It was the Studio 54 of fine dining and the Circus Maximus of celebrity; in the endless party that was New York in the 1980s, the Quilted Giraffe was the place to see and be seen. The silvery sleek dining room became a nexus for movie stars to mingle with celebrity artists, rock legends, business tycoons and powerful politicians to clink champagne flutes across tables of foie gras, duck confit and heaps of fresh black truffles.
For many years, the Quilted Giraffe was America’s most expensive restaurant; it served as Manhattan’s temple for haute cuisine on Madison Avenue where sex in the bathroom, cocaine in the lost and found and Mick Jagger with Jerry Hall on table eight was just another Tuesday night at the Quilted Giraffe.
If the 80s were the party, the 90s were the hangover and like its namesake, the ‘giraffe’ was headed for extinction before the Clintonian years ever arrived – taking with it, a certain decadence and rebellion that has yet to be replaced in a city with 32,000 restaurants.
On any given night, the Quilted Giraffe reservation list would read like a who’s who of New York’s power elite. Cataloging his fellow dining room guests one evening was financial journalist John Weir Close who wrote: ‘Woody Allen has dibs on table 7, as on other nights do Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton, and Adnan Khashoggi. Warren Beatty is, as usual, at table 6. Gianni Agnelli is holding court at table 5, which is also a favorite of both William Paley and Ann Getty…Table 2 is assigned to Mr. and Mrs. Andy Rooney, to be followed by Don and Marilyn Hewitt, and then Mr. and Mrs. Walter Cronkite in turn.’
A young Gwyneth Paltrow dines with her father, Bruce Paltrow on a handful of the restaurant’s iconic appetizers known as the ‘beggar’s purse’ – each tiny crepe was a decadent bundle of beluga caviar and creme fraiche that was finished with gold leaf on top
‘Barry was very clever and very down to earth and always wanting people to feel comfortable and wanting people to feel like they were special,’ said Loren Michelle, a former employee of the Quilted Giraffe
Barry Wine poses with Madonna in the kitchen of the Quilted Giraffe, ‘I called myself the co-conspirator in Warren (Beatty’s) seduction,’ said Wine to DailyMail.com
Warren Beatty holds up a pair of Quilted Giraffe branded underwear. Likewise, Barry keeps a note from the artist Helen Frankenthaler who wrote to thank him for the Quilted Giraffe sweatshirt that reads: ‘As you can see I’m a walking ad for QG!’
In many ways, the Quilted Giraffe perfectly encapsulated the era from which it was born; a time when New York City was a hedonistic mecca of excess, power, sex, drugs, money, money, and more money. In 1986, the New York Times called the Quilted Giraffe, ‘Manhattan’s celebrated monument to self-indulgence;’ a deft description for a restaurant where the average bill (according to Town & Country) per table was $442 (roughly $1,050 in today’s money) and guests were driven home in a complimentary navy-blue Rolls Royce.
At the center of the circus was the restaurant’s idiosyncratic ringmaster, Barry Wine; whose kitchen clicked like clockwork while he entertained his guests with practical jokes and kept the hype going with other games like the time he snatched a customer’s loafers from under the table after the guest had slipped them off in the throes of passion with his dinner date; only to return them later under a silver cloche for a surprise ‘dessert.’ Or the time he waltzed through the tiny dining room introducing his guests to a phallic Japanese vegetable that was particularly large and hairy.
Sharing the helm was also Barry’s now ex-wife, Susan, who ran front of house operations, ‘…that is, you know, the French tradition,’ said Wine. The couple grew up across the street from each other in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before they eventually got married and moved to New York City.
Barry worked as a young corporate attorney in Manhattan when he and Susan decided to move upstate in favor of a slower paced life. ‘I had been this Wall Street lawyer in 1969 when Woodstock came along, and I missed it because I was working. So, I rented a car, drove up there, stopped in New Paltz and bought a house that same day,’ said Wine to DailyMail.com.
