The restaurant is nestled among curls and curves of space age design on the third floor of the Armani building on fifth avenue. Open for lunch and dinner, the restaurant is attracting people who dress up to eat out, as they do in Europe, as Armani pointed out a little acerbically, after he’d said Americans overcook pasta.
The chef is Lorenzo Viani, the owner of Ristorante Lorenzo, a one star Michelin resto in Forte dei Marmi on the Mediterannean coast, the favourite beach of the Fiorentini.Dishes include layers of grilled eggplant and buffalo mozzarella, served with tomato reduction sauce 16.00, sliced herbed crusted yellowfin tuna served in a nettle sauce 28.00, Cioccolato pistachio semifreddo clementine sorbet and chocolate caprese 12.00 . As well, a routine-looking $40 lunch.
Armani opened the restaurant in the depths of the recession. Lousy timing say the cognoscenti. But on a tuesday after one pm, the place was around 50%.
And I guess it’s attracting the A list. As I stepped into the elevator, Angela Lansbury glided out looking around retirement age rather than 83. She was with her manager, a guess again, and talking intently.
I was glad to see her because I had tickets for Blithe Spirit that evening, and when the star is 83, who knows what might happen. It was a hoot to see Broadway’s oddest theatrical event of the season carried by an octogenarian with an incredible dancing moment. The show itself has Broadway’s wellknown fault: a star vehicle in a house far too big for an intimate comedy – so it can make money fast.
Aside from Rupert Everett, the only actor now alive who can carry off Coward and Wilde with style, the cast was a strikeout. It was difficult to hear, the Shubert having the acoustics of the Hummingbird – it takes 30 seconds for a joke to reach the audience and another 30 seconds for the cast to hear the audience reaction which throws the rhythm off, and the seats are raked so you have to keep peering around the folks.
And the folks! They came to see Jessica Fletcher, the kindly sleuth of Murder She Wrote. Who was this cut up doubling over chairs, kicking up her heels. They tittered nervously.
Why, Lansbury isn’t very nice either. Lansbury is funny because she has a dark side, remember The Manchurian Candidate, which gave an edge to her performances in Mame and Sweeney Todd and now suggests that dotty old Madame Arcati – invited to summon spirits in a genteel village, has her own personal reasons for causing havoc. Of course she had nothing to do with anyone else on stage. Pity she wasn’t on more.
