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      Guy Fieri, Elder Statesman of Flavortown

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      MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Guy Fieri looks as if he has prepared his whole life to be a middle-aged rock star.He has grays in the famous goatee now, a faint tan line beneath his chain necklace and a pair of hulking middle-finger rings that do not slow his incorrigible fist-bumping. He talks about the higher purpose of his “namaste” tattoo, and feigns outrage when no one recognizes his Dean Martin references. He revels, still, in conspicuous consumption, double-fisting naan and tandoori chicken during a recent television shoot here at a strip-mall Indian restaurant tucked between a nail salon and a wax center.“I want to chug the chutney!” Mr. Fieri said, daring someone to stop him. “One little bump.”It was 9:33 a.m.But somewhere on a rickety highway near the Jersey Shore that afternoon — past the Jon Bon Jovi restaurant he said he needs to come back and visit; beyond a seaside bar called the Chubby Pickle, where he congratulated himself for not making any R-rated puns, before making several — Mr. Fieri caught himself in a reflective mood.In the 15 years since he began “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” his Food Network flagship, Mr. Fieri, 54, has become perhaps the most powerful and bankable figure in food television, the éminence grise of the eminently greasy. And by dint of that show’s success — and Mr. Fieri’s runaway celebrity, and that golden porcupine of hair, and maybe that one review of his Times Square restaurant a while back — certain perceptions have attached to him through the years, perpetuating the caricature he still often seems eager to play.He would like a word about all that.“If you only hear Metallica as a heavy-metal band, then you are not hearing Metallica,” Mr. Fieri said, riding shotgun after a day of filming and charity work. “Now maybe you don’t like that style. But they’re real musicians.”Mr. Fieri’s red Camaro is a signature emblem of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” his flagship Food Network show.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesFor nearly two decades, since before he mailed a reality-show audition tape to the network, Mr. Fieri has plainly believed he was a real musician, contributing worthy entries to the canon.What is striking now, long after the parody seemed to congeal, is that the wider food community stands ready to believe him.Mr. Fieri has emerged as one of the most influential food philanthropists of the Covid age, helping to raise more than $20 million for restaurant workers. He has established himself as an industry mentor among chefs who may or may not admire his cooking but recognize his gifts as a messenger, which have boosted business for the hundreds of restaurants featured on his show. He has won the blessing of the white-tablecloth set through sheer force of charisma and relentlessness, coaxing a reconsideration of how the food establishment treated him in the first place.“I don’t think he had the respect of people like me or people in the food industry,” said Traci Des Jardins, an acclaimed Bay Area chef who has become a friend. “He has earned that respect.”“An amazing individual,” said the philanthropic chef José Andrés, recalling how Mr. Fieri churned out plates of turkey for wildfire evacuees in 2018.At a recent shoot for “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” at Moo Yai Thai in Sea Bright, N.J.Timothy O’Connell for The New York Times“Whether he likes it or not,” said Andrew Zimmern, a fellow food-television veteran, “he has become an elder statesman.”In that case, Mr. Fieri said, he looks forward to the initiation ceremony.“Don’t you think there should be some kind of a cloak?” he asked, imagining luminaries fitting him for a tweed jacket with elbow pads over his tattoos. But, he added, “I guess I’m kind of becoming one of the guys now.”His point, as ever, was that people are complicated, including Guy Fieri, professional uncomplicated person. Maybe especially Guy Fieri, whose very surname (it is “fee-ED-ee,” he reminds audiences, nodding at his Italian roots) demands fussiness from a man who says things like “flavor jets, activate!” for a living.He is at once sensitive to the exaggerated persona he has embraced, challenging a reporter to name the last time his show recommended a hamburger, and acutely aware of his own ridiculousness. He calls himself semi-chunky as a matter of branding (“body by dumpling,” he said) but is actually quite trim in person, singing the praises of vegan food.The young, pregoatee Mr. Fieri showed an entrepreneurial instinct, selling pretzels from a cart in Ferndale, Calif.Courtesy of Guy FieriHe is a son of Northern California hippies, with superfans across MAGA nation and what can seem like a bespoke set of personal politics, often using his platform to tell stories celebrating immigrants while lamenting what he sees as the country’s overreliance on welfare programs.He can pass hours, by land or fishing boat, reflecting on life and family with a close friend, Rob Van Winkle, whom Mr. Fieri addresses as Ninja and most others know as Vanilla Ice.“Some of us never grow up,” said Mr. Van Winkle, who attributed Mr. Fieri’s nickname for him to his rap in the 1991 “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” sequel, adding that he has been renovating the chef’s new home in Palm Beach County, Fla., a short drive from his own. “When Guy and I are together, we’re like the oldest teenagers in town.”The tonal whiplash in Mr. Fieri’s company can be dizzying. He compares himself in one breath to Happy Gilmore, Adam Sandler’s rampaging golf star of the 1990s (“He’s a hockey player that makes money playing golf, and I’m a cook that makes money doing television”) and speaks in the next of his “fiduciary responsibility” to continue showcasing local restaurants.Rob Van Winkle, better known as Vanilla Ice, has become a close friend. Courtesy of Food NetworkHe can edge toward profundity discussing the America he sees in his travels — comparing it to an overstuffed washing machine, clanking through its burdens — before defaulting to pablum about a national shortage of hugs.He has learned that moderation has its place, he suggests, but only in moderation — a principle best expressed, perhaps inevitably, through the Tao of Lars Ulrich, the Metallica drummer.Mr. Fieri was filming at the Chubby Pickle, in Highlands, N.J., when a chef preparing pork tacos seemed to skimp on the salsa. Mr. Fieri objected.When Metallica cuts an album, he asked, doesn’t the band go heavy on the high-hat? Don’t they give the people what they want?“You get as much Lars,” Mr. Fieri said, “as Lars wants to give you.”Riding the ‘Fame Rocket’The red bowling shirt was probably a giveaway.But for the first 25 seconds of his 2005 audition reel for “The Next Food Network Star,” Mr. Fieri presented himself as a proper snob. He welcomed viewers to Sonoma County and pledged to prepare a dish “not in fusion but in con-fusion” — a Gorgonzola tofu sausage terrine over a “mildly poached” ostrich egg, with Grape-Nuts (this was wine country, after all) and pickled herring mousse.Mr. Fieri as he won “The Next Food Network Star” competition in 2006 — a victory that propelled him to fame. At right is the chef Emeril Lagasse.Courtesy of Food NetworkMr. Fieri shivered at his own faux brilliance. He clasped his hands and stared, as if waiting for his audience to agree. And then: “Ha, ha, haaa. No, seriously, folks, real food for real people. That’s the idea.”Mr. Fieri proceeded to make something he calls the jackass roll — rice, pork butt, fries and avocado — so named, he said, because a friend told him he looked like a jackass preparing it. He described his parents’ macrobiotic diet in his youth, saddling him with “enough bulgur and steamed fish to kill a kid” and leaving him no choice but to cook up alternatives.He ticked through his well-curated biography — a year studying in France; a hospitality degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; a stab at his own casual restaurants back in California — with such conviction that it almost made sense watching a man lay fries and barbecue over sushi rice.Revisiting the video, what stands out is how fully formed Mr. Fieri’s public image was before a single television producer could think to meddle.His hairstylist friend gave him the bleached spikes on a lark one day, and they stuck. His buddies knew his talents for table-to-table rat-a-tat, and urged him to make a tape. The ethos was effectively