 Originally painted as a section of the curtain for the Serge Diaghilev's Ballet Russe over three weeks in London, the painting was was acquired by Phyllis Lambert for the Four Seasons. It depicts a Spanish bullring.  It hung on the Four Seasons Wall for many years until Aby Rosen bought the building.  He undertook a renovation of the restaurant and decided to remove the curtain in order to 'preserve' it in the middle of the night.  Many people were concerned; articles were written; and the curtain ended up at the New York Historical Society.  

Four Seasons Restaurant

Le Tricorne

After the restaurant was sold in 1973, a new group took over. The grille room was established and they hired a new chef, ma&icirc;tre d &ndash; But the restaurant was not noted for the food. Nora Ephron often came for lunch, she brought the publishers in and bit became known as a power lunch setting. Philip Johnson held a round table there. Henry Kissinger and Tom Wolfe were regulars. They were not alone. Other regulars Henry Grunwald, Clay Felker, Bess Myerson, Gene Shalit, Richard Snyder, Gloria Steinem, James Beard, and you, Michael Korda, Calvin Klein, Edgar Bronfman, and you, Jackie Onassis, Nelson Doubleday, Mark Goodson, and you, too, Oscar de la Renta, Louis Auchincloss, Alex Liberman. The Grille Room attracted New York's thinkers, movers and shakers all immortalized in Lee Eisenberg's Esquire article.

 The power lunch was invented at the Four Seasons, and the cast of characters was a source of fascination. Some of the regulars&amp;rsquo; favorite tables, as sketched by Julian Niccolini, an owner who presided over the seating chart.  

The Four Seasons Restaurant

America's Most Powerful Lunch

The Four Seasons Restaurant came about when Bronfman hired Joseph Baum Restaurant Associates to make a restaurant to add value to the building. He decided to highlight American cuisine. Mimi Sheraton was on the research and testing team for the menu. The restaurant cost $4.5 million to open. It should be compared to the Guggenheim Museum which cost $3 million and was built at roughly the same time. It was the first restaurant to offer meals that changed with the seasons and was famous for its power lunches &ndash; JFK`s 45th Birthday dinner was held there. More recently there was a new renovation by Annabelle Seldorf in 2018.

 Belmont Freeman discusses the restaurant renovation of the Four Seasons Restaurants in the Phillip Johnson Seagram Building. 

Four Seasons Restaurant

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