Blythe Danner, actress and mother of Gwyneth Paltrow smiles for Barry’s camera during her evening at the Quilted Giraffe while the legendary photographer Richard Avedon (right) showcases one of his prints
Roger Ebert, film critic gives his beggar’s purse ‘two thumbs up’
The restaurant first opened in 1975 as a humble but elegant eatery in New Paltz, New York by Barry and Susan Wine before moving the location to Manhattan where it became a celebrity hot spot for movie stars like Shirley MacLaine (pictured)
The Wines settled into their new home; Barry as a small-town country lawyer while Susan opened an art gallery and clothing boutique in the village. The only thing missing was a restaurant and the Wines thought an eatery next door to Susan’s gallery might drive more business from the ladies who lunch crowd. They re-purposed a Victorian clapboard home and opened the doors to the Quilted Giraffe in 1975; the name was inspired by a restaurant called the Quilted Bear in Scottsdale, Arizona where Susan’s parents lived. The decor was simple and elegant but quirky: the walls were embellished with a herd of giraffe themed baby quilts taken from an exhibit at Susan’s gallery while a massive, stuffed toy giraffe filled the bathtub in the bathroom.
Barry’s debut in the kitchen was auspicious. It was on New Year’s Eve in 1976 when his chef’s car had broken down on the way to work. Facing a fully booked night of reservations, Barry had no choice but to start cooking and he never stopped. His learning curve was steep, he told Dailymail.com: ‘Because I didn’t know how to cook, it also meant that I didn’t know when something was done. I didn’t know when the steak was rare, medium or well-done. I didn’t know if the fish was cooked through or over cooked.’
By 1979, the little-restaurant-that-could became the hottest ticket in the Hudson Valley and the Wines were ready to go back to Manhattan. They shuttered the doors in New Paltz and took over a tiny Greek deli on Second Avenue, moving their family of four into the apartment upstairs.
Long gone were the $9.00 New Paltz prices. The dinner prix-fix menu which included an appetizer, entrée, cheese course and dessert started $32.50 in Manhattan. By the time the Quilted Giraffe moved to its second location on Madison Avenue, the prix-fix cost $75 not including wine and the mandatory 18% tax and tip. ‘Everybody was afraid to be expensive,’ said Wine, who explained that he bumped by the prices in $5 increments every three months.
The prix-fix, of course, did not include the Quilted Giraffe’s infamous signature dish: the ‘beggar’s purse’ – a cheeky name for a tiny, savory appetizer that John Weir Close called, ‘the Proustian madeleine of the 1980s.’ The ‘purse’ was a supple bundle of beluga caviar and crème fraiche that bulged from a delicate crepe, topped off with gold leaf and pulled together by a chive ‘purse string.’ You could purchase one individually for an additional $15 or a collection of five for $75.
Diane Sawyer (journalist) and her husband Mike Nichols, the Hollywood film director (The Graduate, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) feast on a collection of beggar’s purses. In the early 1980s the decadent appetizer was originally sold as a $30 addition to the prix-fix menu, by 1990 a collection of five cost $75
Al Roker, host of The Today Show celebrates his birthday at the Quilted Giraffe in 1992. ‘Woody Allen has dibs on table 7, as on other nights do Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton, and Adnan Khashoggi. Warren Beatty is, as usual, at table 6. Gianni Agnelli is holding court at table 5, which is also a favorite of both William Paley and Ann Getty…Table 2 is assigned to Mr. and Mrs. Andy Rooney, to be followed by Don and Marilyn Hewitt, and then Mr. and Mrs. Walter Cronkite in turn,’ reported journalist John Weir Close
Beggar’s purse antics were the force driving the dining room entertainment that people flocked to taste and see. The handcuff ‘were all part of the fun,’ said Wine to DailyMail.com
Yoko Ono (left) enjoys dinner with her son, Sean Lennon (right). The beggars’ purse appetizer was always served on telescoping silver pedestals, most of the time the diner had to eat them hands free while handcuffed to the furniture
Former New York City mayor, David Dinkins, a Quilted Giraffe habitue opens wide for his begger’s purse
They would arrive at your table in requisite dramatic fashion; in the palm of a gilded plaster hand or on top of silver telescoping candle pillars. Handcuffs were also part of the fun, Loren Michelle, a former employee told DailyMail.com: ‘Barry is a little kinky but in a cute way.’ If you were beautiful and you were game, Barry would instruct the guest to close their eyes and take the entire treat down in one bite as their hands were shackled to chrome railings. Decadent, suggestive, and outrageous – it was New York City in the 1980s after all and beggar’s purse antics were the force driving the dining room entertainment that people flocked to taste and see.