airlifted to “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” shortly after he won the next-food-star competition, and has never much changed.Mr. Fieri, appearing here with Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” was quick to embrace mainstream celebrity.NBC Photo / Paul Drinkwater“It’s been super-hard to rip off, and I’ve tried numerous times,” said Jordan Harman, who helped develop the show in 2007 and is now at A+E Networks. “You can redo the same beats, the same kind of places, the same kind of food. But there’s a magic that he brings that is really not replicable.”Mr. Fieri took to fame quickly, hustling as though the window might be brief. He appeared at local fairs and casino shows that seemed beneath him (Mr. Harman thought), because they invited him. He autographed spatulas and bell peppers because fans asked him to. He toured the country in a flame-painted bus stocked with Pabst Blue Ribbon because what better way to travel? He wore sunglasses on the back of his head because sure, why not?Friends say Mr. Fieri expanded his empire with almost clinical resolve, tending to a portfolio that came to include books, knives, a winery, a line of tequilas and several shows. Today, his name graces dozens of restaurants across six countries and more than a few cruise ships.“This guy don’t sit down,” said Mr. Van Winkle, who traced their friendship to a chance encounter years ago at an airport Starbucks in Charlotte, N.C. “I don’t sit down a lot, too, and I look at him and go, ‘Bro, you don’t sit down.’ ”Mr. Fieri remarked in 2010 that his “fame rocket” would shoot skyward for only so long, reasoning that he must “do what I can for the program while it lasts.” (By “the program,” he meant his wife, Lori, and two sons in Santa Rosa, Calif., along with his parents and a cast of tag-along pals with names like Gorilla and Dirty P.)Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, a 500-seat restaurant in Times Square that opened in 2012 and closed five years later.Casey Kelbaugh for The New York TimesHis Times Square restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, can feel in hindsight like an exercise in overextension, an assumption of manifest destiny powered by swagger and a signature Donkey Sauce.“Like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m going to do this, and it’s just going to be another big success for me,’” said Mr. Zimmern, summarizing Mr. Fieri’s confidence. “But you need to make sure that the food is absolutely perfect.”It was not.And that blazing New York Times review in 2012 (“Guy Fieri, have you eaten at your new restaurant?”) dovetailed with an already-rolling sendup of Mr. Fieri across the culture. He was skewered on “Saturday Night Live,” preparing Thanksgiving “turducken-rab-pig-cow-cow-horse-nish-game-hen” fried in Jägermeister. His likeness became fodder for undercooked Halloween costumes nationwide.He was invited to a Manhattan roast of Anthony Bourdain, a frequent antagonist who once said that Mr. Fieri appeared “designed by committee,” and often took more incoming than the honoree.“The guy who just dropped a 500-seat deuce into Times Square,” Mr. Bourdain called him. (The restaurant closed in 2017.)Lee Brian Schrager, the founder of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, remembered the evening as “the single most uncomfortable night of my life” — and, looking back, a snapshot of a distant time.“He went through the war,” Mr. Schrager said of Mr. Fieri. “He won.”New Context, Same ShtickSo, has he changed, or have we?Mr. Fieri appraises himself now as “a little more mellow, a little more methodical” — and maybe a little likelier to prize mentorship of the next class of television chef, including his son Hunter, over his own celebrity.Mr. Fieri, filming at the Chubby Pickle in Highlands, N.J., often shoots at several restaurants in the same day. Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesThe moment has likewise tilted his way, at a time when there can seem to be less cultural currency in sarcastic detachment. “Can someone please explain to me what the hell Guy Fieri ever did to anyone?” the comedian Shane Torres asked, earnestly, in a 2017 routine. “As far as I can tell, all he ever did was follow his dreams.”It has helped that Mr. Fieri is well suited to the modern internet, a TikTok regular and walking meme who generates headlines that can register as Onion-ish absent close inspection.“Is Guy Fieri to blame for Dogecoin’s latest record high?” Fortune wondered last May.“Amid Ukraine-Russia war,” read a Fox News web piece in March, “Guy Fieri’s new season of ‘Tournament of Champions III’ provides comfort, unity.”Yet the likeliest explanation for his durability, for his heightened esteem among some peers, is deceptively simple.“He seeks to understand rather than be understood,” Mr. Zimmern said, “which I think is as high a compliment as I can give.”For all the tropes and totems on “Diners” — the loud shirts and little hoop earrings; the adult baby talk (“me likey wingy”); the red Camaro whose driver-side door he opens and shuts at every stop for the cameras, without necessarily hopping inside — he is, at core, hosting a travel show.Working the selfie circuit at a recent charity event for New Jersey veterans.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesViewers see a culinary backpacker cosplaying as the ugly American, a man always seeking, even if all roads lead to ambient comfort. The episodes blur, their locations at once distinctive and indistinguishable. California and Wyoming and Maine do not seem so far apart.“He goes to all these diners, drive-ins and dives,” said one fan, Jim McGinnis, 77, explaining the show’s appeal as Mr. Fieri administered handshakes and how-ya-doing-brothers at a charity event for New Jersey veterans. “It’s just a pleasure.”It helps that no one wrings more theater from the preordained: Mr. Fieri arrives at a chosen spot. He seems excited. He riffs, a little uncomfortably, to make the jittery proprietors more comfortable. (The stop at the Indian restaurant, Haldi Chowk in Middletown Township, N.J., included nods to “Wheel of Fortune,” “Forrest Gump” and “My Cousin Vinny,” with a brief meditation on the differences between I.T., iced tea and Ice-T for reasons that eluded the room.)Eventually, a chef has walked Mr. Fieri through the preparation of a favored dish. The host takes a bite — in this scene, it is the tandoori chicken — and shifts his weight a bit. He stands back, silent. His eyes dart mischievously, as if he has just gotten away with something. He wanders off, pretending to collect himself. The chef smiles. The big reveal only ever goes one way.“Not good, chef. Not good at all,” Mr. Fieri says, the oldest left turn in the TV judge’s manual. “Fantastic.”Rachael Ray, a friend whom Mr. Fieri cites as an influence, compared his people skills to a game of tag: You will like him. Denying as much midpursuit only wastes everyone’s time. “He just keeps chasing you,” she said.Mr. Zimmern described him as a politician, “always talking to his base,” forever the person he told them he was.Mr. Fieri tends to be a generous reviewer, typically doling out on-camera raves.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesAnd if Mr. Fieri has carefully avoided the public politics of some Trump-denouncing peers, a day on the road with him during filming can feel something like a campaign swing before the Iowa caucuses: an hour in each ZIP code, a quick check with an aide to make sure he knows what town he’s in, an inveterate fondness for name-dropping.“I learned this from Henry Winkler, one of my heroes …”“My buddy, Sammy Hagar, who’s my business partner …”That Mr. Fieri does not appear to have an off switch is consistent with the public record. Several friends compared him, warmly enough, to some natural disaster or another. “Hurricane Guy,” Mr. Harman said.Reminded of his 2010 line about capitalizing before his “fame rocket” crashed to earth, Mr. Fieri insisted he still viewed his celebrity horizon as finite.“There will be a time when the light doesn’t shine as bright on the golden locks,” he said. “Which is cool.”He was not entirely convincing on either score. But until that day comes, he suggested, he would keep up appearances, with one exception.“Everybody’s like, ‘You bleach your hair. Why don’t you dye your goatee?’ ” he said, rubbing at his grays. “I’m like, ‘You know what? Enough.’ ”He smirked a little, raising his head in concession to the moneymaker atop it.“This, I got stuck with,” he said. “This kind of happened.”Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      Nashvile 2022 Visitors’ Guide

