It’s not hyperbole to say that Le Cirque – Sirio Maccioni’s celebrated 34-year-old restaurant now located on East 58th Street – is more empire than eatery, a canteen for three decades of boldfaced names.
When the restaurant first opened inside the Mayfair Regent Hotel on East 65th Street in 1974, it was a modest 22-table space – a quarter of the size of what is now the restaurant Daniel.
But the unpretentious L-shaped room, with its beige walls accented with pink, blue and yellow monkey murals and sconces, quickly evolved into a sanctuary to the stars.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Frank Sinatra and the king of Spain frequented the dining room, while ex-Presidents Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford reliably occupied the tables during lunch.
“The powerful people come to my restaurant,” Maccioni once said in his warmly Italian-accented English. “I’m not discriminating; I have a small restaurant, and I like to see the same face come all over again.”
The son of a Tuscan farmer, Maccioni took up waiting tables in his early years.
After sojourns in Germany and Cuba, he arrived in New York to work his way up to the maitre d’ position at the famous Colony. On his first day, he elegantly averted a crisis regarding overlapping reservations for Frank Sinatra and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Maccioni, the subject of an HBO documentary airing tomorrow night at 8 p.m. called “A Table in Heaven,” picked up the name for his place while working in Paris. To him, it meant “a circus for important people.”
When he set up shop off of Park Avenue, he became the ringmaster.
After each meal, regular Sinatra would leave Maccioni a note saying if he enjoyed the visit or not. If he was happy, it would say “yes;” if he wasn’t, simply “no.” He’d later explain what was wrong to Maccioni over coffee at the Waldorf.
Frank Zappa was initially banned for being underdressed but returned in a suit and tie and said, “This better be the best [expletive] meal of my life. I’ve toured the Kremlin, met the pope, and I’ve never needed a suit.”
He dined at Le Cirque so often that he and Maccioni became best friends.
“I want some place where I can go to lunch easily,” was how former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger described the restaurant.
He often did so with Richard Nixon – after their first public reunion was arranged by Maccioni.
The most expensive dish on the menu, available since the first seating, is still the Dover sole, now $75. Maccioni’s pasta primavera is also a perpetual favorite.
On a single day, Reagan, Nixon, Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush all ate lunch at the original Le Cirque.
Revlon mogul Ron Perelman once came in to dine with his third wife, Patricia Duff, only to find both of his exes – Faith Golding and Claudia Cohen – already eating.
When Mario Maccioni, Sirio’s eldest son was 10 years old, he took phone reservations one evening and was instructed to tell all callers that the restaurant was booked solid – even the pope was to be denied a table.
When the wife of Gov. Hugh Carey called and couldn’t get a seat, she told Sirio, “I was denied a table.” Sirio then confronted his son, who replied, “You told me not even the pope, and he’s only the governor!”
Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney used to visit the restaurant whenever he was in New York – and even got his mail there. Roy Cohn kept his own jar of mayonnaise in the kitchen.
In 1996, Maccioni relocated to the opulent 19th century Villard House inside the Palace Hotel with the name Le Cirque 2000.
The $6 million investment included a double dining-room space luxuriously decorated with the aluminum, leather and velvet furniture against dark-stained wood walls, embodying a futuristic circus.
Perelman held the reception for his fourth marriage to Ellen Barkin there in June 2000.
In 2006, Maccioni moved again, this time into the Bloomberg News building on East 58th Street.
The 16,000-square-foot space encompasses a formal dining area as well as a younger-feeling bar and café.
Meanwhile, a who’s who of the world’s best chefs have cycled through the kitchen, including Terrance Brennan, David Bouley, Jacques Torres, Geoffrey Zakarian and, most famously, Daniel Boulud.
Boulud, who was brought over from Paris by Maccioni in 1986 and has gone on to open numerous restaurants in New York alone, and Maccioni reportedly maintain an irreconcilable relationship.
Still, Maccioni’s favorite Le Cirque moment transpired outside its walls. Because of security concerns, the pope couldn’t come to dine at the restaurant, so Maccioni brought the food to him, at the Holy See residence on the Upper East Side.
“The pope was very enthusiastic,” Maccioni said about the incident. “He come to me and say, ‘Is it true in order to come to your restaurant I have to call ahead of time?’ And I tell him, ‘No, you don’t even have to call. What about making a reservation for a table in heaven?”
The Maccioni documentary was filmed by Andrew Rossi, who followed Sirio and his three sons, who are expected to inherit Le Cirque, for several years.