We started the year worrying that pom-pomed moccasin boots were here to stay. Thankfully, we now know they were not.

Meatpacking district original Florent Morellet failed to understand the skyrocketing rents on his "shabby" bit of Gansevoort St. 

At a Bergdorf Goodman Fashion Week party, a slightly manic Isaac Mizrahi explained why he does not attend fashion shows. Later on, at Cynthia Rowley, Parker Posey told us she doesn't like runway viewing because it makes her sweat. And Victoria Beckham almost prematurely revealed the winner of Project Runway.

A couple weeks later, we continued to talk fashion at the Westminster Dog Show: “You never want to wear anything that outshines the dog, you want to wear shoes that won’t slip, and you never want to wear anything that clashes with the carpet.”

On the one-year anniversary of The Box, now-embattled owner Simon Hammerstein told us: “If you look at the program from last year till now, certainly we kept pushing the boundaries of what we thought people would be able to take. … It paid off because people really responded well to stuff that I thought they would get creeped out by." How things change in a year!

L.A.-based institution Wolfgang Puck dissed hometown hero David Chang. 

We attended a non-fund-raising fete in honor of the Jagger Dagger--a specially designed $250,000 ice pick that Jade Jagger created for Belvedere vodka--and Alexander Wang, Tara Subkoff, and Tatiana von Furstenburg were all confused. 

Even after quitting his (recently resurrected) Gatecrasher column, Daily News gossip Ben Widdicombe found the time to fill us in on New York chatter from Istanbul.

Sarah Jessica Parker played rock star at the premiere of Sex and the City. 

A post-Padma Salman Rushdie shilled for the Kama Sutra at a steamy Barnes & Noble reading. 

Summer rolled around and we pondered the wearability of the season's ubiquitous maxi dress.

At the 30th anniversary of Betsey Johnson, the designer mourned the death of downtown. More recently, the old-school club kids at Susanne Bartsch's Christmas toy drive proved that they're still having fun. 

Out in the Hamptons, we tried--and sort of succeeded--to wheedle information out of a freshly divorced Christie Brinkley.

We made a study of Chuck Bass--er, Ed Westwick's--carefully crafted photo face in preparation for a very special Gossip Girl party.

At the DNC in Denver, the celebs of the Creative Coalition wondered how to get in touch with the common folk. However, by the end of the week, they were more than happy to relax at Google and Vanity Fair's fancy get-together.

Over at the RNC in Minnesota, buddies Danny Meyer and Tom Brokaw unwound over junk food and fly-fishing chat.

Fashion Week: Round II brought us to a glittery party hosted by Interview at the unfinished Standard Hotel and a premiere party for The Rachel Zoe Project, where Ms. Zoe's mother told us some cute stories about her daughter (our next run-in with Ms. Zoe was less warm). Andre Leon Talley hoped for a new generation of less emaciated models, and Andre 3000 informed us that dressing well doesn't mean you're gay. To top it off, we stumbled upon a quietly A-list party on West 31st St. 

At an Accompanied Literary Society party (co-hosted by Diesel), literature (sort of) met fashion. We met Fiona Apple, who was there with author-boyfriend Jonathan Ames. 

Toby Young returned to New York to promote the film version of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. 

We got pre- and post- election assessments from the literary and media set at the New York Public Library Lions benefit and a screening of After the Party, respectively.  

We found out that Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise eat at the Zaro's across the street from our office (sometimes)!

The art and social worlds were forced to note the tanking economy. 

Finally, to close out the year, we were treated to a discourse on hip-hop by Tom Wolfe. 

After months of searching for some deep-pocketed tenant to replace the hugely celebrated restaurateur Florent Morellet, whom she infamously booted from her building at 69 Gansevoort Street amid a lengthy dispute over rent and taxes, Ms. Lucas had finally decided to leave well enough alone.

