The Colony

Cuisine for the Cosmopolite

The Colony
December 1920–December 4, 1971
French-Continental

Ownership:

Gene Cavallero, Jr. (1956–1971)

Alfred Hartmann (1922–1927); Ernest Cerutti (1922–1937); & Gene Cavallero, Sr. (1922–1956)

Joseph L. Pani (1919–1922)

Location:

30 East 61st Street
(Entrance moved around the corner from 667 Madison Avenue in 1926 to the more discrete location on East 61st Street).

Literature:

Robert B. Parker, Pale Kings and Princes (1987): In chapter 36, the characters dine at the Colony Restaurant.

Rona Jaffe, The Best of Everything (1958):

“And others, who have a great deal of money to spend, stay at the Plaza or the Waldorf or the St Regis, and go to the hit musicals with tickets that cost fifty dollars a pair, and dine at the Colony and the Brussels and Le Pavillon, and drink at the Harwyn and the Little Club and the Starlight Roof, and when they go home they say, Once a year is enough for me, I couldn’t stand the pace!” (Penguin Classics, 2011: 389).

Ludwig Bemelmans, Dirty Eddie (1947):

“‘Romanoff’s, alors, is not the Colony in New York, and the Colony is not Fouquet’s in Paris, but I love it with my tongue hanging out'” (Hamish Hamilton, 1948: 104).

Ludwig Bemelmans, I Love You I Love You I Love You (1939):

“De Glenzer went to the Colony for lunch to discuss terms for a Gauguin sketch. He looked through the crowd assembled at the good and bad tables as he sat down to wait for his client” (Hamish Hamilton, 1943).

Publications:

Ribbat, Christoph. In the Restaurant. London: Pushkin Press, 2017: 74-75.

Sidney, Deana. “Society’s Darling – The Colony Restaurant and Their Legendary Chicken Hash in a Bread Box.” Lost Past Remembered. Blog, March 20, 2014 (illustrated). [Features incomplete 1945 recipe for The Colony’s famous chicken hash in a bread box, or ‘Eggs Encore Colony,’ as well as author’s interpretation of how to recreate the dish.]

Colacello, Bob. “Here’s to the Ladies Who Lunched!” Vanity Fair, January 30, 2012 (illustrated). [Featured in the February 2012 issue.]

Bence, Bill. “The Colony Restaurant.” A Week in New York April 1946: A Slice of Time in the City. Blog, May 19, 2010.

“Recipes of the Lost City: Toast Colony.” Lost City. Blog, November 27, 2009. [Features recipes for Toast Colony and White Bean Salad.]

Whitaker, Jan. “Catering to the Rich and Famous.” Restaurant-ing Through History. Blog, July 26, 2009 (illustrated).

Grimes, William. Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York. New York: North Point Press, 2009: 235-239 (illustrated), 256, 286, 287, 299.

Fine Collins, Amy. “The Colony Elite.” Vanity Fair (September 2000). [Published online June 20, 2011.]

Mariani, John with Alex Von Bidder. The Four Seasons: A History of America’s Premier Restaurant. New York: Smithmark, 1999: 10.

Cavallero, Gene, Jr. and Ted James. The Colony Cookbook. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.

Johnston, Laurie. “Colony Restaurant Closes Amid Tears.” New York Times, December 6, 1971.

Greene, Gael. “Colony Waxworks.” New York 4, 1 (January 4, 1971): 61-63.

Greene, Gael. Bite: A New York Restaurant Strategy for Hedonists, Masochists, Selective Penny Pinchers and the Upwardly Mobile. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971.

Cannon, Poppy. “Restaurants.” Town & Country 118, 4505 (December 1964): 50-51. [Cannon pays homage to New York restaurants that observe the changing seasons, including La Caravelle and Lüchow’s.]

Davidson, Jo. Between Sittings: An Informal Autobiography of Jo Davidson. New York: Dial Press, 1951: 210, 272.

Beebe, Lucius. The Stork Club Bar Book. New York: J. J. Little & Ives, 1946: 20. [Regarding Colony head bartender Marco’s preference for the shaken martini.]

Brody, Iles. The Colony: Portrait of a Restaurant and Its Famous Recipes. New York: Greenberg, 1945.

Sullivan, Frank. “Gloria Swanson Defends Her Title.” New Yorker, March 30, 1940: 21-22. [Regarding the appearance of actress Gloria Swanson at the Colony in a smoke-puffing hat.]

Case Harriman, Margaret. “Profiles: Two Waiters and a Chef – II.” New Yorker, June 8, 1935: 22-26.