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      With the opening of a big African American music museum, new retro bowling halls and a ramped-up food scene, Nashville just kept on growing over the last two years. A visitors’ guide.As the weather warms, travelers anxious to get back to honky-tonkin’ in Nashville can expect not only to find things much as they were prepandemic — Tootsies Orchid Lounge, Legends Corner and Robert’s Western World are still cranking out boisterous fun along Lower Broadway — but also a vertiginous number of new restaurants, hotels and music venues. They will also find one of the most impactful music museums to open anywhere in decades: the National Museum of African American Music.There were losses, of course, such as the closing of Douglas Corner, the well-known music venue, and Rotier’s Restaurant, but venerated country music draws like the Ryman Auditorium, the Grand Ole Opry House and the small-but-mighty singer/songwriter venue, The Bluebird Cafe, made it through, as did most Nashville restaurants.Indeed, according to the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. (NCVC) the city added a staggering 197 new restaurants, bars and coffee shops; a couple of jazzy retro bowling alleys; and 23 hotels in 2020 and 2021.“I think we are one of the very few destinations that kept building while everything was shut down,” said Deana Ivey, the president of the NCVC. “We have more music, more restaurants, more hotels and a growing arts and fashion scene. If the early numbers we’ve received for March are correct, then March will be the best month in the city’s history.” As an indicator, she said, the preliminary number for hotel rooms sold in March 2022 was 7.6 percent higher than March 2019.Currently, according to the NCVC, vaccination and masking requirements are being left up to businesses, and a number of music venues are requiring proof of a negative Covid-19 test, so visitors should contact those venues directly.From left, James Lee Jr., his sons Cy and Brooks, and Mr. Lee’s wife, Asha, listen to music at one of the hands-on exhibits at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville.William DeShazer for The New York TimesCulture and revelryNashville’s newest cultural gem, the National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM), opened last year at the long-planned 5th + Broadway, a complex of restaurants, shops, offices and residential space across the street from the Ryman Auditorium. The museum aims to tell the comprehensive story of African American music’s influence on American culture. Museum designers have done a noteworthy job of laying out the intersectionality of varying genres in the 56,000-square-foot facility where videos of musicians are in constant rotation.Numerous artifacts on display include B.B. King’s guitar “Lucille,” George Clinton’s wig and robe, and a microphone used by Billie Holiday. Storytelling is partitioned into six main rooms, five dedicated to specific genres, including R&B, hip-hop, gospel, jazz and blues, with rock ’n’ roll mingled throughout. The main gallery, Rivers of Rhythm, ties it all together within the context of American history. The museum also informs visitors that Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard and Etta James all spent time singing and playing in Nashville.Nashville has two new venues — Brooklyn Bowl Nashville (above) and Eastside Bowl — that combine bowling with live music and a restaurant-bar scene.William DeShazer for The New York TimesIn the revelry lane, Nashville now has two venues with a common theme, Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, in the Germantown neighborhood, and Eastside Bowl, in Madison. Both claim a stylish 1970s décor and vibe that combine bowling with a restaurant/bar/music experience. The music venue at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, based on the original Brooklyn Bowl in, well, Brooklyn, seats 1,200. Jimmy Fallon hopped onstage in February to join the local Grateful Dead cover band The Stolen Faces, and Grand Ole Opry’s new inductee, Lauren Alaina, recently played; Neko Case is scheduled for August.Over in Madison, Eastside Bowl, which seats 750, is also bringing in respected talent. The singer-songwriter Joshua Hedley performed in April, and the Steepwater Band rockers are scheduled for May. Eastside Bowl has regular bowling and “HyperBowling,” a cross between pinball and bowling with a reactive bumper used to navigate the ball. The food includes the much-missed shepherd’s pie from the Family Wash, an Eastside institution that closed in 2018.The French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten developed the concept for the new restaurant Druisie & Darr at the recently renovated Hermitage Hotel.William DeShazer for The New York TimesEat and sleepNashville fans coming back to the city for the first time in two years will find a food scene still ramping up at breakneck speed with the chef and founder of Husk, Sean Brock, doing some heavy lifting. In 2020, he opened Joyland, a burgers and fried chicken joint, and, on the other end of the spectrum, the Continental, an old-school, fine-dining restaurant in the new Grand Hyatt Nashville. Recent dishes there included tilefish with crispy potatoes, leeks and watercress, and an unforgettable whipped rice pudding with lemon dulce de leche and rice cream enveloped in a sweet crisp. Last fall, Mr. Brock launched his flagship restaurant, Audrey, in East Nashville, which centers on his Appalachian roots; upstairs his high-concept restaurant, June, is where he hosts “The Nashville Sessions,” which highlight tasting menus created by notable chefs.Other renowned chefs are finding a place in Nashville. The French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten developed the concept for the new restaurant Druisie & Darr at the recently renovated Hermitage Hotel, and the James Beard Award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini has brought in Music City outposts of New York’s The Dutch and Carne Mare, both at the newly installed hotel W Nashville in the Gulch neighborhood. Others are adding on; RJ Cooper, also a James Beard winner, launched Acqua, next door to his swanky Saint Stephen in Germantown last month.A Nashville favorite, the Elliston Place Soda Shop, is back on the scene after recently relocating.William DeShazer for The New York TimesA slice of coconut meringue pie at Elliston Place Soda Shop.William DeShazer for The New York TimesFor both locals and travelers, the opening of a second Pancake Pantry downtown is relieving fans of having to wait in line at the Hillsboro Village location for the shop’s made-from-scratch flapjacks (their heavenly sweet potato pancakes with cinnamon-cream syrup come to mind). Similarly, the much-applauded Arnold’s Country Kitchen on 8th Avenue South now has a night and weekend schedule to accommodate the usual crush of meat-and-three fans. Cheering things up on the West End Corridor is the historic and colorful Elliston Place Soda Shop, back after relocating to 2105 Elliston Place. The ice-cream shop had been in operation for over 80 years right next door, and now has a polished-up menu, a full bar and, you guessed it, a stage for live music.Certainly, there won’t be a dearth of accommodations for visitors any time soon. The city added 4,248 hotel rooms over the last two years. The 130-room, hipster-forward Moxy Nashville Vanderbilt is the first hotel ever to open in cozy Hillsboro Village, and the massive new luxury monolith, the Grand Hyatt Nashville, downtown has one of the highest rooftop bars in the city, along with seven restaurants.Travel Trends That Will Define 2022Card 1 of 7Looking ahead. More