She would reopen Mr. Morellet’s famous Florent restaurant on her own, less than 48 hours after its highly publicized June 29 closure. Same menu. Same staff. Same iconic green storefront. Only without the eccentric Mr. Morellet at the helm. Or his neon pink “Florent” sign in the window.

The place would simply revert to R&L Restaurant, its prior moniker before Mr. Morellet moved in and turned her family’s formerly dingy diner space into a popular meatpacking district destination. (The old R&L signage still hangs above the door.)

For someone who seemed so eager to cash in on the neighborhood’s supposedly sizzling hot real estate market—with asking retail rents along nearby 14th Street now soaring upward of $500 per square foot—it was an abrupt about-face.

It simply begged the question: After Apple, Carlos Miele and Stella McCartney had all moved into the area, had meatpacking retail finally peaked?

How ironic for Mr. Morellet, whom many credit for pioneering the neighborhood’s stunning rise from seedy to chichi, if his forced retirement after 23 years in business were to also signal the area’s economic downturn.

Sources familiar with the situation insist, however, that this latest bizarre twist in the continuing Florent saga had more to do with the landlord’s own eccentricities than any mere whims of the market.

“We had offers at the numbers that we needed to,” said Matt Cohen, senior director of retail services for the Lansco Corporation, who spent nearly six months shopping the 1,500-square-foot eatery space to other restaurateurs, as well as altogether different types of retailers.

Ms. Lucas had been asking for around $350 per square foot annually, equating to roughly $44,000 in monthly rent for a restaurant of that size—a hefty hike from the mere $6,018 that Mr. Morellet had been paying.

Instead, she oddly opted for no rent at all.

“Joanne decided that she wanted to move forward under her own business,” said Mr. Cohen, who seemed as surprised as anyone by Ms. Lucas’ stunning reversal, which only happened within the past two weeks, he added. (The news was first reported last week by the foodie blog Eater.)

“I don’t think anybody expected it,” he said.

Anybody except perhaps her long-standing tenant, Mr. Morellet.

“People don’t get the full picture about her,” the renowned 55-year-old restaurateur explained, sitting on a bench outside his packed eatery during its splashy closing party this past Saturday night. (He was constantly interrupted by well-wishers asking to take his picture.)

“A year ago, she was offered millions and millions to buy the building, and she couldn’t get herself to sell it, because she wanted to keep it in the family,” Mr. Morellet said.

“I knew that when push came to shove, or when the contracts came across, eh, she couldn’t do it,” he continued. “She called me yesterday after she read my response to thank her, and you know, she said, ‘These people would spend a million to gut the place and I just can’t.’”

Mr. Morellet described her change of heart as “the best outcome, short of me staying.”

But can she really run a restaurant?

For the past 13 years, Ms. Lucas has been kicking back at home (she currently lives in Seekonk, Mass.) while the monthly checks rolled in from Mr. Morellet. (The single-story building has been in her family since 1955; Ms. Lucas herself acquired the deed in 1995.)

Now, she doesn’t even have those few thousands to work with.

Calls to the restaurant and to Ms. Lucas’ Massachusetts home went unanswered; a number of workers were inside the location, polishing its various chrome fixtures, on Tuesday, the day of the restaurant’s supposed reopening. “Tomorrow,” one man clarified.

Ms. Lucas would be well advised not to expect the dense crowds that turned out for Mr. Morellet’s final hoorah to return for the grand reopening. Many patrons scoffed at the notion when asked over the weekend, though a few confessed some curiosity about the new incarnation.

“I’ll check it out—but it’s never going to be the same,” said Franklin Bonafe, a 36-year-old Burberry salesman who’s been coming to Florent since the early 1990s. (“I had my first date here,” he said.)

Like countless others crammed inside the diner on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Bonafe and a friend had come to pay their last respects. “I hope they don’t do anything too drastic to the place,” he said. “They’re probably going to change something.”

Some suspect that Ms. Lucas may have bigger surprises in store.

