subject: Would There Be An Elaines Without Elaine? [print this page] In the last couple of years, as Elaine Kaufman faced on-and-off health problems, some of the regulars at her restaurant played a particularly morose kind of parlor game.
Quietly, reluctantly, after a few late-night drinks, out of earshot of the voluble Ms. Kaufman, they brooded among themselves. They speculated. They asked each other: What will we do when? Will the place survive when? Will Elaines be Elaines when?
Their voices trailed off, leaving the questions unfinished.
They found it too painful to think about what would become of the saloon she ran like a salon, where she made the people she liked feel comfortable and tolerated the rest. (Except when she didnt, and ordered them out.)
The when in the regulars sotto-voce questions about the future shifted into the present tense on Friday, when Ms. Kaufman died at 81.
That night, the restaurant she had run for 47 years was packed with regulars and celebrities like Alec Baldwin and James Lipton. Even Gov. David A. Paterson showed up, talking about hanging out there when he first became governor in 2008, following Eliot Spitzers resignation.
The commiseration and the celebration of Ms. Kaufmans strong gravitational pull on her regulars lives continued on Saturday and Sunday nights. The tables were filled with people who looked at the covers of books and the photographs that lined the walls by or of the regulars, some with Ms. Kaufman front and center.
Pushing through the crowd by the bar, some wondered what the regulars had wondered as her life was ending: Would there be an Elaines without Elaine?
Thats the question I think everybodys asking, said the author and lyricist Christopher Cerf. Can we go and make it work without her? Its hard to imagine.
Robert Tucker, a lawyer for Ms. Kaufman, said on Saturday that he would not comment on her will. The restaurants going to stay open, he said. Everyone I know is still going to go to Elaines. He directed a reporter to call Diane Becker, who has worked at Elaines for 26 years, most recently as the manager.
I know what Elaine would want right now, which is to keep it going, and then well see what was in the will, Ms. Becker said. Were just going to keep going until we get instructions otherwise.
The word otherwise seemed to raise the would-Elaines-be-Elaines-without-Elaine questions again. Can a restaurant continue after losing a proprietor who was dominant in a way that, say, celebrity chefs like Mario Batali and Daniel Boulud are not? They have restaurants around the world that they have to visit. And they were, first and foremost, chefs; when they said hello to guests, they seemed to be stealing precious moments away from the kitchen.
By contrast, Ms. Kaufman owned only Elaines, at 1703 Second Avenue, near East 88th Street. She was there night after night, going from table to table, gossiping with people who would swagger or stagger out when the clock said it was later than they had imagined. In the days when there was a poker game in a corner, as opposed to the oxygen tanks that helped her breathe as her emphysema worsened, it was an unusual night when Elaine was not on the premises, presiding.
If you want me to bet on something, said the writer Gay Talese, I dont think its going to make it, the same way Toots Shors didnt make it. He was such a personality. He was a New York character. And the ashes of the city swept that restaurant away after he was gone.
And Gino, he added, referring to Gino of Capri, a Lexington Avenue restaurant that closed in May.
Elaines without Ms. Kaufman? Inconceivable, said the novelist and screenwriter David Black, who married his second wife there. A bar that basically started as a literary hangout would never get traction now.
The mystery writer Carol Higgins Clark added: Of course theres a void without Elaine there was no one like her.
Josh Gaspero, a former publishing executive who was such a habitu he calls himself the Cal Ripken of Elaines, said he had gotten a glimpse of an Elaineless Elaines years ago, when she took vacations.
It wasnt the same, he said. Will we still go there now? Yeah, but not with any regularity. The charm of Elaines was Elaine.
Stephen McFadden, himself a former bar owner, echoed that idea, but added: People still go to P.J. Clarkes, and theres no P. J. Clarke around. And there are really, in the restaurant business now, no legendary characters. There are the superchefs, the snob appeal, the next big thing. But theres no place where its like eating in your living room with 100 people where you dont know them, but by the end of the night you probably will.
Another regular, Paige Peterson, an actress, writer and illustrator, said something would be missing at Elaines that shuffling, grouchy, marvelous character. She said that after she had surgery for a brain tumor in the 1990s, Ms. Kaufman sent over a canister of chicken soup.
Then the phone rang: What are you doing?
I said, Ive got 46 staples in my head.
She said, Get in here.
But Ms. Peterson said there was more to Elaines than Ms. Kaufman. The waiters have all been there for decades, they know everybody, they know your kids, she said. We know about their kids. There was a great community with all of the waiters. So its going to be hard without her, but were not going to abandon them.
And, even though some regulars talked about the sightseers who stopped by because of the fame of Elaines as a hangout for celebrities, not everyone who went there kept up with Ms. Kaufman. On Friday, after the television crews had done their live shots about Ms. Kaufmans death, two women were talking in the womens room, they recounted later.
Im exhausted, one told the other. I was here for dinner last night. I wouldnt have come tonight except that Elaine died.
A third woman looked startled. Elaine died? she asked.
