One of the great Hollywood actresses I would often see when working at Trattoria Dell’Arte was Arlene Dahl. She’s still full of energy and probably well into her 90s. She was once married to actor Lex Barker, best known for playing Tarzan, and then later to Argentine-American actor Fernando Lamas, with whom she bore several ...
When Tishman Speyer bought Rockefeller Center—previously owned by the Japanese Mitsubishi Estate—Jerry Speyer decided to overhaul the entire complex and give it a makeover. Unfortunately, this closed the center, including The Sea Grill restaurant, where I had worked for a couple of years. Before this happened, Paul Emmett, one of Restaurant Associate’s Vice Presidents, approached ...
It’s not often one meets a Hollywood starlet from the golden age of film. But on one wintry evening in the early 90s, Fay Wray, who enchanted us all in the original version of King Kong, came to dine at Fiorello’s. Canadian-born Wray started her career playing roles in silent comedy shorts before coming to ...
Tom Jones was and has always been a colorful character. His actual Christian name is Thomas John Woodward. His son, Mark Woodward, was an acquaintance and managed his father. And at one time—around the early 2000s—I had discovered that Tom didn’t have a recording contract after reading a story on him in The Wall Street Journal. ...
One evening, Diana Ross came to Trattoria Dell’Arte after her show at about five minutes to closing with her spiritual guru Marianne Williamson and six other friends in tow. My jaw literally dropped at the sight of her. She was as fabulously looking in person as all the pictures I had only seen of her ...
One of my favorite comedians of all time was Dom DeLuise. I loved watching all his appearances on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show as well as his roles in Burt Reynolds’ Cannonball Run movies. And of course, let us not forget his own film, Fatso. One evening, Dom came to dine at Trattoria Dell’Arte. I think ...
In the mid-’90s, Al Pacino was dining quite a bit at Trattoria Dell’Arte as he was living nearby, on 57th & 8th Avenue. At the time, Pacino was riding on the successful heels of his recent film Scent of a Woman (1992) for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, completed director Brian De ...
When I began working at The Sea Grill in the late 90s, I came on as Assistant Director, which was just a fancy name for Assistant Manager of Restaurant Associates‘ flagship restaurant. One of the great aspects of the job was serving some of the most influential people on the planet. And none were more ...
Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy once came to Trattoria Dell’Arte for dinner. It was the first and only time I saw them there. So, to woo them, we gave them one of our best tables (#52), usually reserved for our regulars and ultra-special celebrities. Cronyn was a Canadian-born actor who had distinguished himself over a ...
During the 90s, I used to see Keith Jarrett quite often as he used to dine at an Italian restaurant across from Carnegie Hall called Trattoria Dell’Arte that I used to manage along with my colleagues Sandra Scandiber, Debra Moore, and Russell Raiteri. At the time, Jarrett was at the peak of his career. With ...
Keith Jarrett
Tom Jones
Sam Cohn
David Rockefeller
Charles Bronson
Al Pacino
Éric de Rothschild
Jackie Onassis
Natasha Richardson & Liam Neeson
Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy
Max Roach
Arthur Miller
Diana Ross
Tanaquil Le Clercq
Sammy Davis Jr.
Richard Widmark
George Balanchine and Tanaquil Le Clerq
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