“It’s very weird—unless she’s pulling a rabbit out of her hat,” said Faith Hope Consolo, chairwoman of retail leasing for Prudential Douglas Elliman, who has brokered and marketed a number of spaces in the surrounding neighborhood. “I never assume, even when we represent the No. 1 luxury guy in the world, that there isn’t a more beautiful girl, a better tenant—you know, there’s always that element of surprise.”

It’s possible that keeping the diner open is only a temporary fix while Ms. Lucas continues to search for a tenant she’s more comfortable with.

When asked whether Lansco was finished with Ms. Lucas’ listing, her broker, Mr. Cohen, was noncommittal: “That I can’t say.”

With reporting by Em Whitney

cshott@observer.com

"I gave him a call yesterday and we may be in talks to continue his stay in my building," Mr. Noury told The Villager this week.

But Mr. Morellet apparently isn't interested, according to the article.

Instead, the flamboyant restaurateur is planning to go out "with a bang," kicking off the “Final Five Weeks of Florent" over Memorial Day weekend, with each following week given a theme to represent a stage in the "grieving process he’s undergone over losing his restaurant....Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and, finally, Acceptance."

Winick Realty is shopping the space for $700,000 per year.

That's roughly $58,333 per month -- a substantial increase from the restaurant's current $6,018 monthly rate and quite higher than even the $43,000 estimate that one broker gave The Observer last week.

Read our previous coverage here.

UPDATE: Eater is now reporting that Lansco is marketing the Florent space -- not Winick. Oh, and the asking rent is more like $50,000 per month.

That $150,000 he's seeking from landlord Joanne Lucas in court? "What we're claiming is not really damage," he said. "It's being overcharged."

Specifically, the landlord was supposed to charge the restaurant only 66 percent of the annual increases in real-estate taxes over the past several years; instead she charged the full 100 percent, he explained.

That's in addition to her alleged failure to file tax forms that would have also reduced the restaurant's tax burden, as the article reported.

A housing court judge was expected to read Mr. Morellet's complaint and render a decision within the coming weeks.

“A great statue of Florent,” he has proposed, “dressed up as Marie Antoinette, spitting water out and surrounded by pigs. I think that would be fucking fabulous.”

Mr. Angelo was referring to Florent Morellet, flamboyant owner of the iconic Florent diner at 69 Gansevoort Street, who has been known to dress up as the famous French monarch at his annual drag-queen-themed Bastille Day parties—though he might as well sport a coonskin cap, given his reputation as a neighborhood pioneer.

The charismatic 54-year-old restaurateur first started serving up steak frites back when S&M clubs still bounded the meatpacking district, eons before the many upscale eateries, chic boutiques and hip hotels you see today. Florent’s 1985 opening predated Keith McNally’s Pastis bistro and Jeffrey Kalinsky’s upscale clothier Jeffrey New York—both similarly considered trailblazers for the once-seedy area—by about 14 years.

“The neighborhood is what it is because Florent stuck his little stake there,” said Mr. Angelo, who called the eatery operator “one of my heroes,” citing his outspoken activism on issues ranging from gay rights to last year’s brouhaha over the nearby Hotel Gansevoort’s giant billboards. (“When Florent leaves work, he’s out there trying to make the world a better place when so many others have their nose in a plate of coke—that’s an amazing thing for a restaurateur,” he said.) “And he’s been waving that flag for decades.”

Maybe not for much longer, however.

Far from erecting a lasting monument to meatpacking’s founding father, the neighborhood that Mr. Morellet helped popularize is instead pushing him out.

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Morellet, vibrantly dressed in an orange hooded jacket and multicolored scarf, squared off in housing court against a landlord who wants him evicted over $24,072 in unpaid rent dating back to September—a sum the restaurateur has refused to pay because he believes the landlord isn’t holding up her end of the deal.

Specifically, his lawyer has argued, landlord Joanne Lucas, who lives in Massachusetts, has repeatedly failed to file tax certiorari forms with the state, which are required under the lease and which would reduce the restaurant’s share of tax increases on the property. Due to the paperwork snafu, Mr. Morellet has overpaid his portion of the tax burden by more than $27,000 over the past six years alone, according to court papers.