Barry Wine is the Wall Street lawyer turned amateur chef that owned the Quilted Giraffe with his ex-wife Susan and turned it into a culinary juggernaut without any formal training. He became an early pioneer in ‘nouvelle cuisine.’ Celebrity chef, David Burke told the New York Times that Barry Wine ‘was the first chef who showed me how creative and whimsical you can be’
Describing what made the restaurant different from others, Barry Wine told DailyMail.com that it wasn’t necessarily the food; which he said ‘was very good but it was the feeling. I think that’s what people remember most,’ said Wine. The Wines did something that no restaurant had done before, they broke down the third wall, ‘Guests weren’t just being entertained, they were part of the entertainment.’
It was the restaurant’s certain ‘je ne sais quoi.’ Barry established a good-humored friendship with one of his most loyal regulars, Warren Beatty. ‘I called myself the co-conspirator in Warren’s seduction of Madonna,’ he said to DailyMail.com, referring to the time the legendary Hollywood romance blossomed between the two stars during the filming of Dick Tracy.
Once Barry sent to Warren Beatty’s table a beggar’s purse packed with peanut butter. Another time he hid fake food on the actor’s plate – a piece of plastic broccoli mixed in with his vegetables or a plastic egg jammed into his mashed potatoes. Susan Wine told Town & Country in 2013: ‘People loved it…You couldn’t go to Lutèce and get that shtick; you couldn’t go to the Four Seasons and get it. You’re getting the food and the service, and then the chef comes out and plays a practical joke on you. Where else are you going to find that?’
According to Town & Country, Bunny Mellon left her diamond cuff at the restaurant and sent her driver along with a $50 reward to return it. Among the soigne celebrities and socialite regulars like Brooke Astor, Jayne Wrightsman, Ann Getty, Bill Paley, fabled Italian playboy – Gianni Agnelli and Jacqueline Onassis in her blue Chanel suit were also titans of Wall Street: Ron Perelman, Michael Milken and Bernie Madoff (who exclusively ordered take-out for his office around the corner).
For an elite club of high-powered men in the mergers and acquisitions investment world that called themselves ‘the Lucky Sperm Club;’ the Quilted Giraffe served as their club house. Nothing screams ‘money’ quite like a dozen of beggar’s purses and magnum of Chateau Lafitte Rothschild. ‘There was so much money. It was the 80s! People were doing coke everywhere,’ said Loren Michelle to DailyMail.com.
Susan Wine (left) sits with fashion designer Michael Kors in 1990 at the Quilted Giraffe. The (now divorced couple) originally opened the restaurant in upstate New York in 1975 as a way to drive business from the ‘ladies who lunch’ to her local art gallery and boutique, by 1979, the restaurant became so popular, they moved it to Manhattan
Jasper Johns, the celebrated American artist known for his ‘Flag’ painting smiles for the camera (left). Yo-Yo Ma the cellist cuts into a specially made dessert (right). It was important for Barry to make everyone’s dining experience unique, and often the kitchen staff would have to come up with these special surprises at a moment’s notice
Billionaire Saudi arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi who played a key role in the Iran-Contra Affair was having dinner with his entourage on the evening that the scandal broke in 1986. He borrowed the restaurant’s phone to call his pilot and tell him to ‘Keep the engines running’
Barry would supply these Wall Street men with Cuban cigars sold under the table that he smuggled back from ‘…Geneva in special nondescript white plastic boxes, each with its tell-tale gold foil ring removed,’ said John Weir Close in his book A Giant Cow-Tipping by Savages: The Boom, Bust, and Boom Culture of M&A.
