To the pretty young Gen Z things of New York, who live in downtown Manhattan, 1057 Lexington Avenue is Herrera’s, a glamorous pop-up bistro masterminded by Carolina Herrera’s creative director Wes Gordon to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the fashion house. To millennials, 1057 Lexington Avenue is Orsay, an Upper East Side French restaurant they dine at after a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Botero exhibit at Sotheby’s.
But the elegant grande dames of New York—those around when old-money socialites made up the Met Gala guest list and Truman Capote’s swans dominated the gossip columns—recall it as someplace else entirely. A fabulous woman with a bob, a diamond bracelet, and a six- strand pearl necklace asked her friends on Monday night, as Gordon threw a party after his runway show at Lincoln Center, “You remember this when it was Mortimer’s, don’t you?”
In terms of New York’s uptown lore, no restaurant is more revered—except for perhaps La Cote Basque—than Mortimer’s, the see-and-be-seen restaurant that defined uptown culture during the 1970s and 1980s. Opening in 1976, the polished mirror-lined room only held 19 tables: turning it into a de facto private club where cool mattered more than cash. Its location certainly helped, a mere walk for the millionaires and billionaires who owned townhouses between Madison and Fifth or penthouses on Park Avenue.
Lee Radziwell attends Swifty Lazar Party for Billy Wilder on May 6, 1982 at Mortimer’s.
Ron Galella/Getty Images
The owner, Glenn Bernbaum, fastidiously organized the seating arrangements: well-known regulars got the tables along the walls, whereas up-and-comers were seated at tables down the middle. “A food critic dining anonymously at Mortimer’s once described the welcome accorded walk-ins as a greeting normally given to bill collectors,” wrote the New York Times of the restaurant. To be fair, no one really went to Mortimer’s for the food. “The professional dieters in the crowd often make a meal out of an appetizer selection, asparagus vinaigrette, say, or tomatoes basil, cucumber and dill salad and mushrooms with fines herbes,” read a 1980 account of Mortimer’s in The Daily News.
Instead, it was about vibes. Regulars included Henry Kissinger, Oscar de la Renta, and Brooke Astor—the latter of two threw a buzzy dinner for Renata Adler’s made-for-television movie “Reckless Disregard”. Bill Paley (CBS Chairman and husband of Babe Paley) often dined there with his daughter Kate (the step-aunt of Belle Burden, the New York Times best-selling author of Strangers.) Farrah Fawcett dined there with Ryan O’Neal and Valentino Garavani. Andy Warhol, meanwhile, attended Basquiat’s 25th birthday there. (It was a popular celebratory haunt: Bianca Jagger also threw a birthday party at Mortimer’s in 1981.)
