Emmy Park for NY Post<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe restaurant has had its ups and downs, just as Times Square has. As early as 1946, a Post writer wrote, \u201cWith its glittering stars\u2026 Sardi\u2019s holds more fascination for people from the hinterlands than real New Yorkers.\u201d Nonetheless it stayed successful and upscale for many years. Men were expected to wear a coat and tie. In the 1950s and 60s, more than a few Post columnists made it their second office.<\/p>\n
Then, Sardi\u2019s steeply declined during the 1980s. It had a leaky roof and a pest problem and was getting bad reviews.<\/p>\n
But under Klimavicius, the restaurant has rebounded. You can spot Broadway actors, producers, press agents and critics most nights at the upstairs bar.\u00a0It\u2019s tough to get a seat. A kind of glamor has returned.<\/p>\n
You could feel it on opening night of Bernadette Peters\u2019 run in \u201cHello, Dolly!\u201d at the Shubert in 2018, when a red carpet was rolled across 44th Street just so she could grandly stroll into the afterparty\u2026 at Sardi\u2019s.<\/p>\nSardi\u2019s opened in 1927. J.C. Rice<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHere are some delicious Sardi\u2019s tales from the past 100 years.<\/p>\n
When Prohibition ended in 1933, and New York got its first beer shipment, the restaurant\u2019s booze supplies were \u201cdwindling rapidly\u201d because of their ravenous customers, the manager told The Post at the time. Lunch business was up by 50%. <\/p>\n
One night in 1935 actor Sam Levene challenged Sardi\u2019s first caricaturist, Alex Gard, to draw John Barrymore from memory \u2014 on the tablecloth. He did. And Levene bought it from the restaurant.<\/p>\n
When a young Elaine Stritch was in the musical \u201cPal Joey\u201d in 1952, she typically finished onstage at 10:20 p.m., and routinely arrived at Sardi\u2019s by 10:30. She\u2019d then go back to the theater for curtain call at 11. <\/p>\nThe restaurant has about 1,200 caricatures of stars. J.C. Rice<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nA customer asked her, \u201cWhat if you\u2019re out with an attractive man at 11 p.m. Would you leave him to go back to the theater for the final curtain?\u201d\u00a0\u201cOf course,\u201d Stritch said. \u201cI\u2019ve never met a fellow who could keep me from a bow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking of sultry NYC summers, in September 1954, Marilyn Monroe sat in Sardi\u2019s wearing a mink coat given to her as a Christmas gift by her new husband Joe DiMaggio.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey told me not to bring a mink coat to New York in the summertime,\u201d Monroe told The Post at her table. \u201cBut I can always say I don\u2019t know any better. It\u2019s my first mink coat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019ll be a\u00a0helluva long wait between courses at legendary Broadway institution Sardi\u2019s this summer. The iconic 99-year-old restaurant on West 44th Street \u2014 famed for its 1,200 celeb caricatures \u2014 is closing up shop for several months after Wednesday night\u2019s service for much-needed renovations and other behind-the-scenes changes. Its anticipated reopening is in late fall, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2468815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[344468,21741,23170,24047],"class_list":["post-2468814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-broadway","tag-entertainment","tag-restaurants","tag-theater"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Farewell-\u2014-for-now-\u2014-to-Broadway-icon-Sardis.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2468814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2468816,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468814\/revisions\/2468816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2468815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2468814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2468814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2468814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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