Case Harriman, Margaret. “Profiles: Two Waiters and a Chef – I.” New Yorker, June 1, 1935: 20-24.

Ross, George. Tips on Tables: Being a Guide to Dining and Wining in New York at 365 Restaurants Suitable to Every Mood and Every Purse. New York: Covici Friede, 1934:

“Nowhere in New York will you find such a coterie of cosmopolites, such a consistently smart and impressive collection of people of ‘breeding’ as gathers daily for luncheon at the Colony.” [Quoted in Grimes 2009, p. 238.]

James, Rian. Dining in New York. New York: John Day Company, 1930: 187-188.

Notable Guests:

Gianni Agnelli (Former Senator of the Italian Republic) & Marella Agnelli (Italian Noblewoman & Socialite): See Doris Lilly below.

Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook (Publisher & Politician)

Vincent Astor (Businessman)

Bernard Baruch (Financier): “And air conditioning was installed, possibly the first in any restaurant. But it was shut off every summer Saturday to please Bernard Baruch, whose simple tastes demanded a cup of soup, grilled fish, boiled potato, a glass of rye and unchilled air.” (1)

Lucius Beebe (Writer)

Ellin Mackay Berlin (Writer) & Irving Berlin (Composer & Lyricist)

Betsy Bloomingdale (Socialite)

Arthur Brisbane (Editor)

Albert “Cubby” Broccoli (Film Producer)

Haywood Broun (Writer)

Clarence Brown (Film Director)

Truman Capote (Writer): Upon the closure of the restaurant in 1971, “Truman Capote cried and said he would never eat another plate of spaghetti.” (2)

Hattie Carnegie (Fashion Entrepreneur)

Oleg Cassini (Fashion Designer)

Dick Cavett (Television Host)

Bennett Cerf (Writer & Publisher)

Carol Channing (Actress & Comedian)

Charlie Chaplin (Comic Actor): Originated his snake-charmer dance (“in which, lying on his stomach, he plays the rôles of both charmer and snake”) in an upstairs party room at the Colony. (3)

Gary Cooper (Actor)

Frank Costello (Crime Boss)

Noël Coward (Playwright)

Joan Crawford (Actress)

Jo Davidson (Sculptor)

Van Day Truex (Interior Designer)

Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl (Actress)

Fulco di Verdura (Society Jeweler)

Marlene Dietrich (Actress & Singer):

“Not long ago, Miss Marlene Dietrich came into the Colony for lunch. Gene, knowing that people like to look at movie stars, and that movie stars like to be looked at, put her at a small table in the centre of the room. Presently Ernest noticed that she was fidgeting; beautiful women have to lean slightly backward in order to let their gaze rest swimmingly upon the public, and Miss Dietrich had nothing to lean against. Ernest, approaching with a swan-like motion, moved her to a table against the wall, with flowers, ferns, and stained glass behind her. ‘What she wanted,’ he said, later, ‘was a background.'” (4)

Luis Miguel Dominguin (Bullfighter)

Kirk Douglas (Actor & Filmmaker)

Doris Duke (Art Collector, Heiress, & Socialite)

Mia Farrow (Actress) and Frank Sinatra (Singer): “Their fights were like staged performances. You could tell what would happen if you consulted your watch. At 8:30 they’d arrive. At 8:45 he’d start shouting at her. At nine she’d throw a drink in his face” (Gene Cavallero, Jr., regarding the couple’s meals at the Colony). (5)

R.H. Fleischmann (Publisher of New Yorker)

Errol Flynn (Actor)

Ava Gardner (Actress)

George Gershwin (Composer)

Samuel Goldwyn (Film Producer)

C. Z. Guest (Actress): “I had always owned big dogs, but I finally broke down and got myself a little one just so I could bring him to the Colony.” (6)

Gloria Guinness (Socialite)

Pamela Harriman (Former United States Ambassador to France)

Rex Harrison (Actor)

Kitty Carlisle Hart (Actress)

William Randolph Hearst (Businessman)

Leona Helmsley (Businesswoman & “Queen of Mean”)

Ernest Hemingway (Writer) and George Plimpton (Journalist):

Following a feud over an interview, “Hemingway and Plimpton got into a hand-squeezing contest at the Colony restaurant. Hemingway destroyed Plimpton, applying such pressure that Plimpton’s hand was soon covered with little purple bruises.
‘Say, what are you doing?’ said a woman at the next table.
‘We’re just horsing around,’ Hemingway said. ‘We’re pretending we’re a pair of Norman Mailers.'” (7)

J. Edgar Hoover (Former Director of the FBI)

Jean Howard (Actress & Photographer)

Howard Hughes (Engineer & Businessman): See Doris Lilly below.