Another Quilted Giraffe patron was Donald Trump, the lifelong germophobe who had a problem putting his fork down on the table without a table cloth. Wine told Dailymail.com: ‘He called me over to complain. He said, ‘I’m not going to put my fork down on your table full of germs.’ Trump then explained to Wine why he preferred to be seated in front of the bathroom: ‘I like this table because everybody wants to come up to me and shake my hand and if I see that the person coming toward me left the bathroom; I won’t shake it.’
Other prominent guests were Henry Kissinger, notable statesman and gourmand, who supposedly got ‘bombed’ according to Susan Wine in Town & Country. Also, the infamous Saudi arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi who had a key role in the Iran-Contra Affair, was still swilling his Krug champagne and polishing off a chocolate souffle with his entourage on the night the scandal broke in 1986. It would inevitably become the scandal that would mar the Raegan administration after his top officials facilitated the sale of arms to an embargoed Iran, in hopes to use the proceeds from the transaction to fund the Contras, a right-wing rebel group in Nicaruagua.
After dinner, Khashoggi used the restaurant’s private line to call his pilot and order him to: ‘Keep the jets running.’ As the scandal began to wind down, Barry remembers that Ivana Trump and Adnan’s wife, Lamia Khashoggi would often be seen together having lunch at the restaurant, later Trump would purchase Kashoggi’s 261-foot long super-yacht for $29million.
‘I remember the one night there was a couple having sex in the atrium and everyone was all about that, we were all just standing in the doorway watching them just f****** in front of everyone,’ said Loren Michelle, who started working at the Quilted Giraffe when she was 22-years-old and now works as a caterer in Brooklyn. ‘To be 22 and make liver for Henry Kissinger is pretty incredible, I always felt very lucky to work with Barry at the beginning of my career.’
Barry has fun with a guest in the kitchen. Loren Michelle told Dailmail.com: ‘I remember the one night there was a couple having sex in the atrium and everyone was all about that, we were all just standing in the doorway watching them just f****** in front of everyone,’ said Loren Michelle. For this reason Barry said, ‘I had the sinks reinforced in six bathrooms’
Barry Wine stands between Dustin Hoffman (left) and Warren Beatty (right) at the entrance of the restaurant in 1990. Beatty was a regular customer that Wine often played pranks on, slipping fake plastic food into the actor’s dishes. ‘You couldn’t go to Lutèce and get that shtick; you couldn’t go to the Four Seasons and get it. You’re getting the food and the service, and then the chef comes out and plays a practical joke on you. Where else are you going to find that?’ said Susan Wine
Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim bites into a supple beggar’s purse. On and off throughout the 80s and 90s, the Quilted Giraffe was the most expensive restaurant in the United States, where the average American Express charge was $442. Among celebrities and socialites, the restaurant was also popular for the titans of Wall Street: Ron Perelman, Michael Milken and Bernie Madoff- who preferred to order take-out from his office around the corner
The employees also had their fair share of fun but their party started when the restaurant closed. ‘We would go out till two, or three o’clock, sometimes to five in the morning, we were going downtown to Danceteria a lot or sometimes Limelight when it was hot, or maybe The Pyramid Club and Area,’ said Loren Michelle to DailyMail.com
The Quilted Giraffe was Tom Colicchio’s first job (center, holding the knife). Remembering his trial shift he told Esquire: ‘… the woman working the line next to me kept messing up and making me look bad. The last day of my kitchen trail, I just said to her very quietly, ‘Do me a favor and get out of my way, because I want this job.’ The Quilted Giraffe became a ‘kingmaker’ for young chefs looking to launch their career, most famously David Kinch, Noel Comess, Jose Andres and Jan Birnbaum
Ed Bradley (left) , host of 60 Minutes shares a laugh with Barry Wine. Susan Wine (right) poses for a photo with Andy Rooney and his wife. The beloved curmudgeon and 60 Minutes who was a long time regular of the Quilted Giraffe. Once after ordering his usual martini, Barry returned with a supersized martini glass filled with water and an onion on a chopstick, ‘That’s very funny, but I asked for an olive,’ he said
Crazy things would happen at the Quilted Giraffe and the Wines were always there to add to its excitement. Barry purchased a navy Rolls Royce to drive his guests home, ‘It sat outside the restaurant and we had a six foot tall female driver and then sometime, we had this little Chinese guy who carried the gun. There was never a dull moment,’ said Wine to DailyMail.com.