“We want our money back,” Mr. Morellet told The Observer. He’s also seeking $150,000 in damages.

Even if he wins the court dispute, though, the bitter landlord-tenant feud doesn’t bode well for other pending issues, particularly the restaurant’s lease, which expires on March 31. Mr. Morellet indicated that the two sides haven’t had renewal talks since the tax issue came to a head this past summer.

One retail broker contacted by The Observer confirmed that he is already “silently marketing [the Florent space] to a few different people.” (The agent declined to name specific suitors.)

“I know this restaurant—Florent is a great place,” remarked Judge Matthew Cooper upon agreeing to hear the two sides’ arguments on Tuesday.

“Better go this month because his lease is up,” warned landlord attorney Steven Sperber.

“They want to put in a Gap or a Starbucks!” said Florent lawyer Michael Cohen.

Judge Cooper said he would render a written decision on the tax dispute in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, whoever occupies the space come April 1 can expect the rent to skyrocket. Under Florent’s existing lease, signed in 1995, Mr. Morellet now pays just $6,018 per month for the roughly 1,500-square-foot space with the pink neon window sign and pink ceiling. That’s about $48 per square foot annually in a neighborhood where asking rents now go as high as $500 per square foot.

Mr. Morellet previously told The Observer that the landlord now wants a whopping $70,000 per month; the broker indicated that figure was actually closer to $43,000 per month—a huge hike, in either case, and a potential backbreaker.

“Florent is an institution in that neighborhood, and it would be a terrible irony if he ended up being a victim of his own success,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, an organization that counts Mr. Morellet among its board members.

“It’s one of the challenges of business—even positive promotion of your community may ultimately backfire against you,” agreed Roy Liebenthal, proprietor of nearby Pop Burger on Ninth Avenue. “I think it’s sad if that’s what ends up happening to Florent because he was the biggest advocate to make the meatpacking district what it is. But that seems to be the normal pattern in New York. The small cool shops and restaurants come in, make it a happening place, then they all get pushed out. The development of the neighborhood makes it impossible to succeed—it kills the goose that laid the golden egg.”

If his proverbial goose is truly cooked, then Mr. Morellet has no regrets. “If we are to close,” he said, “it’s good to close while we’re doing really great, rather than not.” He said Florent’s final month in business would be one big celebration, perhaps complete with commemorative handkerchiefs.

He does not intend to relocate. “I don’t want to open a restaurant elsewhere,” he said. “It would be a mistake to open another Florent because everyone would compare it to this one. Florent became organically from the space itself—you couldn’t re-create it.”

He doesn’t fault the landlord for trying to cash in. “Until we, as New Yorkers, decide to pass laws to have rent control commercially, landlords should be able to charge what they want,” he said.

He’s just hoping the cycle comes full circle. Could a recession reverse his fortunes? “Real estate prices are starting to tumble,” noted Mr. Morellet, whose own block is marked with several vacant storefronts where former ventures failed to survive amid the recent high-priced retail environment.

“It’s funny because that block looks more and more like it did when I opened 23 years ago; it’s very gloomy,” he said, laughing. “Maybe the little doll that I have with all the little needles in it is paying off.”

“It’s funny, the Internet, it’s like SARS,” Mr. Morellet joked, referring to the way today’s news has spread on the Web. “It’s going to be a process. I’ve been a fighter all my life—for my rights, people’s rights,” he said. Mr. Morellet, who is HIV positive, told us that the possible closing has nothing to do with his health. In fact, the restaurateur said he’s in fine shape these days, pointing to a healthy T-cell count (over 800), which is updated on a board in Florent.

Mr. Morellet added that he is heading to court on February 4^th to fight his landlord, a woman whose name he wouldn’t disclose. (He did, however, confirm that the owner is neither the Gottleib family nor the descendants of R&L, as was earlier reported elsewhere.) “My landlady made some mistakes about the lease, some major ones,” he said, adding that the space is being shopped around for $70,000 a month.