Barbara Hutton (Heiress & Socialite)

Otto Kahn (Banker)

George S. Kaufman (Playwright)

Slim Keith (Socialite)

Grace Kelly (Actress)

Nan Kempner (Socialite)

Rose Kennedy (Philanthropist & Socialite)

Dr. Rudolf Kommer (Journalist & Impresario):

“Dr. Rudolf Kommer lunches nearly every day at one of the centre tables; he is still regarded as a mystery man because, after you have discovered who he is and what he does, the whole thing turns out to be bewildering anyway.” (8)

“At this time I frequently joined my friend Rudolf Kommer for lunch at the Colony Restaurant, where he had a table and lunched daily in the company of some of our prettiest ladies. Kommer was always surrounded by beautiful women and, with his European wisdom, served as a kind of father confessor and advisor to them all. They doted on him and called him ‘Kaetchen.'” (9)

“Every day in the week except Wednesday—when he has to give Mrs. Vincent Astor her German lesson—you will find him ensconced at the Colony Restaurant, playing host to a group invariably graced by one or more of the loveliest ladies of our time.” (10)

Ivar Kreuger (Civil Engineer & Financier; “The Match King”)

Mary Elizabeth Leary “who for twenty-seven years ate lunch there nearly every day—lamp chops, salad, and a grapefruit—and dinner two or three times a week. ‘The coat room boys are practically my secretaries,’ she told The New Yorker in 1953. ‘They get me theater tickets, and if I have a little card party here—I love poker and canasta—they’ll make sandwiches and bring them around at 11 o’clock.'” (11)

Doris Lilly (Newspaper Columnist): “Serge Obolensky taught me how to eat lunch at The Colony for one dollar… You would order eggs ambassador…a piece of bread with a hole cut out of the middle and an egg in it, a little sauce on top. That was $1.50. It wasn’t even on the menu. Then iced coffee and free cookies. ‘Bring on the free cookies,’ we’d cry. Gene Senior would halve the check. Those free cookies kept many a glamour girl going until nine o’clock. When we went out at night with Gianni Agnelli or Howard Hughes we dragged them to The Colony.” (12)

Alfred Lowenstein (Financier)

Mabel Dodge Luhan (Writer)

Leonard Lyons (Newspaper Columnist)

Groucho Marx (Comedian)

Elsa Maxwell (Gossip Columnist)

Louis B. Mayer (Film Producer)

Gilbert Miller (Theatrical Producer) & Kitty Miller (Art Collector & Philanthropist)

Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten (Governor-General of India)

George Jean Nathan (Drama Critic & Magazine Editor)

Samuel Newhouse (Publisher)

Richard Nixon (37th President of the United States)

John Ringling North (President & Director of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus)

Merle Oberon (Actress)

Serge Obolensky (Russian Aristocrat & United States Army Colonel)

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Former First Lady of the United States) & Aristotle Onassis (Shipping Magnate)

Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII)

Babe Paley (Magazine Editor)

Eleanor Perry (Screenwriter & Author) & Frank Perry (Theatre Director & Filmmaker)

Cole Porter (Composer)

Lee Radziwill (Socialite)

Charles Revson (Businessman & Founder of Revlon)

Cordelia Biddle Robertson (Writer & Socialite)

Millicent Rogers (Jewelry Designer & Socialite)

Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd President of the United States & Former Governor of New York) & Eleanor Roosevelt (Former First Lady of the United States)

Arnold Rothstein (Crime Boss): In the Colony’s early, disreputable days, “Gambler Arnold Rothstein, soon to meet a rude and abrupt end, stopped by for sandwiches and ginger ale. He always left a 10-cent tip.” (13)

Rosalind Russell (Actress & Model)

Henry B. Sell (Editor of Town & Country)

Joe Schenck (Film Studio Executive)

Gloria Schiff (Model & Socialite)

Frank Shields (Tennis Player)

Jean Shrimpton (Model)

Anne Slater (Socialite)

Carmel Snow (Editor-in-Chief of Harper’s Bazaar)

Jill St. John (Actress)

Saint Subber (Theatrical Producer)

William Rhinelander Stewart (Businessman & “Best-Dressed Man in New York City”): “William Rhinelander Stewart has a table, reserved for him on certain days, against the left wall.” (14)

Preston Sturges (Film Director): “One evening…film director Preston Sturges showed up shabbily dressed, with a woman on each arm. After dinner he confessed to Gene senior that he was flat broke and unable to pay his tab. Gene senior handed him a $100 bill and instructed him to buy a new suit. ‘And until you get on your feet, you may eat here free,’ the restaurateur said. ‘But don’t you think one woman is sufficient for a man down on his luck?'” (15)

