NEW YORK -- It was a place where even a commoner felt royal.
Delmonico’s treated every customer like an aristocrat. The tableware was sterling silver. Glasses were crystal, and dishes were fine china. Attentive waiters in crisp uniforms circled the dining room, while friendly hostesses in cocktail dresses circulated through the bar.
In the era of fine dining, the downtown Manhattan restaurant was one of the finest.
And now, Max Tucci, a grandson of one of the former owners, has recreated that era, and its lush luxuries, in “The Delmonico Way: Sublime Entertaining & Legendary Recipes from the Restaurant That Made New York!”
If you’re looking for a how-to on making Oysters Rockefeller or Orange Blossom cocktails, you’ll find that here.
But the book is far more than a compilation of recipes. It contains lovely memories – not only of a time when people dressed for dinner – but when pride of ownership prevailed.
“Delmonico’s, known as America’s first fine dining restaurant, was the gold standard,” Tucci writes. “The style in which my family operated the restaurant for nearly seventy years is alive within me, imprinted on my soul. It is an honor, and I feel compelled to share it.”
The original Delmonico’s opened in 1827, a modest pastry shop run by immigrants Giovanni and Pietro Delmonico. It soon grew in size and ambition.
“It introduced a la carte dining and printed menus in the United States, and popularized French dishes at a time when British food was the cuisine of choice among affluent Americans,” Tucci notes, “It was the first restaurant in the country to use white tablecloths, and in 1859 it was the first restaurant to be reviewed by the New York Times.”
The restaurant fed Abraham Lincoln and hosted dinners for dignitaries from Mark Twain to the Prince of Wales. Specialties included Manhattan cocktails, baked Alaska, and the famous Delmonico steak, although opinions varied on precisely what cut of meat that was.
The business would survive several fires before establishing its permanent flagship at 56 Beaver St. in 1837. But Prohibition posed a more complicated challenge later. What was Delmonico’s without French champagne or Spanish sherry in its rich sauces?
In 1923, the restaurant closed.
Two years later, Oscar Tucci walked by the empty building. He had arrived in New York from Tuscany in 1912 and worked in the hospitality industry. When he saw the abandoned restaurant, he glimpsed his American dream.
He bought the place and re-opened Delmonico’s in 1926.
Prohibition ruled? No problem. Tucci’s wife smuggled bootleg gin into the restaurant in a baby carriage, under blankets, and their son, Mario. While selling booze risked arrest, they cleverly circumvented the law by selling Delmonico dollars. That scrip was then traded for liquid refreshments at the bar.
Once Prohibition ended in 1933, Tucci moved fast. Twelve hundred dollars got him New York State Liquor License #00003. The restaurant was refurbished. Menus were revived, and a few Italian specialties were added. The brass rails in the bar were polished to a high gloss twice a day, and attentive staff ministered to a stream of Wall Street brokers.
“The men who come here don’t air their problems,” one bartender confided to a reporter. “They talk stocks. I keep my ears open to catch a good tip.” Wall Street gossip helped some of the smartest and most attentive barkeeps buy houses.
That world may be gone, but tipplers can still re-create some of its concoctions, thanks to the book’s recipes. Cary Grant’s go-to drink sounds like a hangover in a glass: dark rum, ruby port, applejack brandy, maple syrup, and bitters. Governor Thomas Dewey had his singular favorite – Holland gin, mixed with sugar, bitters, and a twist of lemon.
Tucci firmly believed dining out didn’t just mean dinner. It meant an experience. So Delmonico’s offered several dining rooms, each in a different style, to give a different ambiance. Other spaces accommodated private parties.
By now, Delmonico’s occupied the entire building offering even more select accommodations for people like Rock Hudson.
“Delmonico’s became his kitchen and his discreet boudoir,” the author writes. “In the 1950s, Hudson became a regular… After a few cocktails, and some air kisses with other A-listers, Rock shed his inhibitions and headed to the penthouse.”
The private apartment had a marble fireplace, dining room, kitchen, wet bar – and bedroom. Once a guest – and their guests – entered the suite, “Do not disturb” was the house rule. Violators were fired on the spot.
That attention to privacy made Delmonico’s a celebrity haven. Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, and Elvis Presley dropped by for Lobster Newberg or spaghetti Bolognese. Sammy Davis Jr. and Chubby Checker were booked for intimate engagements.
Impromptu performances weren’t unheard of, either. Lena Horne would often go onstage between courses and sing. And a tipsy Gypsy Rose Lee once climbed atop a table and did a striptease, covering her essentials with an oversized menu.
“Few places outside of Hollywood have seen the glamour that Delmonico’s did in its heyday,” Debbie Reynolds once reminisced. “I miss that time and I miss that place!”
Although celebrities can make a restaurant’s name, they can’t pay all its bills. As star-studded as Delmonico’s became, the financial world remained its bread-and-butter.
To attract and keep the Wall Street crowd, Tucci installed a stock ticker at one end of the bar; tables closest to it were reserved for top Wall Street executives. Lehman Brothers were given their own room and ticker. Up to a thousand lunches were served every workday.
Nor was it a men’s club. Although there were few women on Wall Street, when Muriel Siebert became the first to get a seat on the Stock Exchange in 1967, she celebrated at Delmonico’s, where she became a regular. “All are welcome at my table,” Tucci insisted.
Certainly, sexism crept in. During the 1970s, the restaurant took out smarmy ads featuring their “lovely young hostesses” with taglines like “I’m Gretchen. Meet me for cocktails at Delmonico’s.” These promotions owed more to the decade’s singles-bar culture than any shift in the institution’s mission. Delmonico’s remained dedicated to good food and good manners.
But the city around it was changing.
“By the 1980s, crack cocaine had taken hold around New York, murders were on the rise, and gangs were quickly forming,” Tucci writes. In 1987, the family sold the business.
“Over the last three decades, Delmonico’s, under several different ownerships, shed elements of sophistication,” the author mourns. Plain plates and flatware replaced the fine china and silver. “What formed the basis of the Delmonico way,” he writes, “was dismantled.”
The restaurant has been shut, hobbled by COVID restrictions and various legal fights. And that’s why “seeing Oscar’s Delmonico come back to life via this book has been a joy,” Tucci writes, a chance not only to relive his childhood but inspire a new generation.
“The same doors that have opened for me, I am opening for you, affording you the opportunity to become part of the Delmonico way,” he says. “A wish of mine is that as you read these pages, they will encourage you to set intentions while setting the table, to never keep the good china packed away – and use what your ancestors passed down to you.”
