La Grenouille: Theatre on 52nd Street

This morning Eater points us to Vanity Fair's "web exclusive" coverage of 45 years at La Grenouille (watch the Savory video). There is a short blurb about the restaurant and 15 photos showing old menus and yesterdays celebs coming and going from the establishment. VF has it right when they point out that La Grenouille is the last of its kind.* The experience of dinner at the restaurant is part old school French cuisine and part dinner theatre. Sitting side-by-side on the banquet watching social x-rays cavort is great entertainment, all the while picking up succulent frogs legs with your fingers and daintily eating the meat off the tiny bones. There is something very decadent about the whole activity.

On one occasion when Chris and I were at the restaurant, we had the pleasure of sitting next to a Las Vegas Casino owner who chatted us up, while we watched Anne Slater entertain her table, until our attention was turned to the front door where an entourage of secret service preceded an unidentifiable foreign dignitary leading his family to a large table in the back of the restaurant.

A prix-fixe menu costs $95/person. Add a bottle of wine to your bill, plus service and tax and you've got a night out that costs about the same as tickets for two to a Broadway show.

*Sort of. It's the last of the posh restaurants that hail from the French culinary invasion that was ignited by Henri Soule's Le Pavillon. There's one other less flaunty establishment on the Upper East Side: Le Veau D'or. Step inside this restaurant for a true time warp. It is a modestly priced classic experience not to be missed.