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      Booze, Biscuits and Bands: Musical Brunch Is Back in New York

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      Here are six brunches that, after a long pandemic pause, are entertaining and feeding weekend crowds in Manhattan and the Hudson Valley.The room was packed with tipsy party people when the drag queen Ginger Snap suddenly grabbed my wrist and planted my hand on her right falsy — and with exhilarated eyes gave me a look that passionately purred: Brunch is back, girl.That’s how I kicked off an afternoon at Broadway Drag Brunch, one of several live-entertainment brunches that, after a long pause caused by coronavirus restrictions, are feeding music-loving and hungry patrons in New York, where brunch is church.Some of these brunches are like intimate concerts with music as an atmospheric backdrop. At others, the star of the show is the show itself — with performers encouraging hands-in-the-air singalongs and servers nudging you to order pitchers of bottomless cocktails to drink with the prix fixe omelets and pancakes. The music ranges from boy-band ballads to chill jazz and lonesome bluegrass, and the locations include a below-ground club and an idyllic waterfront.Here are six weekend musical brunches that — barring coronavirus restrictions — will quench your thirst for tunes and toe-tapping to go with your booze and biscuits.Christopher Brasfield is part of a rotating cast that performs as the flirty Boy Band Project.Hunter Abrams for The New York TimesBoys Are the BandSweet seduction is on the menu at Boy Band Brunch, held every other Sunday afternoon at one of New York’s new kids on the block: Chelsea Table + Stage, a performance venue that opened in September inside the Hilton New York Fashion District hotel. It stars the Boy Band Project, a flirty quartet with members who belt, dance, thrust their pelvises and sing the “Please don’t go, girl” musical repertoires of ’NSync, Boyz II Men and other crush-inducing boy bands of the 1990s and 2000s.The cast rotates, but at a recent performance, the bandmates were played by Chris Messina (the sporty one), Sam Harvey (the not-that-bad boy), Christopher Brasfield (the boy next door) and Nic Metcalf (the sensitive one). The tables were filled with mostly millennials and Gen Xers brunching on smoked salmon avocado toast and singing along with every lyric, as if Justin Timberlake himself were on one knee pleading for their affections.If the vibe feels like Backstreet Boys meets Broadway, it’s no wonder: The Boy Band Project was created by Travis Nesbitt, a former cast member of “Altar Boyz,” a musical satire of a Christian boy band that had a hit Off Broadway run in the 2000s. (chelseatableandstage.com)Breakfast BebopEye-popping Hudson Valley vistas accompany the vamps at Sunday Jazz Brunch at Cove Castle, a lakeside restaurant in Greenwood Lake, N.Y. Located about a 45-minute drive from the George Washington Bridge (or a 10-minute drive from the Metro-North station in Tuxedo, N.Y.), the town doesn’t have the same weekend bustle and artistic cache as nearby Beacon or Hudson. But that’s a draw for brunchers, especially those who pull up in their boats to dock and dine in an 80-seat room with sweeping views of Greenwood Lake, as well as the hills and woodlands of Sterling Forest State Park.Along with Cove Castle, the Sunday brunch is hosted by the Hudson Valley Jazz Festival, which helps program the mostly local bands. The menu is brunch comfort food, including challah French toast and a trio of sausages served with Brazilian cheese bread. (covecastleny.com)Latin and Cuban are the musical styles you’re likely to hear during jazz brunch at 1803, a corner restaurant in TriBeCa. Named for the year of the Louisiana Purchase, the New Orleans-inspired venue features a rotating schedule of local ensembles. On a recent Saturday, a jazz trio — Eduardo Belo on bass, Rogério Boccato on drums and Vinicius Gomes on guitar — made the airy two-story dining room feel like the French Quarter by way of São Paulo, Brazil.The menu is heavy on bayou fare, including a crawfish-cake benedict, gumbo and jambalaya (a vegan option is made with a crispy tofu); and Southern favorites like chicken and waffles and a rosemary-forward macaroni and cheese. (1803nyc.com)A Glass of TwangBrunches with honest-to-goodness live country music are scarce in New York, and that surely makes country fans madder than a cat getting baptized.Filling that void is Spaghetti Tavern, an Upper West Side bar and restaurant that hosts bluegrass brunches on the weekends. Last Sunday, it was as if the 65-seat dining room were nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, thanks to Pickin’ Parm, a quartet made up of Kris Bauman (banjo), Ross Martin (guitar), Kells Nollenberger (bass) and Cesar Moreno (mandolin). “This is a song about picking up farm girls,” Moreno announced with a smile, to which diners responded with applause and a “yeehaw!” It was a cool spring day so the doors were open, giving passers-by a taste of honky-tonk.The menu features traditional brunch fare with Italian twists, including a spaghetti frittata wedge and baked cannellini beans and eggs. But the house specialty is Spaghetti in a Bag: pasta tossed in a sauce (pick among pesto, cacio e pepe and others) and served piping hot in an oversized parchment satchel. The bottomless mimosas come in a cute refillable ceramic donkey, because why not. (spaghettitavern.com)Curtain Up, Chow DownAnnie, Effie, Mimi: No Broadway diva is safe from sendup at the R-rated Broadway Drag Brunch, a raucous meal-and-a-show that plays twice on Sundays at Lips, a long-running drag club-restaurant that now lives on a quiet stretch of Midtown East, where it moved in 2010 after more than a dozen years at its original home in the West Village.On a recent afternoon, it was mostly young women in the audience, including brides-to-be and birthday revelers who, at one point in the show, lined up to sit on a throne and take a photo with the sharp-tongued Ginger Snap. (“I smell Long Island Railroad,” Miss Snap told one table.) The cast of drag queens lip-synced to numbers from Broadway musicals including “Dreamgirls,” “Rent” and “Jekyll & Hyde,” but the crowd became the most worked up when the D.J. cut show tunes with pop hits.The is the only brunch on this list that doesn’t include live music and singing, but give a queen a break: The performers double as servers (and work hard for tips). Thirty dollars gets you a musical-themed entree, like the Sweeney Todd steak and eggs, or the Mamma Mia mozzarella omelet — and a bloody mary or mimosa. Add $6 and the cocktails are unlimited. (nycdragshow.com)Strawberry Fields: Ultimate Beatles Brunch features songs from the Beatles catalog sung by costumed cast members. Deborah SableA Hard Night’s MorningPaul and Ringo meet pizza and ratatouille every Sunday for the nostalgic Strawberry Fields: Ultimate Beatles Brunch. The meal-meets-concert had an 18-year run at the former B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square; it’s now a weekend staple at City Winery’s 32,000-square-foot venue, which opened in October 2020 and overlooks the Hudson River at Pier 57 on Manhattan’s West Side. The show features vintage instrumentation and amplification of songs from the Beatles catalog sung by costumed cast members, many of whom performed with the Broadway and touring companies of the long-running musical “Beatlemania.”The $55 ticket includes the show and an unlimited breakfast buffet; bottomless drink packages are also available. It’s a great way to introduce children under 12 to the Fab Four: They get in at no cost, with brunch foods available for purchase. (citywinery.com) More

