Farewell — for now — to Broadway icon Sardis…
It’ll be a helluva long wait between programs at legendary Broadway establishment Sardi’s this summer season.
The iconic 99-year-old restaurant on West forty fourth Street — famed for its 1,200 celeb caricatures — is closing up store for a number of months after Wednesday evening’s service for much-needed renovations and other behind-the-scenes adjustments.
Its anticipated reopening is in late fall, just in time for its centennial.
So if you need to put in an order of cheese and crackers or a turkey membership, or get a drink upstairs from my pal, bartender Jeremy Wagner, hie thee to Midtown pronto.
Sardi’s restaurant is closing for a number of months. Christopher Sadowski
The break was set in movement by the latest retirement of longtime proprietor Max Klimavicius, who in March offered his eatery to the Shubert Organization, Broadway’s greatest landlord.
I’m requested a lot whether or not or not this change-up is a good factor. Well, that outdated carpet may actually use a shampoo. But the sale is the best potential end result.
All of us in New York know how frighteningly simple it’s for our favourite spots to be right here sooner or later and gone the next. Regulars of Donohue’s on the Upper East Side felt that sting this week.
The Shuberts had been already Sardi’s landlords — and frequent clients — and perceive its significance to the theater and their business. They’ll be strong stewards of the institution that just about every individual who’s labored on Broadway over the last century has dined and drank in.
The restaurant is famed for its movie star caricatures. Andrew Lloyd Webber finally bought his in 2025, and was joined by “Sunset Boulevard” stars Nicole Scherzinger and Tom Francis. Emmy Park for NY Post
The restaurant has had its ups and downs, just as Times Square has. As early as 1946, a Post author wrote, “With its glittering stars… Sardi’s holds more fascination for people from the hinterlands than real New Yorkers.” Nonetheless it stayed profitable and upscale for many years. Men had been anticipated to put on a coat and tie. In the Fifties and 60s, more than a few Post columnists made it their second workplace.
Then, Sardi’s steeply declined during the Nineteen Eighties. It had a leaky roof and a pest downside and was getting unhealthy reviews.
But under Klimavicius, the restaurant has rebounded. You can spot Broadway actors, producers, press brokers and critics most nights at the upstairs bar. It’s robust to get a seat. A form of glamor has returned.
You may really feel it on opening evening of Bernadette Peters’ run in “Hello, Dolly!” at the Shubert in 2018, when a purple carpet was rolled across forty fourth Street just so she may grandly stroll into the afterparty… at Sardi’s.
Sardi’s opened in 1927. J.C. Rice
Here are some scrumptious Sardi’s tales from the past 100 years.
When Prohibition ended in 1933, and New York bought its first beer cargo, the restaurant’s booze provides had been “dwindling rapidly” because of their ravenous clients, the supervisor told The Post at the time. Lunch business was up by 50%.
One evening in 1935 actor Sam Levene challenged Sardi’s first caricaturist, Alex Gard, to draw John Barrymore from reminiscence — on the tablecloth. He did. And Levene purchased it from the restaurant.
When a younger Elaine Stritch was in the musical “Pal Joey” in 1952, she usually completed onstage at 10:20 p.m., and routinely arrived at Sardi’s by 10:30. She’d then go back to the theater for curtain call at 11.
The restaurant has about 1,200 caricatures of stars. J.C. Rice
A buyer requested her, “What if you’re out with an attractive man at 11 p.m. Would you leave him to go back to the theater for the final curtain?” “Of course,” Stritch said. “I’ve never met a fellow who could keep me from a bow.”
Speaking of sultry NYC summers, in September 1954, Marilyn Monroe sat in Sardi’s carrying a mink coat given to her as a Christmas reward by her new husband Joe DiMaggio.
“They told me not to bring a mink coat to New York in the summertime,” Monroe told The Post at her desk. “But I can always say I don’t know any better. It’s my first mink coat.”
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