Russian Tea Room
The Russian Tea Room is an Art Deco Russo-Continental restaurant, located at 150 West 57th Street (between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue), between Carnegie Hall Tower and Metropolitan Tower, in the New York City borough of Manhattan.[1]
Russian Tea Room
Design[edit]
The restaurant building was originally four stories high.[27] The structure measures 25 feet (7.6 m) wide and extends the entire length of the block to 56th Street. The floors do not have load-bearing walls, allowing a flexible arrangement of furniture.[47]
During the 1990s renovation, the ground floor remained intact, but the upper stories were modified significantly.[28] After the restaurant reopened in 1999, the first floor was designed in a similar manner to the original, with stag-head and firebird motifs; an ice sculpture was placed in the center.[31] There was a bear-shaped revolving aquarium on the second floor.[3][5][32] This story also contained green and red upholstery, a gold-painted tree with 35 glass eggs,[31] and a Tiffany glass ceiling with 250,000 pieces of glass mosaic.[3][5] The upper stories were decorated with a fireplace, bronze-painted domed ceilings, and blue walls.[3] There was a double-height ballroom on the third floor and three private dining rooms on the fourth floor.[31] The fourth story also contained a 3D model of troops in Moscow's Red Square,[3][32] Many of these decorations were salvaged from Maxwell's Plum, also operated by LeRoy.[37] After 2006, the top two stories were used for catered private events, while the lowest two stories contained the restaurants.[54][55]
Cuisine[edit]
A 1938 article in Vogue magazine cited the Tea Room as selling "authentic blinis, with caviar, melted butter, and sour cream, but only if you are wise enough to order ahead".[61] When the Russian Tea Room reopened in 1999, it primarily served Russian and Georgian cuisine.[30][31] Among the dishes served were pelmeni, fish, and hot borscht; the restaurant also sold 250 types of wine.[62] By 2006, the restaurant's menu included borscht, as well as blinchiki with goat cheese, duck confit, and wild mushrooms. One of the most expensive dishes on the menu, Iranian caviar, cost $350/oz ($12/g).[20] Other dishes, such as beef Stroganoff and chicken Kiev, were not listed on the menu but could be cooked on request.[63]
The Los Angeles Times wrote in 1983 that "As a lunch room it services the Manhattan headquarters of the major studios. [...] Those in the know also know the importance—literally the significance within the inner sanctums of show business—of being seen there".[64] When the Tea Room closed in 2002, Nation's Restaurant News wrote: "Over the years the celebrated restaurant was a haunt for the rich and famous".[37] The New York Times wrote that the restaurant had attracted "agents, performers and power brokers in the cluster of entertainment businesses" in the area, but that the restaurant's popularity slowly declined as older patrons died.[48]
British comedian Rowan Atkinson married makeup artist Sunetra Sastry at the Tea Room in February 1990.[59][80]
Reception[edit]
Bryan Miller of The New York Times said in 1992 that "beneath all the hype there is little substance", saying that the restaurant suffered from "inattentive and unprofessional" service despite being highly patronized.[81] After the Tea Room reopened in 1999, it received several negative reviews.[34] William Grimes of the Times wrote that the reopened restaurant was "appalling", saying: "More than ever, the Russian Tea Room is not about the food. [...] The modern touches that [Canelle] has introduced often seem peculiar, and the traditional dishes lack soul."[62] Lenore Skenazy of the New York Daily News wrote: "If you want opulence, it's here. If you want history, hurry over. If you want borscht, run! For your life."[82] Architecturally, it was more positively acclaimed; the Tea Room received the Award for Outstanding Restaurant Design from the James Beard Foundation in 2001.[83]
When the Tea Room reopened in 2006, several reviews noted that waitstaff often took their time delivering food and failed to respond to customers' repeated requests.[63][84][85] Times food critic Frank Bruni regarded the restaurant as "good", saying that "in terms of food and all else, the Russian Tea Room doesn't add up neatly or quite make sense", although the high quality of the food was counterbalanced by poor service.[84] A writer for the Columbus Dispatch said, "The lore (think boldfaced names and movie cameos) and decor are the reasons most people will come, but the food can be a draw as well" unless one was a vegetarian or was looking for the Tea Room's staple dishes.[63] A writer for The New Yorker said the food "runs from serviceable [...] to forgettably enjoyable", but the waitstaff were apathetic.[86]