Category Archives: Upper East Side

Martell’s Restaurant

RIP
Martell’s Restaurant
1469 3rd Avenue
New York City of My Youth

I can not even find a photo of Martell’s Restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan — the blue-and-white striped awning, the tile floors, blue-and-white checked tablecloths, big burgers and fat fries.  Martell’s was a bridge from the old joints of New York City with their pyramids of hard boiled eggs on the bar, sawdust on the floor and the faint and not-so-faint smell of beer and piss mixed with the grease from a thousand burgers and the new places that hit town in the 70s and began the shift into the world of TGIFridays.

When we didn’t go out for fancy food or to Schrafft’s  with our nanny, we went to Martell’s — our version of McDonald’s (with wine for Mother).  When I returned to New York many years later, I’d go back to Martell’s on occasion for a big bourbon and a plate of French fries — once with my step-sister (Oliver’s daughter) when our worlds and our lives re-collided.
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Posted by Wendy Lawless  Chanel Bonfire, Georgann Rea, Manhattan Restaurants, Martell's Restaurant, Upper East Side, Wendy Lawless, Yorkville

Isle of Capri

Isle of Capri, 3rd Ave. and 61st Street

In addition to the high style and classic French presentation of restaurants like La Grenouille, La Caravelle and Lutece, 1960s New York offered another kind of “fine” dining experience — the clubby neighborhood classic, often a bistro with sidewalk seating.  After my mother divorced my step-father and sold the apartment in the Dakota we moved to Park Avenue on the Upper East Side which was home to many of this other type of restaurant, probably because there were fewer people who cooked in this more rarified neighborhood.  One of our regular haunts was the Isle of Capri.  It was a “fancy” restaurant but run by a family, the Lamanna’s, who made everyone feel as if they were eating at a rich Italian relative’s house.  In 1967 Craig Claiborne validated the restaurant’s local reputation by naming it “the best small Italian restaurant in New York” and giving it three stars in the New York Times.  It was the kind of place where everyone seemed like a regular and so, for a while, were we.  My and Robbie’s La Grenouille training and matching Florence Eiseman dresses made us pretty additions to the crowd and the simple plates of pasta–fettuccine alfredo was our favorite–and veal piccata we were given made us feel happy and at home.  
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Posted by Wendy Lawless  60s New York, Chanel Bonfire, Craig Claiborne, Florence Eiseman, Georgann Rea, Isle of Capri Restaurant, New York Restaurants, Robin Lawless, The New York Times, Upper East Side, Wendy Lawless