Reopenings – Midtown As Microcosm

When it’s back, the city will be too.

- By Adam Platt

WHEN HE’S FEELING low about his little corner of that restaurant ecosystem called midtown, Paul Denamiel does what many of us are prone to do during these sideways times: He thinks about the good old days. His family enterprise, Le Rivage, which opened in the ’50s among the gin joints and dive bars clustered west of the Theater District, on the stretch of 46th Street now known as Restaurant Row, hasn’t been reviewed for a while, or breathlessly blogged about, or patronized by members of the haute Broadway celebrity set. But over the years, Bruce Spring steen has been in for a taste of the sturdy French cooking, and Madonna has too. On good days, which were most days, you could set your watch by the different crowds—the matinee crowd, the pre-theater dinner crowd, the post-theater regulars—who would keep the snug townhouse dining room busy until after midnight.