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      Where Jazz Lives Now

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      SurfacingWhere Jazz Lives NowThe jazz club, with its dim lighting and closely packed tables, looms large in our collective imagination. But today, the music is thriving in a host of different spaces.The vocalist, flutist and producer Melanie Charles sings at a rehearsal in her Brooklyn home, which has become a rehearsal space, recording studio and gathering spot.A disco ball threw beads of light across a crowded dance floor on a recent Monday night in Lower Manhattan while old film footage rolled across a wall by the stage. A half-dozen musicians were up there, churning waves of rhythm that reshaped over time: A transition might start with a double-tap of chords, reggae-style, from the keyboardist Ray Angry, or with a new vocal line, improvised and looped by the singer Kamilah.A classically trained pianist who’s logged time with D’Angelo and the Roots, Angry doesn’t “call tunes,” in the jazzman’s parlance. As usual, his group was cooking up grooves from scratch, treating the audience as a participant. Together they filled the narrow, two-story club with rhythm and body heat till well past midnight.Since before the coronavirus pandemic, Angry has led his Producer Mondays jam sessions every week (Covid restrictions permitting) at Nublu, an Alphabet City venue that feels more like a small European discothèque than a New York jazz club. With a diverse clientele and a varied slate of shows, Nublu’s management keeps one foot in the jazz world while booking electronic music and rock, too. On Mondays, it all comes together.The bassist Jonathan Michel, the drummer Bendji Allonce and the keyboardist Axel Tosca at Cafe Erzulie in Brooklyn.Cafe Erzulie, a Haitian restaurant and bar, hosts a wide range of music including a weekly Jazz Night.As New York nightlife has bubbled back up over the past few months, it’s been a major comfort to return to the legacy jazz rooms, like the Village Vanguard or the Blue Note, most of which survived the pandemic. But the real blood-pumping moments — the shows where you can sense that other musicians are in the room listening for new tricks, and it feels like the script is still being written onstage — have been happening most often in venues that don’t look like typical jazz clubs. They’re spaces where jazz bleeds outward, and converses with a less regimented audience.“The scene has started to fracture,” the drummer and producer Kassa Overall, 39, said in a recent interview, admitting that he didn’t know exactly what venue would become ground zero for the next generation of innovators. “I don’t think it’s really found a home yet. And that’s good, actually.”It’s an uncommonly exciting time for live jazz. Young bandleaders have wide followings again — Makaya McCraven, Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper and Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah each rack up millions of plays on streaming services — and a generation of musicians and listeners is lined up to follow their lead, or break away. This year, for the first time, the most-nominated artist at the Grammys is a jazz musician who crossed over: Jon Batiste.The saxphonist Isaiah Collier gives a fist bump at the Arts for Art On_Line Salon at the Clemente in Manhattan.The saxophonist Isaiah Collier and the bassist Tyler Mitchell at the Arts for Art On_Line Salon.The drummer Andrew Drury performs as part of Jason Kao Hwang’s Human Rites Trio at the Arts for Art On_Line Salon.These players’ music has never really seemed at home in jazz clubs, nor has the more avant-garde and spiritual-leaning work of artists like James Brandon Lewis, Shabaka Hutchings, Angel Bat Dawid, Kamasi Washington, Nicole Mitchell or the Sun Ra Arkestra, all of whom are in high demand these days.Maybe it’s a case of coincidental timing. A confluence of forces — the pandemic, the volatility of New York real estate, an increasingly digital culture — has upset the landscape, and with the music mutating fast, it also seems to be finding new homes.Jazz is a music of live embodiment. Part of its power has always been to change the way that we assemble (jazz clubs were some of the first truly integrated social spaces in northern cities), and performers have always responded to the environment where they’re being heard. So updating our sense of where this music happens might be fundamental to re-establishing jazz’s place in culture, especially at a moment when the culture seems ready for a new wave of jazz.A musician warms up on melodica at Nublu’s Producer Mondays.The scene at Nublu, an Alphabet City venue that feels more like a small European discothèque than a New York jazz club.Producer Mondays sessions regularly fill the narrow, two-story club with rhythm and body heat till well past midnight.FIFTY-NINE YEARS ago, the poet and critic Amiri Baraka (writing then as LeRoi Jones) reported in DownBeat magazine that New York’s major clubs had lost interest in jazz’s “new thing.” The freer, more confrontational and Afrocentric styles of improvising that had taken hold — Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor’s revolution, for short — were no longer welcome in commercial clubs. So artists started booking themselves in downtown coffee shops and their own lofts instead.The music has never stopped churning and evolving, but since the 1960s, jazz clubs — a vestige of the Prohibition era, with their windowless intimacy and closely clustered tables — have rarely felt like a perfect home for the music’s future development. At the same time, it’s been impossible to shake our attachment to the notion that clubs are the “authentic” home of jazz, a jealously guarded idyll in any American imagination.But Joel Ross, 26, a celebrated vibraphonist living in Brooklyn, said that especially in the two years since coronavirus shutdowns began, many young musicians have become unstuck from the habit of making the rounds to typical jazz venues. “Cats are just playing in random restaurants and random spots,” he said, naming a few musician-run sessions that have started up in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but not in traditional clubs.Sometimes it’s not a public thing at all. “People are getting together in their own homes more, and piecing music together,” Ross said.The vocalist, flutist and producer Melanie Charles, 34, has made her Bushwick home into a rehearsal space, recording studio and gathering spot. And when she performs, it’s usually not at straight-ahead jazz clubs. Her music uses electronics and calls for something heavier than an upright bass, so those venues just might not have what’s needed. “Musicians like me and my peers, we need some bump on the bottom,” she said. “Our material won’t work in those spaces the way we want to do it.”Collier warms up with the pianist Jordan Williams at the Arts for Art On_Line Salon.The bassist Ken Filiano peforming with Jason Kao Hwang’s Human Rites Trio at the Arts for Art On_Line Salon.High among Charles’s preferred places to play is Cafe Erzulie, a Haitian restaurant and bar tucked along the border between the Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods of Brooklyn. With bluish-green walls painted with palm-leaf patterns and bistro tables arrayed around the room and the patio, the club hosts a wide range of music, including R&B jams; album release shows and birthday parties for genre-bending artists like KeiyaA and Pink Siifu; and a weekly Jazz Night on Thursdays.Jazz Night returned this month after a late-pandemic-induced hiatus, and demand had not ebbed: The room was close to capacity, with a crowd of young, colorfully dressed patrons seated at tables and wrapped around the bar.Jonathan Michel, a bassist and musical confidante of Charles, was joined by the keyboardist Axel Tosca and the percussionist Bendji Allonce, playing rumba-driven rearrangements of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” jazz standards and traditional Caribbean songs. The crowd was tuned in all the way, which didn’t always mean quiet. But when Allonce and Tosca dropped out and Michel took a thoughtful, not overly insistent bass solo, the room hushed.Charles sat in with the trio partway through its set, singing a heart-aching original, “Symphony,” and an old Haitian song, “Lot Bo.” Almost immediately, she had 90 percent of the place silent, and 100 percent paying attention. With the band galloping over “Lot Bo,” she took a pause from improvising in flowing, diving, melismatic runs to explain what the song’s lyrics mean: “I have to cross that river; when I get to the other side, I’ll rest,” she said. “It’s been hard out here in these streets,” she told the crowd, receiving a hum of recognition. “Rest is radical, low-key.”“Musicians like me and my peers, we need some bump on the bottom,” Charles said. said. “Our material won’t work in those spaces the way we want to do it.” Cafe Erzulie is just one of a handful of relatively new venues in Brooklyn that have established their own identities, independent of jazz, but provide the music an environment to thrive. Public Records opened in Gowanus in 2019 with the primary mission to present electronic music in a hi-fi setting. It had initially planned to have improvising combos play in its cafe space, separate from the main sound room, but its curators have recently welcomed the music in more fully.Wild Birds, a Crown Heights eatery and venue, has made jazz part of its regular programming alongside cumbia, Afrobeat and other live music. It will often start a given night with a live band and audience seating, then transition to a dance floor scenario with a D.J. In Greenpoint, IRL Gallery has been hosting experimental jazz regularly alongside visual art exhibitions and electronic-music bookings. Due south, in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, the Owl Music Parlor hosts jazz as well as chamber music and singer-songwriter fare; Zanmi, a few blocks away, is another Haitian restaurant where jazz performances often feel like a roux of related musical cultures.And jazz is proving to be more than just a feather in a venue’s cultural cap. The rooms are actually filling up. “For one, we cater to a very specific sort of demographic: young people of color, who I think really understand and appreciate jazz music,” said Mark Luxama, the owner of Cafe Erzulie, explaining Jazz Night’s success. “We’ve been able to fill seats.”Besides, he added, “it’s really not about the money on Jazz Night. I think it’s more about creating community, and being able to create space for the musicians to do their thing and have a really good time.”The scene at Producer Mondays, a jam session held weekly at Nublu in Manhattan.The pianist Ray Angry playing with the Council of Goldfinger, including Kamilah on vocals and Andraleia Buch on bass at a recent Producer Mondays night.FROM THE START, the story of jazz clubs in New York has been a story of white artists receiving preferential treatment. The first time history remembers jazz being played in a New York establishment was winter 1917, when the Dixieland Original Jass Band — all white, and dishonestly named (so little about their sound was original) — traveled up from New Orleans to play at Reisenweber’s Café in Columbus Circle. The performances led to a record deal, and the Dixieland band had soon recorded the world’s first commercially distributed jazz sides, for the Victor label.During Prohibition, jazz became the preferred entertainment in speakeasies and mob-run joints. The business of the scene remained mostly in white hands, even in Harlem. But many clubs served a mixed clientele, and jazz venues were some of the first public establishments to serve Black and white people together in the 1920s and ’30s. (Of course, there were notable exceptions.) In interviews for the archivist Jeff Gold’s recent book, “Sittin’ In: Jazz Clubs of the 1940s and 1950s,” Quincy Jones and Sonny Rollins each remembered the city’s postwar jazz clubs as a kind of oasis. “It was a place of community and pure love of the art,” Jones said. “You couldn’t find that anywhere else.”But when jazz grew too radical for commerce, the avant-garde was booted from the clubs, and up sprang a loft scene. Artists found themselves at once empowered and impoverished. They were booking their own shows and marketing themselves. But Baraka, writing about one of the first cafes to present Cecil Taylor’s trio, noted a fatal flaw. “Whatever this coffee shop is paying Taylor,” he wrote, “it’s certainly not enough.”The money piece never quite shook out on the avant-garde, and by the 1980s the lofts had mostly closed amid rising rents and unfriendlier civic attitudes toward semi-legal assembly. Still, that form-busting, take-no-prisoners tradition — whether you call it avant-garde, free jazz or fire music — continues.In recent decades, it has had a pair of fierce defenders in the bassist William Parker and the dancer Patricia Nicholson Parker, a husband-and-wife duo of organizers. The Parkers run the nonprofit Arts for Art, and since the 1990s they’ve presented the standard-bearing Vision Festival, often at the Brooklyn performing arts space Roulette. They’ve also long brought music to the Clemente, a cultural center on the Lower East Side, and during the pandemic they’ve added virtual concerts to their programming.It’s hard to argue with results, and if Arts for Art has never built a huge audience, it has retained a consistent one while nurturing some of the most expansive minds in improvised music. James Brandon Lewis, the tenor saxophonist whose album “Jesup Wagon” topped many jazz critics’ appraisals of last year’s releases, has that creative community partly to thank for shepherding his career. Zoh Amba, another uncompromising young saxophonist, is cutting a strong path for herself thanks largely to Arts for Art’s support.“What Arts for Art asks of people is that they really just play their best,” Nicholson Parker said. “If your music is about getting people to consume alcohol, then that’s different.”“You need places and people who support that kind of creative freedom,” she added.The drummer Kate Gentile at the Jazz Gallery in Manhattan.AT SMALLS JAZZ Club, the storied West Village basement, purebred jazz jam sessions still stretch into the wee hours on a nightly basis, inheriting some of the infectious, insidery energy that existed in its truest form into the 1990s at clubs like Bradley’s. But today it’s hard to argue that Smalls is the right destination for hearing the most cutting-edge sounds.And although they don’t usually say it publicly, seasoned players have come to agree that the code of conduct at Smalls’ jam sessions went a little flimsy after the 2018 death of Roy Hargrove. His frequent presence as an elder there had helped to keep the bar high, even as the room had come to be filled with musicians whose hands-on experience of jazz arrived mostly through the distorted lens of formal education.The Jazz Gallery, a nonprofit club 10 blocks north of Union Square, has combined the Bradley’s legacy with a dedication to bringing forward new works by progressive young bandleaders, and it’s become an essential hub. Rio Sakairi, the Gallery’s artistic director, cultivates rising talent and encourages mentorship between generations, often by offering targeted grants and commissions of new work.A light switch in Charles’s home is adorned with an image of Ella Fitzgerald.An array of instruments in Charles’s home.She’s come to terms with the Gallery’s place on the receiving end of jazz’s academic pipeline. “You cannot take the fact that jazz is being taught at conservatory out of the equation,” she said. “Younger musicians that are coming out, they all go through school systems.”Partly as an extension of the way jazz conservatories work, jam session culture doesn’t really exist at the Gallery. Shows end when they’re scheduled to. To Charles, it feels “more like a work space” than a club. “I’m glad those spaces are there,” she said.Looking at a jazz scene in transition, a fan can only hope that some of the energy accrued at the margins, in cross-pollinated clubs and more experimental settings, might flow back into spaces where the jazz tradition is a common currency: places like Smalls, the Jazz Gallery and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem (all of which have nonprofit status, and the economic flexibility associated with it).“It just needs to be reconnected: The Smalls people need to be talking to the Jazz Gallery people; the beat machine kids need to be talking to the Smalls people,” said Overall, the drummer. “Maybe there needs to be a space that acknowledges all these different elements.”For now, Charles said, the old haunts still feel needed, and loved. “At the end of the day I still end up at Smalls,” she said. “It’s like a church whose heyday is gone, but you still come and pay your respects.”Drury, the drummer, grabs a bite before performing with Jason Kao Hwang’s Human Rites Trio.Surfacing is a visual column that explores the intersection of art and life, produced by Alicia DeSantis, Jolie Ruben, Tala Safie and Josephine Sedgwick. 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      in Movies

