On March 20, 1974, a new French restaurant opened on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It was called Le Cirque (The Circus), and it soon became the hottest ticket in town. It was partly known for its lavish meals—where Daniel Boulud and David Bouley, among others, earned their fame as chefs. But Le Cirque was equally known for its celebrity-studded guest list that included Andy Warhol, Henry Kissinger, the Reagans, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Onassis, Donald Trump, and once even a pope. It truly was a circus, and one managed deftly by its ringmaster-manager Sirio Maccioni.
Almost 43 years to the day after it first opened, on March 24, 2017, Le Cirque filed for bankruptcy. According to Nation’s Restaurant News, “Le Cirque was in the process of reducing expenses . . . but was not able to meet lease obligations.” In September, it was confirmed that the doors will close for good after the next New Year’s Eve service.
The Maccionis—Sirio and his three sons—are still looking for a new venue, but the New York press has already bid fond farewell to the current locale in the ultramodern Bloomberg Tower. Le Cirque “made its biggest splash during Ronald Reagan’s presidency—a New York era satirized in Bonfire of the Vanities, but also a time of renewed optimism after Watergate, the Vietnam War and the gloomy Jimmy Carter years,” wrote Steve Cuozzo in the New York Post—adding that it was “the city’s premier showplace for the era’s excess and glamour.” As Helen Rosner put it in the New Yorker, “Le Cirque was the epitome of a clubby Manhattan fine-dining scene whose snobbishness, far from undermining the enterprise, was the mighty engine of its success.”
There’s something to be said about this—call it the case for snobbery. Remember that great scene from Goodfellas in which a young Henry Hill thoroughly impresses his date when he takes her to the Copacabana? They cut the line, enter through the kitchen, and are seated front and center while everyone else has to wait. We all secretly—or not so secretly—crave status.
Ruth Reichl captured this feeling in a 1993 double-review of Le Cirque, written partly as a nobody and partly as the recognized food critic for the New York Times. Unrecognized, Reichl had to wait a half-hour at the bar until her reserved table was available—unfortunately in the smoking section. Not long after she starts perusing the wines, a captain stands before her. “ ‘I need that wine list,’ he says peremptorily, holding out his hand. I surrender, and it is 20 minutes before it returns.”
Several visits later, Reichl is finally identified by Sirio Maccioni. He tells her, “The King of Spain is waiting in the bar, but your table is ready.” At which point she is treated like royalty, given a prime seat in the dining room and not in “Siberia” (a restaurant term dating back to Henri Soulé at Le Pavillon in reference to lesser tables, such as ones near the restroom). As for the food, “there is lobster, intertwined with chanterelles, artichokes and tiny pearl onions,” Reichl writes. “This dish is so tremblingly delicate, so filled with flavor, I feel as if I have never really tasted lobster before.”
In his 2001 book The Last Days of Haute Cuisine, Patric Kuh explains that the snobbery can be both repelling and intriguing—that “the best way to get people in was to plant in their minds the idea that they might not be able to.” Kuh refers to Maccioni’s “way of toying with the alternating currents of access and restriction that would always make the atmosphere at Le Cirque feel charged.” Ultimately, “it is [Maccioni’s] image that is positioned between one standing nervously at the door and sitting happily at a table. When he himself leads the customer to a table, the journey across the dining room becomes a form of inverted perp walk that demonstrates fame rather than infamy; demonstrates above all that one is known.
Of course they came for the food, too, whether it was the sea-bass paupiettes crafted by Daniel Boulud, lobster risotto, chateaubriand, or the model Vatican constructed of white chocolate that Jacques Torres presented to Pope John Paul II. Maccioni himself made famous an off-menu item: the decidedly Italian pasta primavera. (Yes, there’s irony in a dish popular among Le Cirque clients—including Donald Trump—being readily available in the frozen-food aisle of your local supermarket.)
In 2014, the New York Daily News gave Le Cirque four stars for the cuisine. But, said critic Michael Kaminer, “everything else rates a zero.” The four-star executive chef, Raphael Francois, has since left and opened an exquisite French bistro in Washington, D.C., called Le DeSales. Over coffee at the bar, Francois reflected on the challenges of Le Cirque. “We have a lobster salad that we were making in a different way, and some customers, they wanted the lobster salad of 20 years ago, so it was like two restaurants in one restaurant,” said Francois. For certain customers, he explained, “you have to keep the menu the way they want at their standard and their palate as well, so it was a big challenge. But with the Maccionis, I mean we had a great relationship—they helped me get that change done, so that’s why we stayed together and collaborated for two years.”
Francois is hopeful, however, that the flagship Le Cirque will find a new home someplace else in New York (there are other Le Cirques around the world that the Maccionis continue to oversee). He’s also of the opinion that finding a new venue will do it some good. “I think to change the location is actually a great thing for them, because they’re going to turn the page, and they can start with a new mindset. . . . I think for the [Maccioni] sons it’s actually a good opportunity.”
Eric Ripert agrees. The legendary chef who presides over the three-Michelin-starred Le Bernardin (when he’s not skiing the French Alps with Anthony Bourdain) says that Le Cirque is simply continuing to evolve. “When you look at the old Le Cirque, where [Boulud’s eponymous restaurant] Daniel is now—that Le Cirque was basically rejuvenated when they opened in the Palace Hotel. It was much different than the previous one. And then when they went to the Bloomberg building, it’s a very modern building, a very different space, and I think they reinvented themselves in many ways.”
Ripert also points out that the attraction of a given restaurant is rarely straightforward. “People go to a restaurant to have a certain experience. It’s not about the food. It’s not necessarily about seeing famous people. It’s a much more complex experience that the clients are looking for.” He calls Le Cirque an institution and hopes it won’t be gone for good: “We don’t want a New York without Le Cirque.”
If the restaurant does find a new home, it won’t be the same. It may have a bit more, shall we say, égalité. “In America it’s all about volume,” says Francois. “If you target just your regulars, then you’re not going to achieve your volume. So the business model [is] you have to actually VIP everybody—but not too much because people want to feel relaxed. But you have to treat everybody the same way. You can’t just please your regulars.”
But if everyone is a VIP, is anyone?
Victorino Matus is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and deputy editor of the Washington Free Beacon.
