Speaking of imaginary food

Rico says he's never eaten there (couldn't afford it anyway), and now won't be able to, nor will anyone else, as James Barron's article in The New York Times explains:

When the restaurateur Elaine Kaufman died last year, the manager who inherited her legendary restaurant on the Upper East Side said: “We’re going to try to run it as usual.” Less than six months later, the manager, Diane Becker, announced she was giving up because Elaine’s “was not a viable business” anymore. She said the restaurant’s last night would be 26 May, with the final last call arriving about 4 a.m. the following morning. The decision to shut down what was once a see-and-be-seen hangout for writers, editors and actors reflected “financial reality”, Ms. Becker said. “The best analogy I can propose is the place is on life support,” she said. “I put money in since Elaine died. She put money in it before she died. The nature of business is to make a profit, not become a place to put your money in.” Ms. Becker said that Elaine’s had “struggled” after the financial meltdown of 2008, and that since Ms. Kaufman’s death, “the customers weren’t there. It got pretty lonely in the evenings.”
The announcement had been dreaded by anxious regulars since Ms. Kaufman’s death, on 3 December, of complications from emphysema. She was 81.
“It’s kind of a cliché, but it really is the end of an era,” said Stephen McFadden, a regular at Elaine’s and an owner of another bar, McFadden’s Saloon, at 800 Second Avenue. “It was a full-blooded clubhouse. There isn’t a place in town that I think comes close to it right now and, as hard as the waiters and everyone tried to keep it going, it was like a wonderful candle that went out.”
Ms. Kaufman left the restaurant and most of her estate to Ms. Becker. That included the two five-story buildings that housed the restaurant, at 1703 Second Avenue, near 88th Street, and Ms. Kaufman’s co-op apartment a few blocks away.
Ms. Kaufman’s will directed Ms. Becker to sell the apartment and spend the money on estate taxes, and included four bequests totaling $230,000. But the apartment remains on the market, and the original asking price of $2.95 million has been reduced to $2.75 million.
A spokeswoman said Ms. Kaufman had refinanced the mortgage on the two Second Avenue buildings. But the spokeswoman, Cynthia Carway, said the revenue from the buildings— that is, the rent from the apartments above the restaurant— covered only the loan payment.
Ms. Becker was reluctant to discuss whether she had considered selling or leasing Elaine’s, or whether she had received offers. “I really don’t want to talk about that,” she said. “That’s really kind of in-house business.”
But Stephen Jones, the owner of the Knickerbocker Bar and Grill, at 33 University Place, said he had made a “serious offer” to Ms. Becker almost two months ago. “We thought we were in the middle of serious negotiations,” he said, “and then she did a 180 and said she was not interested in selling to anybody.” He said that the closing announcement “came out of the blue” and that he was looking into bidding on the building. (Ms. Becker said she had turned down the earlier offer.)
Closing Elaine’s will idle twenty employees, including bartenders, waiters, and dishwashers, some of whom have been on the payroll since the 1980s. Bill Grenfield, the president of their union, Local 100 of Unite Here, said the contract with Elaine’s called for each union employee to receive two weeks of severance pay. He also said that Ms. Becker had not notified the union before she announced the shutdown.
Some of those workers said, as Ms. Becker did, that business had been slow since Ms. Kaufman’s death. Frank Rugova, a waiter and maitre d’hotel who has worked at Elaine’s for almost twenty years, said Ms. Becker had “tried, but she couldn’t make it”. Mr. Rugova said that there had been some resentment that Ms. Kaufman had left the restaurant to Ms. Becker, but that the workers who were upset had come to accept it. “They got used to it,” he said.
Ms. Becker said the efforts to keep Elaine’s afloat had begun long before Ms. Kaufman’s death. “We sought licensing agreements while Elaine was alive,” she said. “Elaine worked very hard at salvaging the business. With Elaine it was different. It was beyond a business; it was her life. The rest of us have to have income. The waiters aren’t making any money. They’re extraordinarily loyal. Years ago, Elaine was always very proud that everyone who worked there made a good living. She would say, ‘My guys send their kids to college, they buy houses, and we have fun.’ Then people just weren’t making a living anymore.”
The regulars had once struggled to imagine Elaine’s without its defining personality, without her throaty voice rumbling from the end of the long bar. But Ms. Becker’s announcement caught many by surprise. “I’m just flabbergasted,” said the actor Chris Noth. The loss of Elaine’s, he said, was like “what’s happening to the rest of the city; it’s why the city is becoming block after block of Duane Reades and Bank of Americas.” Referring to Ms. Becker, he added: “Elaine’s was a symbol. It was incumbent on her to make sure Elaine’s stayed in place.”
The author Stuart Woods, who dedicated his latest book to Ms. Kaufman, said he had tried to assemble a group to buy the restaurant four or five years ago, while letting Ms. Kaufman continue to operate it. “I couldn’t get anybody to kick in any cash,” he said. “Elaine was in her late 70s at the time, and couldn’t go on forever. After she died, when I heard she’d left it to Diane, I figured Diane would know how to keep it going, but Diane wasn’t interested in schmoozing the way Elaine was.”