      Hollywood Glamour Is Pandemic-Proof at the Polo Lounge

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      LOS ANGELES — Hollywood is down in the dumps. Oscar hopefuls like “King Richard,” “Nightmare Alley” and “West Side Story” have sputtered, and everyone knows that, studio spin aside, the Omicron variant is only partly to blame.What about those stunning Spider-Man grosses? Sure, great, whatever — another superhero hit. It doesn’t change the fact that one storied studio, 20th Century Fox, vanished in 2019 and another, the venerable Warner Bros., is slashing theatrical output by almost half. Unless regulators do something unexpected, Amazon will soon swallow Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Streaming services are ending a moviegoing era.“It’s over,” a glum film executive said at a holiday fete. “TV won.”But there is at least one place where Hollywood feels undiminished. Step into the 88-year-old Polo Lounge — as a deluge of film V.I.P.s have done lately, defying a lingering boycott over its owner, the sultan of Brunei, and his enacting of Shariah law in his country — and return to a time when movies indisputably commanded the culture. Outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, which houses the Polo Lounge, change is washing through moviedom with terrifying speed. (Hollywood’s prize system, long a crucial promotional platform, is crumbling, with the near-abandonment of the Golden Globes on Sunday as only one example.) Inside the clubby Polo Lounge, however, very little has changed in decades.It might as well be 1937, when Marlene Dietrich, wearing long gloves, could be seen dispassionately smoking a cigarette at the bar, her mink slung over a stool. “It’s one of the last surviving links to a time when movies still mattered,” said Terry Press, a former president of CBS Films and longtime patron.What better place for Hollywood heavies to gather for what amounts to group therapy? And, perhaps, plot a counterattack.As of early December, Polo Lounge revenue for the year was roughly 10 percent above the same period in 2019.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesRegular visitors in recent months have included David M. Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, which is merging with Warner Media; Brian Robbins, the new kingpin at Paramount Pictures; Toby Emmerich, Warner’s movie chairman; Bryan Lourd, the Creative Artists superagent; and Jeffrey Katzenberg, a former studio chief who remains a formidable Hollywood string-puller.Mary Parent, who produced “Dune” as vice chairman of Legendary Entertainment, and Casey Bloys, who reigns supreme at HBO and HBO Max, have conducted business there in recent months. Power lunchers have included Emma Watts, Paramount’s former production chief; Reginald Hudlin, an Oscar-nominated producer and director; and Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live.”Not long ago, Jimmy Fallon, dutifully wearing a face covering, stood next to the grand piano on a Friday night and belted out “Sweet Caroline.” Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Lawrence have been spotted. Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson dropped in for a bite the day after Christmas. Caitlyn Jenner had tried but was asked to leave for ignoring the dress code. (No “ripped denim.”)As of early December, Polo Lounge revenue for the year was roughly 10 percent above the same period in 2019, according to Edward Mady, the hotel’s general manager. He added that the Polo Lounge had recently been receiving about 150 calls a day for reservations, with roughly 75 requesting one of nine patio booths.“What boycott?” Mr. Mady said.In 2014, Mr. Katzenberg, Jay Leno, Ellen DeGeneres, Elton John and others led an entertainment-industry boycott of the property after its owner, the sultan of Brunei, imposed Shariah law in his country, making gay sex and adultery punishable by stoning. Hollywood mass-shunned the Polo Lounge, which was at first deserted and then bounced back as a popular spot for Beverly Hills Ladies Who Lunch. (“Betsy! Betsy!”)The restaurant has a large outdoor dining area filled with Brazilian pepper trees, roses bushes and magenta bougainvillea.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesBy 2017, many luminaries had returned. The entertainment industry enjoys a public snubbing, but it also has a short attention span. President Trump, elected in 2016, prompted outrage on so many fronts in liberal Hollywood that remembering to be mad at the Polo Lounge was difficult.And people wanted their salads. The most popular one at the Polo Lounge is the McCarthy, famous for its price ($44) and for being chopped so finely that one could almost drink it with a straw.A-listers may have returned, but none were eager to be quoted in this article. An email to Mr. Katzenberg, for instance, was forwarded to a spokesman, who responded, “He is actually unreachable on vacation at the moment so won’t be able to participate.” Others declined because they did not want to make themselves a target for activists. Several cited the awkward optics — cooing over an ostentatious watering hole at a time when more studio layoffs are on the horizon.Protesters have not given up. In 2019, George Clooney wrote an opinion piece calling for an expanded boycott. (He did not respond to a query on whether his position had changed.) In October, one of the most ardent proponents of a boycott, James Duke Mason, wrote a new letter to the sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, demanding the revocation of his kingdom’s “draconian laws.”“The boycott has been and still is firmly in place,” Mr. Mason said by phone. “It’s a matter of values. Is your McCarthy Salad really more important than human rights?” Mr. Mason added that he and several associates intend to redouble their campaign against the hotel and its sister Dorchester Collection properties in 2022. (Mr. Mason comes from a show business lineage; his parents are Belinda Carlisle and Morgan Mason, a former agent and producer.)Dorchester Collection, the London-based hotel company owned by the Brunei Investment Agency, responded with a statement: “We operate autonomously and embrace our longstanding values of inclusivity and belonging.”Pepe De Anda, the director of Polo Lounge, started working at the restaurant in 1986.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesIn some ways, the Polo Lounge is perfectly positioned for life during the pandemic. It has a large outdoor dining area adorned with Brazilian pepper trees, roses and magenta bougainvillea. Studio offices have been mostly closed since March 2020, so moguls who would normally conduct business meals on their lots have needed a place to go; many live within walking distance. Mr. Zaslav has been intermittently staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel; he is renovating a historic estate four blocks away.The Los Angeles power-restaurant scene has also been shaken up. Chateau Marmont closed its restaurant to the public when the pandemic started. (It has also had boycott issues.) The Palm was sold, prompting the departure of its charismatic torchbearer, Bruce Bozzi. For some, the Peninsula still has the stench of Harvey Weinstein, who, his accusers said, used the cover of work meetings there to sexually harass and assault women.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      in Theater

