told The Post at her table. “But I can always say I don’t know any better. It’s my first mink coat.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
