Read | 01. Oct 2020

Eating Out May Get Back To Eating Indoors, After All

I have been to "The Odeon" since I have been going to New York. When that special mix of French bistrot and classic American bar opened its doors in the early Eighties. What makes me part of a certain generation of New York lovers, those who stuck to downtown Manhattan long after everyone who was anyone moved to Brooklyn.

Like "Vanity Fair" once wrote:

"The Odeon looked cool but exuded warmth, which is not a sentiment associated with the 80s, a decade best remembered for the three *C’*s—not Clemente, Chia, and Cucchi, but cash, cynicism, and cocaine, as well as that holdover from the 70s, casual sex. The perspectives of writers, artists, gallery owners, waiters, and cooks who ushered in the era at the Odeon tend to be rosier. Yes, they admit, drugs and sex could be had there, particularly if one knew about the storage closet beneath the stairs, but those commodities were everywhere in New York. What made the Odeon special, they say, is that, in the formative years of the decade, it became a clubhouse where the young men and women who would determine the direction of the culture—high and low—for at least the next 10 years came to network, flirt, and occasionally fight. aids, moneygrubbing, and the ravages of prolonged drug use—not to mention age, the usual suspect—would soon sober up the crowd, but for a few euphoric years there were rules to be rewritten and reputations to be made.

And that included the reputations of the young trio who had opened the Odeon: the London-born Keith McNally, his older brother Brian, and a fresh-faced transplant from Streator, Illinois, named Lynn Wagenknecht, who would eventually marry, and later divorce, Keith."

Then, many years later, Covid 19 hit the City, killing its backbone industry of restaurants and bars, one assumes half of them to be closed forever. Some, like the "The Odeon" expanded their outdoor space, during those warm súmmer nights, what seems to be not a problem, the entertaining crowd even more interesting than before.

Small indoor place closed and hoped for better times, but nobody know when that will be.

As the nights are getting more chilly and rain will come soon, then snow and thunderstorms, "The Odeon" was happy to open indoors again September 30th. With a strict concept of mask-wearing, temperture checking and distancing.

Read what "Vogue Daily"s elise Taylor had to say today about her first lunch at "The Odeon" - I ´ve already started to look forward to my next reservation.