In 1984, It All Happened at These New York Restaurants
You could get away with a lot in Manhattan in 1984. You could write a bestselling novel, Bright Lights, Big City, in the second person, like Jay McInerney did, his brooding protagonist hoovering up “Bolivian marching powder” and hanging out at The Odeon. You could have a menial job, go out clubbing, eat for cheap at dawn at a 24-hour joint, survive on scant sleep and spend a few hours pursuing acting, music, photography or performance art before heading back to work for another shift, making enough to cover rent. You could also start a magazine with no money, like Kim Hastreiter and David Hershkovits did, when they founded PAPER 40 years ago. Any cockeyed idea seemed possible, if you were imaginative and daring.
“We were out all night all the time,” says Barbara Sibley, a restaurateur who owns La Palapa and runs Holiday Cocktail Lounge, side-by-side on St. Marks Place. The AIDS crisis was on the horizon, she recalled, but it hadn’t seriously hit yet so wasn’t a big concern. Back then, she worked at an East Village, Tex-Mex place called Bandito. “A crazy-drinking tequila and cocaine crowd” came in, she says, along with regulars like Matt Dillon, Sean Penn, Madonna and Rockets Redglare. “There was so much creativity, like one ecosystem,” she says.
Heroin suffused the restaurant scene too. The most stylish place in the East Village was 103, a cafeteria named for its address on Second Avenue. Simon Jutras worked the graveyard shift, from midnight until 8 a.m. At the time, he was auditioning for acting roles and today co-owns the elegant bars Sugar Monk, in Harlem, and Bitter Monk, in Brooklyn’s Industry City.
“People would nod off face down into their food constantly,” Jutras says, particularly those coming in after partying at the club next door, The Saint. “We would poke them and they’d get up, their faces full of food, really messy. It was the only restaurant in the world where I could say to a customer, if they were assholes, ‘This is my table, but I don’t think I’m going to serve you.’ I was in no mood. I was so bad to customers that at one point somebody stood up and screamed, ‘Give this actor a job!’”
Jutras recalled that the most famous dish at 103 was the chili salad, for $4.75. The beef stew, at $6.50, was more deluxe. One freezing winter night a guy came in who was “very high and ate like a pig,” he says. “He tried to leave without paying. The manager, who was this straight-laced guy who used to work at Studio 54, took his coat.” Some people were a bit shocked, Jutras says, by the behavior of both staff and customers, but it was all pretty normal in that era, nothing that would be acceptable now.
Bandito and 103 didn’t last, but The Odeon, in Tribeca, is still happening. So is its sister restaurant, Cafe Luxembourg, an Upper West Side bistro with a downtown sensibility. It’s a PAPER favorite that continues to be mobbed every night, featuring satisfying burgers and fries and perfect martinis. PAPER people have also never stopped loving Indochine, which opened across the street from the Public Theater the same year the magazine was founded. The Vietnamese-inspired cuisine, the palm leaf wallpaper and legendary customers like Dianne Brill and Amanda Lepore remain unchanged.
Jean-Marc Houmard, Indochine’s co-owner, attributed the restaurant’s longevity to its sense of fun, “where you go to have a good time, not just for the food. It’s the whole experience, sharing a bunch of dishes, having a staff with a mix of personalities, shapes and ages and backgrounds, keeping the place buzzing and fresh.”
Another pioneer that opened in 1984 was Quatorze, a French bistro on West 14th Street and Eighth Avenue, at the edge of Chelsea and the West Village. The neighborhood back then was rife with drug dealers and prostitutes, says Mark Di Giulio, who nevertheless saw potential in the space. He and his late partner, Peter Meltzer, were Francophiles who thought they could make a go of it since the rent was under $2,000, and they believed people were ready for an unpretentious French experience as opposed to the stuffy spots uptown.
“Our original group of investors looked at me like I was nuts,” Di Giulio says. The address was just too scary and risky. He and Meltzer found new investors who took a chance on them, and Quatorze was a hit, luring people from uptown who thought it was racy. “Madonna came in, artists from the Village and Tribeca,” he says, “and by the time we left in ‘94, the total neighborhood had begun to turn around, paving the way for the Meatpacking District to become a hub.”
Quatorze, now in its 40th year, ended up reopening on the Upper East Side, at First Avenue and 82nd Street. A similar menu of French classics feeds the children and grandchildren of those who flocked to the original location in 1984. “I’m still standing,” Di Giulio says.
Di Giulio, as well as everyone else contacted for this story, hasn’t forgotten those not still standing, due to AIDS or other causes. Many also fondly recalled bygone, quirky hotspots they frequented in 1984, like Dave’s Corner Luncheonette, El Internacional, Le Zinc, Moondance Diner, Cafe Orlin and Kiev. The beloved Meatpacking District’s Florent, also often cited, didn’t open until 1985.
The famous names that popped up, over and over, as habitués of these places, were Madonna, Debi Mazar, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Halston, John Belushi and Kenny Scharf. How did any of these people, who ended up successfully producing a lot of work however long or short their lifetimes, get anything done? It was 1984. What else can we say?
Photography: Paige Powell