Barry smiles when asked about the time Susan allegedly kicked out three women by throwing their fur coats into the street, ‘I’m sure that happened,’ he said. But to be fair, Susan made an exception to squeeze them between dinner reservations after they begged for a table; hours later they refused to leave. Susan notoriously ran a tight ship in front-of-house operations, to the point that Arthur Sulzberger Jr, publisher of the New York Times was moved to send an apology letter after missing his dinner reservation.
‘There was unbelievable demand,’ Susan told the New York Times in 1992, ‘and we had to make sure people would come when they said they would, because we could not afford to waste a seat.’ Things completely changed after the Quilted Giraffe received its first four-star review from the New York Times in 1984. Barry’s right hand man in the kitchen, Noel Comess told Town & Country: ‘It was like a nuke going off in the place.’ To celebrate, Barry gave Noel a Rolex watch.
The Quilted Giraffe became such an important part of New York’s cultural history that when celebrating the new millennium in 2000, the newspaper added it to their timeline of the city’s most important events like the year Ellis Island opened and when the New York Dodgers won the 1955 World Series
In 1987, the Quilted Giraffe moved from its Second Avenue location to its final place on Madison Avenue and 55th Street in the bottom of the AT&T building. The lavishly appointed dining room was imagined by Barry Wine who inspired by 1950s diners
Barry incorporated handcuffs into the begger’s purse hype. Former employee Loren Michelle said: ‘Barry is a little kinky but in a cute way’
But the Quilted Giraffe’s outsize legacy is much more than the cultural lore of its celebrity patrons and expensive wine list. Even in its humble beginnings in New Paltz, the Wines were pioneers in the culinary arts during a time when Julia Child had yet to liberate America from TV dinners and green bean casseroles.
The wasabi tuna pizza was another signature dish at the Quilted Giraffe. By the 90s, Barry’s focus turned to Japanese fusion. ‘Quilted Giraffe may easily be the most exciting, most accessible Japanese restaurant in town: just Japanese enough for the Japanese, not too ethnic for the less-than-adventurous New Yorkers,’ said Gael Greene, New York Magazine restaurant criti
At the time, New York City’s fine dining scene was dominated by the disciplined school of French cuisine, its icons were Lutèce, La Côte Basque and the fabled Le Cirque. The Wines were looking to do something different. ‘We said ‘we’re not French, we’re going to be American,’ explained Wine who began reinventing French classics with his own twist. For instance, the famous leg of lamb dish baked in hay from the Michelin 3-star restaurant in France, Les Prés d’Eugenie became became ‘leg of lamb cooked in corn husks on a Weber charcoal grill.’
‘The Quilted Giraffe was one of the first serious luxury restaurants on the French model that had no pretense of being French,’ said David Waltuck, a legendary New York restaurateur who opened Chanterelle in SoHo around the same time the Wines brought their upstate juggernaut to Manhattan, or as food critic, Gael Greene called it: ‘Lutèce country.’
‘There was no such thing as arugula in 1972. There was no foie gras. There were no fresh raspberries, there were no stores like we have today.” explained Barry Wine to Dailymail.com. ‘It was all processed, packaged food.’ The Wines began growing produce and ingredients for their restaurant on their small property; perhaps the earliest version of the ubiquitous ‘farm to table’ restaurants today.
Looking at a list of wines served by the glass from the restaurant’s earliest days in New Paltz, Barry Wine laughs perhaps at their own naivety or perhaps at the absurdity: ‘Chateau Petrus: $4.00, Chateau D’Yquem: $4.50, Chateau Cheval Blanc: $3.00;’ all wines that today, fetch thousands of dollars.
Barry Wine stands next to celebrity chef, Daniel Boulud (center) whose restaurant ‘Daniel’ in New York City is a Michelin three-star. Fine dining in New York City was dominated by the disciplined school of French cuisine when the Wines first opened the Quilted Giraffe and Barry looked to do something different: ‘We said ‘we’re not French, we’re going to be American’
‘I’m sure we got a lot wrong at the beginning. We learned on the job, but we had nice local waiters that were those were the days everybody was just discovering food, so it was very cool to say you worked in a good restaurant, not a diner,’ explained Wine.
