Russian Tea Room nestles among skyscrapers

Press, 18 December 1986, Page 23

Russian Tea Room nestles among skyscrapers

By

DORIS FRANKEL

of Reuter (through NZPA) New York

Next door, Carnegie Hall is receiving a facelift. Nearby, workers in a cloud of dust are finishing a 78-storey tower and at the back another skyscraper is rising.

Only the Russian Tea Room, an opulent fivestorey restaurant which has long lured the artistic, the rich, and the famous, remains a quiet reminder of an elegant past. Originally a modest tea room and pastry shop, the restaurant was founded 60 years ago by Russian emigres.

“It was started by Russian ballet people,” said its owner, Faith StewartGordon. “They were the waiters, the cooks, and everything originally. And that tradition flowered into attracting people from all the arts.” The Russian Tea Room opened in 1926 on 57th Street, and moved, a few months later, across the street to its present site next door to Carnegie Hall, the concert hall. During the years, the neighbourhood has changed. Fifty-seventh street is now a fashionable thoroughfare of office towers, art galleries, boutiques, and restau-

rants. Developers have tried to get the Tea Room to change too — a few years ago, one offered SUSI2.S million ($25 million) for the site, said Ms StewartGordon, who refused to move.

The developer “wanted everything, the land, the building,” she said. “He didn’t care about the restaurant so much.” “He wanted to relocate it. But we didn’t go for that at all. We really didn’t want to give up the Russian Tea Room,” said Ms Stewart-Gordon in her office, furnished with French tapestries and antique samovars. Gazing with a resigned look through her thirdfloor window at the construction around her, Ms Stewart-Gordon said, “We don’t even have a view any more.” At lunchtime, workers sit on crates on the pavement nearby, eating sandwiches from brown paper bags. Inside the restaurant, such celebrities as the Aga Khan, Woody Allen, or King Juan Carlos of Spain may be dining on Beluga caviar, shashlik Caucasian, mushrooms a la Russe, or strawberries Romanoff. The restaurant, with its bright facade of green, red, and black glass,

comes into its own during the Christmas season. There is, however, always a holiday atmosphere about it: Christmas decorations of gold tinsel and sparkling red balls hang from the Art Deco chandeliers all year long. In the 19505, Ms Stew-art-Gordon — then Faith Burwell, a young actress from South Carolina — was part of the theatre crowd who dined there. She met, and eventually married, the owner, Sidney Kaye.

“A lot of us used to hang out here as a lot of younger actresses do now,” she recalled. A group of businessmen including Mr Kaye bought the Tea Room in 1946. It was no longer just a pastry shop; a previous owner had turned it into a restaurant in the 19305.

Mr Kaye bought out his partners in 1955 and after his death in 1967, his widow took over. “It seemed to me to be really a part of my life and something that I wanted to continue with,” she said.

She met her present husband, James StewartGordon, a former magazine editor, at the Tea Room in 1970. Over the years, the restaurant — with its red bench seating, forest-

green walls and everpresent samovars for tea — has become a New York institution attracting tourists as well as such celebrities as Jacqueline Onassis, Meryl Streep, Louis Malle, Prince Rainier, and the late Princess Grace of Monaco.

“The Aga Khan comes in when he’s in town. He always orders a bottle of vodka and sometimes a whole pound of caviar,” Ms Stewart-Gordon said. “And the King of Spain and Queen Sofia were here a couple of weeks ago.”

With three dining rooms, the Tea Room can seat 300, and serves up to 1600 people a day.

The 75-item menu emphasises such Russian specialities as blini (buckwheat pancakes) and Karsky shashlik (marinated spring lamb). Main courses cost SUS3O to SUS4O (SNZ6O to $80). One thing which has changed about the Russian Tea Room is its staff. No longer are they members of the Imperial Russian corps de ballet. In fact, none of them is even Russian, not even the waiters in their traditional Russian garb. “Until recently we had one Russian cook,” Ms Stewart-Gordon said, “but she decided to leave the city.”