Elaine's was an Upper East Side bar and restaurant, located near the corner of 2nd Avenue and East 88th Street in Manhattan which shut its doors for the last time on May 26th, 2011.[1]
Established in 1963,[2] Elaine's is famed both for the writers and other New Yorkers such as Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, George Plimpton, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, William J. Bratton, Peter Maas, Clay Felker, Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Mario Puzo, Mark Simone, Sally Quinn, Chris Noth and Sidney Zion, who have been regulars over the years, and for its late chain-smoking namesake and proprietress Elaine Kaufman, who ran the restaurant for over four decades. Visitors have included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mick Jagger, Clint Eastwood, Leonard Bernstein, Eli Wallach, Kirk Douglas, Michael Caine, Elaine Stritch, Luciano Pavarotti and Willie Nelson, among others.
The restaurant was noted for its Oscar night, where celebrities and visiting Hollywood stars congregate to watch the Academy Awards ceremony.
The quirky owner, Elaine Kaufman, was known for not mincing her words, for booting less-favored customers to seat new arrivals, and for forbidding hamburgers in her establishment.[1] She was once arrested after a physical altercation with a visiting Texan.
Billy Joel immortalized the establishment in his song "Big Shot" supposedly about a date gone wrong which included a stop at the eatery with the lyrics, "they were all impressed with your Halston dress and the people that you knew at Elaine's".[1] In the movies a scene from Woody Allen's Manhattan was filmed at the restaurant as well a short sequence in the 2010 film Morning Glory of Elaine Kaufman herself at the bar of Elaine's (where the producer played by Rachel McAdams is trying to track down the television host played by Harrison Ford and Elaine relates at what time he left). In the 1988 hit comedy Big Business, to divert a mismatched set of twins (played by Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin) from upsetting an important shareholder vote, Midler's alter-ego character offers to take them to Elaine's. Elaine's is also immortalized in the Stone Barrington novels by author Stuart Woods. The aboos first chapter always begins with "Elaine's. Late"...
In 2003, New York City banned smoking in restaurants. Kaufman claimed to have quit smoking several years earlier, but was unhappy about her customers being forced to forgo tobacco at their seats. She died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and pulmonary hypertension on December 3, 2010, aged 81.[1] Kaufman willed the establshment to longtime manager Diane Becker. Becker later explained on her reasoning on closing the reastaurant, that, "The truth is, there is no Elaine’s without Elaine...The business is just not there without Elaine."[3]