1 *I call her Naomi because she is so private not even her doorman knows her name.(back to text)

 

2 *Erno Laszlo was the Hungarian skin wizard whose costly potions silkened the epidermi of those who could afford them.(back to text)

 

3 *The diminutive but powerful New York Post columnist.(back to text)

 

4 *CBS’s founding father.(back to text)

 

5 *Madame Alphand was the wife of the former French ambassador to the United States.(back to text)

 

6 *Not his real name or true description, except for the amorous prowess.(back to text)

 

7 *Michael and Ariane Batterberry, creators of Food & Wine magazine, are now publishers of Food Arts.(back to text)

 

8 *Another restaurant in the Shelly Fireman portfolio that includes Trattoria Dell’Arte, Redeye Grill, and many more.(back to text)

 

9 *Lutèce’s creator and original owner.(back to text)

 

10 *His savings decimated by legal fees, Valenza worked as a consultant and staged periodic comebacks, dreaming always of a revolution that would end his exile. In the nineties, he tried everything from a twenty-dollar prix fixe to costly redundancies of truffles at 222 on West 79th Street, reluctantly admitting defeat in 2004.(back to text)

 

11 *It was located where JoJo is now.(back to text)

 

12 *See Chapter 40, “Cuisines from Three Marriages.”(back to text)

 

13 *He later opened Chantilly on Fifty-seventh Street east of Park, now BLT Steak.(back to text)

 

14 *A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, he is now cooking at the Epcot Center.(back to text)

 

15 *The wondrous eight, in order of cuisinary astonishment, were Dodin-Bouffant, the Palace, Lutèce, Le Plasir, the Four Seasons, Shun Lee Palace, Trattoria da Alfredo, the Palm.(back to text)

 

16 *Boutique pizzas were half the size and twice the price of the old coal oven blistered pies of New York tradition and were likely to be layered with such oddities as smoked salmon, duck confit, and seafood in the shell on romaine lettuce.(back to text)

 

17 *Sirio: The Story of My Life and Le Cirque, with Peter Elliot (Wiley, 2004).(back to text)

 

18 *Ultimately, he opened Bouterin, a place of his own that looks like a Provençal granny’s front parlor, far east on Fifty-ninth Street, where once the Palace reigned.(back to text)

 

19 *Owner of popular lounges Lot 61 and Bungalow 8, and, more recently, the restaurant Bette.(back to text)