“That’s a lot of boudin noir!” he laughed.

Mr. Morellet’s lease is up on March 31, so the restaurant, he said, would definitely not close at the end of this month, but he refused to say whether or not he plans to renew the lease in the spring. “Rents are getting sky-high in this neighborhood. The block [of Gansevoort St., where Florent is located] looks a little bit shabby at the moment,” he told the Daily Transom.

“Florent is more than just a restaurant,” Mr. Morellet continued, “It’s been so much a part of the neighborhood and I’ve been getting such an outpouring of sympathy from people. We’re going to be around for a little while. I’m looking forward to having another gay-pride event!”

He told us that he will know much more after the the court hearing next month, adding: “Life is like this—you know!”

“With a big window open to the street, it has that Nighthawks feeling,” Mr. Morellet told the Observer at the time, referring, of course, to the iconic Edward Hopper painting of a city diner in the still of the night. “You can look outside or look from the outside in, and there is something very open,” he added softly.

Since moving to New York from France in 1978, the HIV-positive Mr. Morellet, the son of celebrated Conceptual artist, Francois Morellet, now in his mid-fifties, has become widely known as the patron saint of the meatpacking district.

One Star

69 Gansevoort Street

(between Greenwich and Washington Streets)

212-989-5779

Dress: Casual

Lighting: Soft

Noise Level: Fine

Wine List: Mainly French, limited, inexpensive

Credit Cards: Cash only

Price Range: Main courses, $7.50 to $24

Hours: 24 hours a day, seven days a week

Twenty-one years ago, Florent Morellet opened his bistro in an old diner in the meatpacking district. Since then, the neighborhood has changed almost beyond recognition. By night, it’s no longer a dark, gritty (and for some, thrillingly dangerous) part of town. Stretch limos now roam the streets once prowled by hookers. Trendy mega-restaurants, boutiques and antique stores have taken over many of the old buildings, while S&M bars like the Mine Shaft and the Anvil have disappeared. But when dawn comes, you can still watch refrigerator trucks backing into the brightly lit warehouse doorways as men in bloodstained white coveralls unload sides of meat hanging on aluminum racks like Francis Bacon still lifes. It’s the last authentic sight in a neighborhood that many feel has little more character left to it than Times Square.

And then there is Florent.

Florent is like the sort of place that people went to at 4 o’clock in the morning in Les Halles before they tore the market down. Open 24 hours a day for a bowl of onion soup or steak frites, it was a pioneer in the meatpacking district, its original “destination restaurant.” It remained hip and cool because, as Mr. Morellet put it, “The location was a natural velvet rope.” Over the years, it has kept its impish spirit and has altered very little. It’s even managed to retain most of the original staff—quite a feat, given the vagaries of the restaurant business.

This enduring bistro is tucked away on a narrow cobblestone street near the waterfront, not far from Pastis. The name is emblazoned in pink neon in the window, under the old R&L Restaurant sign, which Mr. Morellet retained. If you look to the left when you walk in, you feel you’re in an American diner. There’s quilted aluminum paneling behind the counter and three sections of cafeteria-style blackboard with white lettering. But instead of “eggs over easy” or the day’s specials, the letters spell out the weather report and recommendations for what’s going on around town (the Count Basie Orchestra, Ute Lemper). The right side of the restaurant is lined with Formica tables and red vinyl banquettes, and the wall is hung with a long mirror and fanciful maps from all over the world.

“French tourists look to the left and feel they’re in New York; Americans look to the right and imagine that they’re in Paris,” Mr. Morellet said.

An etching of Marie Antoinette hangs on the wall by the bathroom. She has a dotted line drawn across her neck and a pair of open scissors pointing toward it.