It was for this very reason that Barry Wine was able to turn the Quilted Giraffe into a culinary juggernaut. Without any formal training, Barry was unburdened by its strict rules; allowing him the freedom to experiment in the budding world of ‘nouvelle cuisine.’ He challenged the white- table cloth establishment and created imaginative recipes that had never been done before, things like the begger’s purses, wasabi tuna pizza and mustard ice cream.
Barry Wine had a creative knack for putting an elegant spin on time-honored basics. ‘It’s all approachable food but it always had a little bit of a twist,’ said Loren Michelle, who still keeps a copy of the menu on her desk. ‘Here’s a classic example,’ she explained, ‘Buttery pound cake with champagne lime cream and fresh berries. All are pretty straightforward ingredients but just that fact that he put champagne in the lime sabayon elevated it.’
‘It was all very progressive and modern, looking at this menu I would serve pretty much all of it today,’ said Michelle to DailyMail.com
It’s no surprise that the Quilted Giraffe was responsible for launching the careers of many celebrity chefs, most notably Tom Colicchio (Gramercy Tavern, Craft, and judge of Top Chef on Bravo) and David Kinch (Manresa) and hiring others like Jose Andres (minibar by Jose Andres, e by Jose Andres, Somni). ‘Because we were so famous, everybody wanted to work with is,’ said Wine to DailyMail.com. Colicchio told Esquire in 2011: ‘I remember at The Quilted Giraffe, when I was when working there to try out for the sous-chef position. I really wanted it, and the woman working the line next to me kept messing up and making me look bad. The last day of my kitchen trail, I just said to her very quietly, ‘Do me a favor and get out of my way, because I want this job.’
Warren Beatty (left) and Keith Hernandez (right) enjoy beggar’s purses that have now been recreated on menus all over the world
Michael Cetta (left) poses in the foyer of Quilted Giraffe. Cetta is the owner of New York City’s Sparks Steakhouse where Paul Castellano of the Gambino crime family was infamously gunned down in a mob hit ordered by John Gotti. Hollywood actor, William Hurt (right) points to his beggar’s purse
Abigail Van Buren (left) of the ‘Dear Abbey’ is treated to custom desserts designed by the kitchen ‘Signed Helpless and but Happy.’ Tommy Mattola, American music executive and former husband of Mariah Carey (right) celebrates a party for his record label at the restaurant. Sony purchased the AT&T building on Madison Avenue that housed the Quilted Giraffe’s restaurant on the ground floor in 1991. In her 1992 review, Gael Greene remarked on how things changed writing that it was now: ‘The Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey Sony, the Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman Sony’
It was also the place that denied a job to Chef Thomas Keller (of French Laundry and Per Se fame). When asked what he looked for in employees, Wine said: ‘People who weren’t traumatized from other kitchens.’
Sony purchased the AT&T building on Madison Avenue that housed the Quilted Giraffe’s restaurant on the ground floor in 1991. After 18 years, the Wines were tired of the grueling everyday commitment and sold their lease to Sony for a seven-figure amount. They closed their doors, officially on New Years Eve in 1992.
Barry Wine now spends most of his time working in his Chelsea penthouse apartment painting and designing jewelry. Mementos of the Giraffe are scattered throughout his home- mugs, menus, newspaper clippings, even the dramatic floor to ceiling pillars that were light fixtures have found a place in his upstate home. When asked if he would ever consider opening another restaurant he said, ‘No,’ but added: ‘I feel like we accomplished many things that weren’t done before, and it was honest.’
The dining room at the Quilted Giraffe’s second location. The restaurant closed in 1992 when Sony purchased the Madison Avenue building from AT&T; after 18-years of business, the Wines saw it at their golden opportunity to bow out. Their closing night was New Years Eve 1992
Barry Wine, chef and owner of the Quilted Giraffe would often play tricks on his customers; once he surreptitiously took the loafers of a man who had slipped them off while in the throes of passion, only to return them later under a metal cloche for dessert