Bet you a pound of Beluga caviar you can`t name the most exclusive and most fashionable restaurant in the entire world.
No, it`s not Maxim`s in Paris. If the cash is at hand, they will accept befezzed Shriners in full toot. Neither is it New York`s gauchely grand Four Seasons, though the prices there run to figures only Washington budget analysts and Manhattan real estate mega-moguls can comprehend.
And it`s certainly not the Bistro in Beverly Hills, where one runs into raffish movie folk like Rosemary Stack and Nancy Reagan. It`s not even that super-chic private gourmet dining club in Chicago, Les Nomades. People who go there actually care what`s on their plate.
No, the most exclusive and most fashionable restaurant in the entire world is a small cafe with cramped tables and simple wooden chairs. Its menu runs to crab cakes, chicken livers, hamburgers, grilled sardines, eggs and meat loaf. The prices for the entrees range from $10 to $16.50 or so–hardly more than you`d pay for a twist of lemon in a martini at the Plaza.
Its name is Mortimer`s, it`s on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 75th and Lexington and the only place more exclusive in the world has to be Greta Garbo`s boudoir.
Why is it so exclusive? For the only reason that ever, ever counts. It`s because of who goes there.
FIT FOR A PRINCESS
Mortimer`s is where, on a given day, you might find both Jackie O. and Christina O.–definitely not dining a deux, perhaps even flicking crab at each other–but there! You might also find, in descending order, Monaco`s Princess Caroline, Britain`s Princess Margaret and Jackie O.`s sister, Princess Radziwell.
Lipstick czarina Estee Lauder, the dreadfully fashionable First Friend Jerry Zipkin and the glorious Gloria Vanderbilt can be found there, as can Claus von Bulow, Henry and Nancy Kissinger, designers Bill Blass and Caroline Herrera, horse and garden trowel woman C.Z. Guest, acting legend Claudette Colbert, acting non-legend George Hamilton and the three women who run New York society–and thus the world–Brooke Astor, Annette Reed and Patricia
(Mrs. William F.) Buckley.
Why do they go to Mortimer`s? It`s extremely handy to their pieds-a-terre. The cheap, simple American fare is a welcome relief and antidote to the gobs of haute cuisine these swells have to pack away in their endless social lives. But most of all, they know that when they go to Mortimer`s, they will find Their Kind, and not The Other Kind–i.e., us.
NO RESERVATIONS
The system is very simple. Mortimer`s does not take reservations. You just come and take whatever table is available. You may arrive, see 50 empty tables and discover that none is available. Jackie O. will arrive and, though the place is jam-packed, a table will instantly become available. But that
–until the next revolution–is how the haut monde works.
Well, I`ve had some social triumphs in my day. I was once mistakenly put in a receiving line of Scandinavian royalty at a black-tie Washington gala (I just shook hands and nodded).
But nothing compares with the recent night when I actually got a table at Mortimer`s!
I plotted this shrewdly. I put on my best Claus von Bulow Monte Carlo mountebank duds. I thought of bringing my friend the Countess Barat, the most stylish woman I know in New York and the kind of woman Claus likes to sport, but countesses are a C-note a dozen at Mortimer`s.
So instead I brought my smashing friend Margaret the Smith Girl–who has 23 summers to my 47 and thus, I thought, would intrigue them. We got there early in the evening, when Jackie O. and the crowd would still be at some Peruvian flute concert. We looked nonchalant. We also stationed ourselves in front of the door so no one else could get in until we were seated. We stood there earnestly chatting for what seemed a week, but finally the maitre d`
came up and, following long and painful thought and several suspicious glances (is he Our Kind of mountebank?), took us to one of the 50 or more empty tables. We`d done it! We`d been seated at Mortimer`s!
Afterward, I was asked who I saw there–Jackie O., Claus, Princess Caroline? I had to confess that the table we were given was the little one back by the kitchen and we saw only waiters and busboys, though a chic lot they were.
So do visit Mortimer`s when next you`re in New York. Bring your Instamatic and autograph book. Ask what is Jackie O.`s next feeding time. Tell your friends about Mort`s, especially those from Mattoon and Wilkes-Barre. Such marvelous places shouldn`t be a secret. —