By 8:30 of an evening, Florent has filled up. Looking down the line along the banquettes, it’s as though the customers had been handpicked to represent every era and walk of life, from the grizzled intellectual couple to the young women with hair dyed like peacocks. At the next table, there’s shrieking laughter as two couples wind up dinner with brandy and sodas.

The food is traditional bistro fare, served in generous portions, and the plates come out super-fast. You can begin with a bowl of fragrant mussels cooked in white wine with lemon and garlic, piled up and served with excellent fries. A rich, grilled boudin noir arrives tender under its crackling skin, with stewed apples and fries. When did you last have a plain-boiled artichoke with Dijon vinaigrette? Delicious. There are snails, of course, and they’re served loaded with garlicky butter in a ceramic snail platter. The salads are very fresh and nicely dressed. There’s arugula topped with a goat-cheese-stuffed mushroom, and there’s a hearty tossed salad, made with beets, endive, pear and walnuts, which we could have shared among four.

Our main courses, hot on the heels of the first, were delivered by a beautiful, unsmiling waitress. Was she Russian?

“Danish.”

“What do you think of the New York sense of humor?”

“Well, at least you don’t make cartoons.”

A classic steak frites, a juicy 10-ounce sirloin, costs $21.50; filet mignon au poivre, cut about three inches thick and served with mashed potatoes and spinach, costs $24. Grilled salmon comes with a miso vinaigrette; a tuna steak, cut on the thin side, comes with a pleasant lemon white wine sauce. The prices are certainly reasonable (only cash is accepted). I don’t know many places where you can get a free-range chicken with mashed potatoes and salad for $16.50. Come here during the day and you can set yourself up for the afternoon with a “working girl’s lunch”: choice of soup, salad or crème caramel with main course and coffee for $9.95.

Desserts include chocolate mousse served in a glass, an excellent cheesecake with a crumb crust and the fine crème caramel. The pastry on the apple crumble seemed to have had quite a workout, however.

When Mr. Morellet first moved in, the diner had been catering to the butchers. So he made a hamburger at cost for $1.95 (it’s now $9.95). “They said, ‘It’s so expensive. There goes the neighborhood!’”

In fact, Mr. Morellet has been a tireless community activist, campaigning for the meatpacking district’s designation as a historic landmark and thwarting the infamous skyscraper designed by the architect Jean Nouvel. He has also championed causes from saving the High Line to gay rights, abortion rights and the right to die. His annual Bastille Day celebration at Florent, complete with feathered drag queens, is legendary.

A few doors down on Gansevoort Street, a mega-restaurant, Sascha, is set to open. But when Mr. Morellet returned from vacation last week, he was astonished to learn that the two restaurants on either side of Florent had closed while he was away. “If you live in New York, you better enjoy change,” he said.

One Star

69 Gansevoort Street

(between Greenwich and Washington Streets)

212-989-5779

Dress: Casual

Lighting: Soft

Noise Level: Fine

Wine List: Mainly French, limited, inexpensive

Credit Cards: Cash only

Price Range: Main courses, $7.50 to $24

Hours: 24 hours a day, seven days a week

Twenty-one years ago, Florent Morellet opened his bistro in an old diner in the meatpacking district. Since then, the neighborhood has changed almost beyond recognition. By night, it’s no longer a dark, gritty (and for some, thrillingly dangerous) part of town. Stretch limos now roam the streets once prowled by hookers. Trendy mega-restaurants, boutiques and antique stores have taken over many of the old buildings, while S&M bars like the Mine Shaft and the Anvil have disappeared. But when dawn comes, you can still watch refrigerator trucks backing into the brightly lit warehouse doorways as men in bloodstained white coveralls unload sides of meat hanging on aluminum racks like Francis Bacon still lifes. It’s the last authentic sight in a neighborhood that many feel has little more character left to it than Times Square.

And then there is Florent.