      Sardi’s Is Back After 648 Days, Its Fortunes Tied to Broadway

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      The caricatures are back up. But many shows are canceling performances just as Sardi’s reopens, a hurdle for a restaurant catering to the theater crowd.It felt sort of like old times, the other night at Sardi’s.Joe Petrsoric, back in his familiar red jacket, was lining up martini glasses at the second floor bar where he has worked since arriving from Yugoslavia in 1972. Manning the front door, his traditional dark suit now accessorized with a face mask, was Max Klimavicius, who started working in the kitchen in 1974 after immigrating from Colombia; he now runs the place.It had been 648 days since Sardi’s, a watering hole so closely entwined with Broadway that it was name-checked in the Rodgers and Hart song “The Lady Is a Tramp,” last served its cannelloni au gratin. And now, on the long night of the winter solstice, the oft-imperiled Main Stem mainstay with caricature-covered walls was ready to try again.The timing is nerve-racking. The Omicron variant is rampaging through New York City, wreaking havoc in the theater industry.There were 33 Broadway shows scheduled to perform Dec. 21, which Mr. Klimavicius chose for a soft reopening with limited hours, a limited menu and reduced capacity. But so many actors and crew members are now testing positive for the coronavirus that only 18 shows actually took the stage that night, and one of those made it to curtain only because the playwright grabbed a script and went on to replace an ailing performer.“The place has to live,” said Mr. Klimavicius, who greeted customers like the long-lost friends many of them were, but also helped make sure they had proof of vaccination. “It’s part of the fabric.”The restaurant is a combination of Broadway commissary and tourist magnet. As it reopened, the producer Arthur Whitelaw, who still remembers a childhood visit to Sardi’s more than seven decades ago (his parents were taking him to a new musical called “Oklahoma!”), settled into a cozy corner from which he could survey the room. A few tables away sat four friends from The Villages, the fast-growing retirement community in Florida, who were in town to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” on their annual Broadway trip.The restaurant’s owners did a substantial rehabilitation of the four-story eatery this year, but are hoping no one will notice, because Sardi’s customers are tradition-bound.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe work was made possible in part by help from the Shubert Organization, which owns the building, and in part with a large grant from a federal government program designed to provide emergency assistance to restaurants and bars affected by the pandemic. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway is a small town, but a big business — in 2018-2019, the last full season before the pandemic, 14.8 million people saw a show, spending $1.8 billion on tickets. Many of those patrons also spent money at hotels, shops, and at restaurants like Sardi’s — a symbiotic, and symbolic, economic relationship that is essential to Times Square and the city at large.“Sardi’s is a symbol of Broadway and the Broadway scene, and it’s been closed for far too long,” said Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance, which represents a theater-dependent neighborhood that occupies 0.1 percent of the city’s land mass, but contributes 15 percent of its economic output. With New York’s business districts threatened by remote work, and its brick-and-mortar stores by e-commerce, in-person experiences like live theater and dining are more important than ever.Times Square is still in recovery mode. “Office workers are coming back slower than anyone would have expected or wanted — occupancies are about 30 percent — and about 77 percent of businesses are open,” Mr. Harris said. “We still have a ways to go.”Sardi’s, which has been operating on West 44th Street since 1927, employed nearly 130 people during peak seasons before the pandemic arrived; it’s restarting with 58.The restaurant has weathered its share of challenges — booms, busts, and bankruptcy. It has been popular and it has been passé, but it has always been there, known more for its caricatures than its cuisine, drawing a mix of industry insiders and theater-loving visitors to eat, drink, kibitz and commiserate.It was established by Vincent Sardi Sr., who in 1947, at the very first Tony Awards, won a special prize “for providing a transient home and comfort station for theater folk.” Mr. Klimavicius is now the majority owner.Sardi’s has about 1,200 caricatures of famous people who have eaten in the restaurant, most of whom are connected to the theater industry. About 900 are on display at any given time. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe original caricature of Barbra Streisand was stolen, so now her image is the only one screwed into the wall, keeping watch over the empty dining room throughout the shutdown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHabitués understand the risks now faced not only by Sardi’s, but by the industry, the neighborhood, and the city.“We haven’t proven that the pandemic is over, and that everything is not going to fail,” said Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical Productions, who likes to transact business at the upstairs bar while shows are running and the room is quiet. “But then, I grew up in California where the ground shook all the time and you never knew if your whole house was going to collapse on you, so I see it differently.”Sardi’s began the pandemic, appropriately, with a moment of high drama: On March 12, 2020, just moments after agreeing to shut down all 41 theaters, a group of Broadway bigwigs gathered at the bar to drown their sorrows. They ate, they drank, they hugged. Then many of them got the coronavirus.Among the industry gatekeepers who fell ill — with, to be sure, no way of knowing how — was Robert E. Wankel, the chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization, which has 17 Broadway theaters, and which is the restaurant’s landlord. On Tuesday, Mr. Wankel was there again, happily holding court over a vodka tonic and relentlessly bullish on Sardi’s, where he has been coming for 50 years, and lunches three times a week.“Sardi’s is going to do very well,” he said, “now that the theater is back.”Max Klimavicius, who grew up in Colombia, started working at Sardi’s in 1974 as an expediter in the kitchen. Now he owns the place.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAmong the restaurant’s most longstanding patrons: Arthur Whitelaw, a producer whose parents first brought him to Sardi’s in the 1940s. On the first night back, Whitelaw had a pre-theater dinner with his producing partner, Ruby Persson.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSardi’s has been a part of Broadway longer than some theaters, and has become part of the industry’s lore. As a line in “The Lady is a Tramp” has it: “The food at Sardi’s is perfect, no doubt / I wouldn’t know what the Ritz is about.” Alice Childress mentions it in her play, “Trouble in Mind,” now being staged on Broadway, while in the musical “The Producers,” Mel Brooks has a would-be showman dream of “lunch at Sardi’s every day.”Over the years, the restaurant has hosted luminaries from Eleanor Roosevelt to Ethel Merman, scads of Tony winners, Oscar winners and even, once a year, the dog that wins the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. “I went there with Elizabeth Taylor, for God’s sake,” said Charlotte Moore, the artistic director of Irish Repertory Theater.Among its current boldfaced regulars: the designer Michael Kors, who created a Sardi’s-themed cashmere sweater for Bergdorf Goodman (selling for $990).“When I walk into Sardi’s I feel like I’m living in ‘All About Eve’,” he said. “I know Times Square needs to come back, and I know Sardi’s needs to come back.”Joe Petrsoric has been working the bar at Sardi’s since 1972. “What am I going to do at home?”, he asked.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlthough the dining room and bar will look quite familiar to Sardi’s regulars — polished but unchanged — the kitchen was completely overhauled in order to modernize it, and some equipment has yet to arrive because of supply chain woes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSardi’s is among the last Broadway institutions to resume operations.Since June, 39 Broadway shows have begun performances, the TKTS booth is once again selling discounted tickets, and other industry watering holes, like Joe Allen and Bar Centrale, have long since reopened.But for months Sardi’s remained shuttered, with an eerie menu in the window still listing the specials for March 13, 2020: a tasting of five cheeses, meatballs over bucatini, sautéed sea scallops.Early in the pandemic, Mr. Klimavicius, like many, had his doubts — theater was dark, Midtown was dead, everything seemed uncertain. But this June, buoyed by $4.5 million from the federal government’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund, he began overhauling the space — redoing the kitchen, the gas lines, the ventilation, and the wiring, among other things — hoping to modernize it in a way that no one would notice. People who love Sardi’s are, to put it mildly, change-averse.“I was concerned when I heard ‘renovation’,” said Andrea Ezagui, a Sardi’s regular from Long Island, who showed up at 4 p.m. — the moment it reopened — and immediately repaired to the bar upstairs, where she celebrated with champagne and friends. “They kept it the way it should be,” she said, “a little piece of heaven on Broadway.”The restaurant’s famous caricatures came off their picture ledges for the restoration — all but one, that is. Barbra Streisand has the only caricature screwed to the wall, because fans stole the original; so now she remains, irremovable, with her admonition “Don’t steal this one” inscribed above her signature.On a recent afternoon, Mr. Klimavicius and his crew set about putting the hundreds of caricatures back up, starting with one of Lin-Manuel Miranda, “a good friend of the house.”As he settled into his domain on the second floor, Mr. Petrsoric, the bartender, was clearly relieved to be back on the job, after spending too many months in Mamaroneck, N.Y., riding a stationary bike and, by his own account, going crazy. “What am I going to do at home?” he said. “I love people. And think about 50 years behind the bar. You know how many people I know?”He started by mixing a Belvedere martini, a cosmopolitan and a lemon drop. “This is unbelievable,” he marveled. “But you know, it takes me one hour, and you’re back to normal.” More

