Sardi’s Is Back After 648 Days, Its Fortunes Tied to Broadway
The New York Times
The caricatures are back up. But many shows are canceling performances just as Sardi’s reopens, a hurdle for a restaurant catering to the theater crowd.
It felt sort of like old times, the other night at Sardi’s.
Joe Petrsoric, back in his familiar red jacket, was lining up martini glasses at the second floor bar where he has worked since arriving from Yugoslavia in 1972. Manning the front door, his traditional dark suit now accessorized with a face mask, was Max Klimavicius, who started working in the kitchen in 1974 after immigrating from Colombia; he now runs the place.
It had been 648 days since Sardi’s, a watering hole so closely entwined with Broadway that it was name-checked in the Rodgers and Hart song “The Lady Is a Tramp,” last served its cannelloni au gratin. And now, on the long night of the winter solstice, the oft-imperiled Main Stem mainstay with caricature-covered walls was ready to try again.
