I found Mr. Charles reading a newspaper review of the Russian Tea Room. Old school restaurants of the tacky, kitschy variety rarely receive press but ever since the Tavern on the Green closed down, all eyes have been on the Russian Tea Room, the last remnant of the legacy of Warner LeRoy.
Surely you have seen the Tavern on the Green. Remember in Ghostbusters, when Rick Moranis runs up to the glass of a schmaltzy restaurant as he’s being chased by a ghoulish gargoyle dog? He screams and falls down and all the rich people stop momentarily, look over, and then return to their conversations. That’s the Tavern on the Green and it’s actually in Central Park. That is, it was until New Years when it closed its doors because it couldn’t pay the bills.
It was a big deal for New York. That ridiculous, outlandish relic of a bygone age was a real landmark in this city of cities and it’s closing came as a shock. The ooze of it’s glitzy “magnificence” was an embarrassment (my wife once mocked it’s faux-luxury as we walked by on a particularly pleasant summer stroll) but when it shuttered its doors, it was like losing an old friend. And New York said goodbye the best way it could- they sold every bit of that restaurant, piecemeal at an auction, every nut and bolt. Mr. Charles probably obtained the mirrored butterflies in the same manner, by picking over the corpse of Josephine Baker’s defunct Parisian nightclub.
Well, the same guy who ran the Tavern on the Green, ran the Russian Tea Room. Back in the day, this place was a wonderland of Eastern European and Russian glamour, all dazzling reds and gold. Wild intellectuals and ballet companies would drop in for parties. A radio interview show was broadcast regularly from one of the dining rooms. The place was on top. That was before old Warner LeRoy kicked the bucket a few years back.
Now there’s this review in the Post that is as bloodthirsty an evisceration as I have ever read in print. Here’s a few delicious, horrible tidbits from critic Steve Cuozzo.
“The RTR has been plagued by rude and/or moronic hostesses since the LeRoy days… A $38 Shashlik ‘tasting’ was evidently inspired by the shoe Khruschev pounded at the UN: skewered chicken, beef and lamb burnt to a uniform leather no street vendor could likely replicate.” He goes on. “Chicken Kiev ($38) contained mysterious hollow apparently meant for herbs that took the night off.” The herring is called “Supermarket-Grade.” The gravlax was called “mucilaginous.” The kitchen is said to be “beyond hope of rescue.” The headline reads “Just Say Nyet to Terrible Tea Room.”
To me, it seemed that as Mr. Charles read this review, he was looking into a sort of mirror and his reaction was interesting. “Well, it’s just a sort of oversized monstrosity now, an enormous white elephant. It’s bound to happen to every restaurant. People get bored and move on, especially now with the influx of cuisine with such refined tastes. Even the most loyal customers can be two-faced. People can be real mother-fuckers.”
This is the only time I’ve ever heard Mr. Charles use foul language.
“If you own a club or a restaurant, two years. Two years is all you have to make your money. We’ve been very lucky to have lines out the door for all these years but you know what they say. Nothing lasts forever.”
To me, Zemblanity is many things- comic, ludicrous, mysterious, cruel. But it’s difficult for me to imagine how Mr. Charles must feel about the restaurant that he has devoted over fifty-five years of his life to. It makes me think about how Walt Whitman wrote the same book, “Leaves of Grass,” over and over throughout his life. He just kept revising it and adding to it and putting out new editions of it. He thought of the book as if it were his body or his life. I imagine that when Mr. Charles considers Zemblanity, he must think of it as interwoven with his own life- his history, his memory, the lives and deaths of his best friends, the passing of time and question of mortality. Mr. Charles just turned 78. He must wonder what will happen to Zemblanity when he dies.
Yesterday, an old man was helped through the front door by his good looking, well dressed and (apparently) successful son. This old man was very feeble but seemed kind and cordially addressed Mr. Charles who returned the greeting. After I had seated the father and son, Mr. Charles came over and asked, “Do you know who that is?”
I did not.
“That fellow invented a board game for Milton Bradley called LIFE. Made a fortune on it too.”
I looked at that old fellow, chatting happily with his son and remembered playing that game as a kid. You’ve got your little plastic car and you eventually go to school (or just get a crappy job) and get married and then get kids, which are little pink and blue pegs that you stick into the car. You turn the multi-colored wheel of fortune (which is situated on the game board up inside a green mountain) and you try to make a ton of money so that you can retire in style. What a truly existential board game that was… like a proto-typical Sims.
And there’s the guy that thought it all up, sitting there at table 32 with his son and he seems pretty happy. Good for him. He shook my hand on the way out and thanked Mr. Charles and me for our hospitality.
Later, during that same shift, Miss Annette started coughing and coughing. It was the horrible, gut-wrenching, emphysemic, bellowing sort of cough that breaks the ribs of old people. “God,” she sighed after regaining her breath.
“I don’t think I’m long for this world.”
