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Hot NYC Restaurants Mostly Dying To Serve Jeremy Lin And Eli Manning
By
Jen Chung
Published Feb 16, 2012
Modified Feb 16, 2012
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By
Jen Chung
Published Feb 16, 2012
Modified Feb 16, 2012
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at how many hot New York City restaurants are falling over themselves to serve linternational Knicks star Jeremy Lin and Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning: They called nine restaurants, posing as the athletes' assistants, asking for reservations for six at the coveted 8:00 p.m. time. While super high-end restaurants like Per Se and Masa wouldn't budge, The Lion and Nobu were happy to accommodate them.
Babbo could only do 8:30 p.m. for Eli Manning ("We can do 8:30. We don't seat parties at 8 o'clock. I know when Mr. Manning's been in the restaurant before, we've had to inform him of the policy. I wish I could say yes—we love having him—but if I said yes for eight, we'd be letting everyone down") and 8:45 p.m. while L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon could do 8:00 p.m. for Lin but 8:30 p.m. for Manning (which is insane, since Manning has a "10-table" ring). And the host/hostess at the Lion said of Lin, "Yes, oh my God, my boyfriend won't stop talking about him."
Of course, for some old fogies, this an update of the classic 1992 SPY magazine story, "Big Shots Never Wait," where SPY writers pretended to be assistants for people like Macauley Culkin, Lorne Michaels, Dan Rather, and Tom Arnold and demanded to know whether hot restaurants could accommodate them—back then, Pat Riley couldn't get better than a 9:45 p.m. reservation at Coco Pazzo.
Tagged
Eli Manning
giants
high end
jeremy lin
knicks
reservations
restaurants
sports
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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