Pastis-responsible, along with Darren Star, for a Meatpacking renaissance-which reopened last year after a five-year hiatus. There are Balthazar and Morandi and Minetta Tavern. There was briefly Cherche Midi, and Pulino’s. The Odeon gave birth to the Cosmo (the signature drink of Sex and the City, itself a McNallyist sort of artifact), kept generations of Saturday Night Live cast members fed and drunk, and will probably again be the un-cafeteria for media types who manage to keep their expense accounts. There’s the Odeon, immortalized on the Vintage Contemporaries edition of Jay McInerney’s 1988 cokey opus Bright Lights, Big City. Artists, bankers, movie stars, agents, gallerists. Part of that has to do with who can be found at any one of the 15 places he’s opened, one every few years since 1980. But his vibe is distinctly this city, specifically Manhattan, and it’s been endlessly imitated, inexpertly duplicated. Inflections are borrowed from the brasserie, synonymous with Paris. It’s one of subway tiles (blame him for their enduring ubiquity), leather banquettes, menus stenciled onto mirrors seemingly salvaged from the Gilded Age, vintage pharmacy trappings that signal the cures to what ails you, healthily stocked bars, menus overflowing with oysters plus English and French comfort cooking. Over the past 40 years, restaurateur Keith McNally has shaped a certain proto-nostalgic vision of dining out, of having a social life in New York City.
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