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      in Music

      La Grenouille NYC: Classic Cuisine and the Owner’s Lusty Crooning

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      Around 9:15 on a recent Wednesday evening, the mood in the full but otherwise serene dining room of La Grenouille suddenly shifted.The lights brightened. A small band began to play loudly. Out of the kitchen emerged a man in sunglasses, sporting a Cheshire cat grin and hips that swayed like a palm tree in a storm. He burst into a rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon,” in a voice that combined the boom of a sportscaster with the swagger of an Elvis impersonator. For almost half an hour, he strutted around this French restaurant known for its towering floral displays and airy soufflés, perching on diners’ tables and even growling like a cat.Who was this brassy balladeer? None other than the restaurant’s majority owner, Philippe Masson.Some guests cheered. Others took photos. As Mr. Masson, 60, told how he once romanced Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a woman could be heard saying, “This is the last dying gasp of the patriarchy.”Mr. Masson and his house band perform the Gershwin tune “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesLa Grenouille, just off Fifth Avenue on East 52nd Street, is among the last old-school French restaurants left in New York City, a contemporary of lost gustatory temples like Lutèce, La Caravelle and La Côte Basque. Much of its reputation has rested on how little it changed during nearly 60 years in business.So the restaurant’s transformation into a raucous late-night jazz lounge has been jarring to some diners, thrilling to many others and surprising to almost everybody. (The performances, which take place on all four nights the restaurant is open each week, aren’t mentioned when you make a reservation online, though they are noted on the La Grenouille website.)“It was definitely like a caricature of Frank Sinatra,” said Caroline Askew, 37, a creative director of a Manhattan design studio, who ate at La Grenouille in July. “But it was fun. I don’t know, I think we needed that sense of humor.”It was one of the first times she’d dined indoors since the pandemic began. “It felt like, OK, this is why I live here,” she said. “I love the old New York-y characters.”To Mr. Masson, who has no formal musical training and who broke into song four times during a half-hour interview for this article, the musical gig feels like a fulfillment of a lifelong destiny. “I seem to move people — I can’t explain it,” he said.Some have been moved in less desirable ways.“It ruined the entire ambience and tenor of the evening,” said Carrie Cort, 77, who lives in Washington, D.C., and has been going to La Grenouille for 28 years. She and her husband recently celebrated his 80th birthday there, and felt the performance was more a disturbance than a delight. “If he wants to open up a nightclub, good, but that’s not what La Grenouille is.”Many guests are excited about the live music, the first in the restaurant’s nearly 60-year history. Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesLa Grenouille has been a Midtown oasis of tradition and tranquillity since Gisèle Masson and her husband, Charles Masson Sr., opened it in 1962. But the restaurant has also kicked up some public drama. In 2014, their son Charles Masson Jr. stepped down from his longtime role as general manager amid a bitter, longstanding dispute with Philippe, his younger brother, who then took over. (Asked for comment about the new musical act, Charles Masson Jr. said, “As much as I may have an opinion, I’d rather keep it to myself.”)Philippe Masson started performing casually for outdoor diners at La Grenouille in July 2020, as a tribute to the restaurant’s captain Bertrand Marteville, who had died of Covid-19. When indoor dining resumed two months later, Mr. Masson removed some tables and replaced them with a stage. He hired four jazz musicians and named them the Buster Frog Quartet, a nod to the restaurant’s name, which means “the frog.”Mr. Masson learned songs like “La Vie En Rose” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” The goal, he said, was to “bring back life to the city.”He soon realized that he had unlocked a passion. “People are saying, ‘Never mind the food or flowers — we are coming here to hear you sing, Philippe.’”Between sets of about 30 minutes, Mr. Masson still runs the kitchen, oversees the dining room and creates the restaurant’s signature flower arrangements. “Music is energizing,” he said. “It picks me up.”Mr. Masson started performing to honor an employee who died from Covid-19, and found a new passion in the process.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesHe knows that not everyone appreciates his act. “One out of 100 say, ‘Oh, Philippe, this is not La Grenouille,’” he said. “I say, it is fitting for me and it is fitting for most.”It’s good for business, too, he said. “In the past we didn’t have a third seating. I could give food away and it wouldn’t happen. Now we have something to create more income for that elusive late-night seating.” (A French singer, Naïma Pöhler, also performs three nights a week, and the singers Lucy Wijnands and Ashley Pezzotti take the stage on Saturdays.)The music has attracted a younger clientele. Liana Khatri, 30, worried that the restaurant would be too stuffy when she visited in August — until Mr. Masson came onstage. “You didn’t care if the guy’s voice was good,” she said. “That was not the point. It was more the experience.”“There are so many trendy restaurants in New York City,” she added. “There is something to be said for a place that is not trying to be cool.”Eventually, Mr. Masson wants to turn the private dining room upstairs into a jazz lounge, where he will keep performing.And what of the employees who hear his crooning night after night? One busboy simply shrugged and said, “You get used to it.”Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      in Movies

      Anthony Bourdain Documentary ‘Roadrunner’ Seeks to Understand His Death, Career and Struggles

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      “Roadrunner” takes an intimate look at Mr. Bourdain’s career and his struggles, using archival footage and interviews from members of his inner circle.In 2016, Anthony Bourdain sat back in a leather coach to talk to a therapist in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was the first time he had gone to a session since his parents sent him to one after catching him with drugs as a teenager. He put on his reading glasses, and went through a list he called “all of my ailments and problems.” More