Florent is like the sort of place that people went to at 4 o’clock in the morning in Les Halles before they tore the market down. Open 24 hours a day for a bowl of onion soup or steak frites, it was a pioneer in the meatpacking district, its original “destination restaurant.” It remained hip and cool because, as Mr. Morellet put it, “The location was a natural velvet rope.” Over the years, it has kept its impish spirit and has altered very little. It’s even managed to retain most of the original staff—quite a feat, given the vagaries of the restaurant business.

This enduring bistro is tucked away on a narrow cobblestone street near the waterfront, not far from Pastis. The name is emblazoned in pink neon in the window, under the old R&L Restaurant sign, which Mr. Morellet retained. If you look to the left when you walk in, you feel you’re in an American diner. There’s quilted aluminum paneling behind the counter and three sections of cafeteria-style blackboard with white lettering. But instead of “eggs over easy” or the day’s specials, the letters spell out the weather report and recommendations for what’s going on around town (the Count Basie Orchestra, Ute Lemper). The right side of the restaurant is lined with Formica tables and red vinyl banquettes, and the wall is hung with a long mirror and fanciful maps from all over the world.

“French tourists look to the left and feel they’re in New York; Americans look to the right and imagine that they’re in Paris,” Mr. Morellet said.

An etching of Marie Antoinette hangs on the wall by the bathroom. She has a dotted line drawn across her neck and a pair of open scissors pointing toward it.

By 8:30 of an evening, Florent has filled up. Looking down the line along the banquettes, it’s as though the customers had been handpicked to represent every era and walk of life, from the grizzled intellectual couple to the young women with hair dyed like peacocks. At the next table, there’s shrieking laughter as two couples wind up dinner with brandy and sodas.

The food is traditional bistro fare, served in generous portions, and the plates come out super-fast. You can begin with a bowl of fragrant mussels cooked in white wine with lemon and garlic, piled up and served with excellent fries. A rich, grilled boudin noir arrives tender under its crackling skin, with stewed apples and fries. When did you last have a plain-boiled artichoke with Dijon vinaigrette? Delicious. There are snails, of course, and they’re served loaded with garlicky butter in a ceramic snail platter. The salads are very fresh and nicely dressed. There’s arugula topped with a goat-cheese-stuffed mushroom, and there’s a hearty tossed salad, made with beets, endive, pear and walnuts, which we could have shared among four.

Our main courses, hot on the heels of the first, were delivered by a beautiful, unsmiling waitress. Was she Russian?

“Danish.”

“What do you think of the New York sense of humor?”

“Well, at least you don’t make cartoons.”

A classic steak frites, a juicy 10-ounce sirloin, costs $21.50; filet mignon au poivre, cut about three inches thick and served with mashed potatoes and spinach, costs $24. Grilled salmon comes with a miso vinaigrette; a tuna steak, cut on the thin side, comes with a pleasant lemon white wine sauce. The prices are certainly reasonable (only cash is accepted). I don’t know many places where you can get a free-range chicken with mashed potatoes and salad for $16.50. Come here during the day and you can set yourself up for the afternoon with a “working girl’s lunch”: choice of soup, salad or crème caramel with main course and coffee for $9.95.

Desserts include chocolate mousse served in a glass, an excellent cheesecake with a crumb crust and the fine crème caramel. The pastry on the apple crumble seemed to have had quite a workout, however.

When Mr. Morellet first moved in, the diner had been catering to the butchers. So he made a hamburger at cost for $1.95 (it’s now $9.95). “They said, ‘It’s so expensive. There goes the neighborhood!’”

In fact, Mr. Morellet has been a tireless community activist, campaigning for the meatpacking district’s designation as a historic landmark and thwarting the infamous skyscraper designed by the architect Jean Nouvel. He has also championed causes from saving the High Line to gay rights, abortion rights and the right to die. His annual Bastille Day celebration at Florent, complete with feathered drag queens, is legendary.

A few doors down on Gansevoort Street, a mega-restaurant, Sascha, is set to open. But when Mr. Morellet returned from vacation last week, he was astonished to learn that the two restaurants on either side of Florent had closed while he was away. “If you live in New York, you better enjoy change,” he said.