Gloria Swanson (Actress):

“No sooner had Miss Swanson settled herself at her table than a puff of smoke escaped from her hat and wreathed upward. Gene blanched and his eyes popped for the merest fraction of a second. Then, inured as he was to fashionable ladies’ hats, he recovered his savoir-faire…
The next puff galvanized Marcel, a green bus boy who had not yet acquired the Colony savoir-faire. He turned pale, seized a water carafe, and was about to put out Miss Swanson’s hat when a curt command from Gene sent him to the kitchen in confusion…
An electric something filled the room. The ladies realized that once again the shrewd and daring Gloria had outgeneralled them, but after the first sharp pang of baffled rage they steeled themselves to a pretended indifference to her new hat.
‘Gloria’s hat puffs,’ one fashionable lady remarked languidly.
‘Yes, I notice. But can it blow rings?'” (16)

Herbert Bayard Swope (Editor & Journalist)

Betsy Pickering Theodoracopulos (Model & Socialite)

Mike Todd (Film Producer)

Rudolph Valentino (Actor): Valentino dined at the Colony on August 14, 1926, the evening before he fell fatally ill with the perforated ulcers that took his life just over a week later, at age 31. (17)

Gloria Vanderbilt (Actress, Model, & Artist): Teenage Gloria Morgan married her friend’s father, Reginald Vanderbilt, after meeting him over homemade ice cream at the Colony. (18)

Virginia Fair Vanderbilt, aka Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt (Socialite): Credited with jump-starting the restaurant’s popularity, Mrs. Vanderbilt had a permanent table to the right of the entrance. (19)

William K. Vanderbilt (Businessman & Philanthropist): “The corner table to the right of the entrance has been W. K. Vanderbilt’s for eight years.” (20)

Diana Vreeland (Fashion Editor & Columnist)

Jimmy Walker (Former Mayor of New York City)

Walter Wanger (Film Producer)

John Wayne (Actor)

Orson Welles (Actor & Director)

Missy Weston (Model & Socialite)

Betsey Whitney (Philanthropist)

Richard Widmark (Actor)

Patricia “Honeychile” Wilder (Actress)

Edward VIII & Wallis Simpson, Duke & Duchess of Windsor

Elsie Woodward (Philanthropist)

Robert Young (Actor)

Notes:

In its early days, the Colony was known for its gambling club upstairs, frequented by gangsters such as Arnold Rothstein, and as a place to meet mistresses. (21) In 1922, chef Alfred Hartmann, maître d’ Ernest Cerutti, and waiter Gene Cavallero bought out the restaurant from owner Joseph Pani and closed it for a ten day revamp. (22) Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt’s arrival for lunch three months later completed the transformation, and “almost overnight tout New York had discovered The Colony.” (23)

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The Colony was the first restaurant in New York to have air conditioning, installed in the late 1920s, (24) though for the benefit of financier Bernard Baruch, it was switched off on Saturday afternoons (see Notable Guests, above). (25)

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The Colony became the first establishment in America to import and serve Dom Pérignon champagne, in the 1930s. (26) They were introduced to the champagne upon the visit of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (appointed Pope Pius XII in 1939). He brought five cases of Dom with him from the papal palace, and after Mrs. William Brady gave a Long Island dinner for the cardinal, she sent the remaining two cases to the Colony. “Gene senior was so impressed with his first taste of the noble wine, he began ordering it for his cellar, a subbasement two floors below street level where he already stocked some 50 varieties of champagne.” (27)

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Considered by Bill Blass as the first restaurant of the “ladies who lunch,” (28) “the Colony offered a feminized counterpart to ’21,’ with women outnumbering men by about six to one at lunchtime.” (29)

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Le Cirque owner Sirio Maccioni was a waiter at the Colony, and later maître d’. (30)

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Customers could check their dogs as well as their coats, though President Nixon was one of few customers allowed to actually bring his dog into the dining room. (31) For other canine guests, entrees were provided in a dog dining room “with satin cushions and silver plates.” (32) The Cavalleros’ memorandum of the preferences and “catastrophes” of Colony regulars includes an incident in which a “young and fairly scatterbrained matron” enjoyed a pre-theatre lunch at the Colony, and returned home after the matinee performance to find her dog mysteriously absent. “Almost before she had time for anxiety, the doorbell rang and a waiter from the Colony, wearing a well-cut overcoat and a soft hat, restored the dog, a morose Scottie which, she now remembered, she had checked at one o’clock in the ladies’ room. He seemed to have had a nice time, and was glutted with creamed chicken, consumed on the house.” (33)

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The Duke of Windsor was responsible for turning the bar into an eating area when he requested to eat there instead of the dining room after a few drinks. (34)

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The bar dining area featured a “blue and white striped lawn tent.” The tent was originally installed as a joke in 1938, but customers became so attached to it that it became a permanent fixture. (35)

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In 1926, the Colony moved its entrance to a more discreet doorway around the corner from Madison Avenue, at 30 East 61st Street. However, new one-way traffic regulations made even-numbered streets eastbound and odd-numbered streets westbound. When Mayor Jimmy Walker’s car had to go around the block in order to pull up in front of the Colony at 61st Street, he ordered a change in the direction of traffic. (36)

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The restaurant hid alcohol from officers during Prohibition by keeping them in a “service elevator reached—by one and all—via the foyer of the women’s rest room. No matter how quick the moves of the Federal agents, the evidence was always one floor away.” (37) Mayor Walker further protected the Colony from alcohol-related sanctions. Gene Cavallero, Jr., recalls an evening when the federal agents attempted to raid the restaurant in Walker’s presence: “He announced to them, ‘Gentlemen, don’t ever come back here again. This is my favorite restaurant.’ And then he turned to my father and said, ‘From now on I want to drink my whiskey out of a glass, not a cup.'” (38)

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How are broccoli, James Bond, and the Colony connected? Original Colony owner Pani was credited with introducing broccoli to America. Later owner Gene Cavallero, Sr., became good friends with a man who happened to be a broccoli grower and the restaurant’s best supplier of said vegetable. The broccoli grower’s son then chose to name himself after the lucrative plant—Albert “Cubby” Broccoli—and became producer of the Bond movies. Meanwhile, Cavallero, Jr., hired a Lebanese barman named Marco who is credited with inventing the shaken, not stirred, martini. We can only assume that “Cubby” Broccoli sampled a few of these innovative martinis during film production, although the phrase “shaken, not stirred” first appeared in Fleming’s 1956 novel, Diamonds are Forever, well before the production of the films. Perhaps Fleming himself bellied up to Marco’s bar? (39)

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The Colony Restaurant is frequently confused with the Colony Club, a women-only social club founded in 1903 and still in existence at 564 Park Avenue today. Colony Club members were often also regular customers of the Colony Restaurant, adding to the confusion.

Menu:

Thursday, March 17, 1966 (Culinary Institute of America)

Friday, July 22, 1955 (New York Public Library)

(1) Greene, 1971: 61.
(2) Johnston, 1971.
(3) Case Harriman (II), 1935: 26.
(4) ibid.: 26.
(5) Fine Collins, 2000.
(6) ibid.
(7) Remnick, David. “The Very Good Life of George Plimpton.” Washington Post, November 4, 1984.
(8) Case Harriman (I), 1935: 20.
(9) Davidson, 1951: 272.
(10) Woollcott, Alexander. While Rome Burns. New York: Viking Press, 1935: 156.
(11) Grimes, 2009: 239.
(12) Greene, 1971: 62.
(13) ibid.: 61.
(14) Case Harriman (I), 1935: 20.
(15) Fine Collins, 2000.
(16) Sullivan, 1940: 21.
(17) Greene, 1971; Kellogg, Eleanor. “Rudy Better After Relapse.” Daily News, August 17, 1926: 2.
(18) Greene, 1971.
(19) Grimes, 2009: 237.
(20) Case Harriman (I), 1935: 20.
(21) Fine Collins, 2000.
(22) Greene, 1971.
(23) ibid.: 61.
(24) Colacello, 2012.
(25) Fine Collins, 2000.
(26) Colacello, 2012.
(27) Fine Collins, 2000.
(28) ibid.
(29) Grimes, 2009: 238.
(30) ibid.: 238.
(31) Colacello, 2012.
(32) Johnston, 1971.
(33) Case Harriman (II), 1935: 24.
(34) Fine Collins, 2000.
(35) Johnston, 1971.
(36) Case Harriman (II), 1935: 25.
(37) Johnston, 1971.
(38) Fine Collins, 2000.
(39) ibid.

Cover photo: Illustration by Dong Kingman. Cover illustration from Gene Cavallero, Jr. and Ted James, The Colony Cookbook. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972. Sourced from Jan Whitaker, “Catering to the Rich and Famous.” Restaurant-ing Through History. Blog, July 26, 2009. Accessed March 23, 2023.