"Ray's is right down the block!"

On Wednesday, April 8, the influential Times critic awarded Mr. Lahey's stylish new eatery, backed by the formidable food-industry duo of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Phil Suarez, just a single star.

Mr. Bruni had raved about Mr. Lahey's prowess with his pizza crusts but ultimately complained that "he hasn't yet nailed the toppings."

Mr. Lahey, whose menu notably bares no mention of pepperoni, felt the critic missed the point: "The driving force was to change this genre of food-making so it's not falling into the same stupid clichés, like, the thick crust on the edge and lots of tomato sauce and cheese.

"If you want your cheese and sauce, you can get it [at Ray's]," he said. "They'll actually put extra shit on for ya!"

The gregarious baker, who also operates the popular Sullivan Street Bakery at 533 West 47th Street, spent the subsequent afternoon trying to keep his troops focused despite the lackluster mark.

"You want to get two," Mr. Lahey said of The Times' hallowed ratings system of zero to four stars. "10 Downing got two. I've been to 10 Downing. It's dogshit!"

Mr. Lahey, 42, has always had a way with words.

When the Daily Transom ran into him at a culinary event last spring, he and Mitchell Davis, vice president of the esteemed James Beard Foundation, had attendees in a titter with their back-and-forth banter about the dubious term "master baker."

"I have nothing against masturbating," the quick-witted Mr. Lahey had said at the time, "but master-baking? Master-baking is something you do by yourself."

A leading proponent of the rather effortless, knead-less method of baking, Mr. Lahey is one of several high-profile restaurateurs now attempting to, um, elevate pizza-making in New York City.

Filmmaker Bob Giraldi recently opened a fancy pizzeria called Tonda in the East Village and brasserie bigwig Keith McNally will be opening another next year at the corner of Houston and Bowery.

"It's the new food fad," Mr. Lahey said of the renewed interest in the Italian staple.

The lunch crowd was still bustling at Co. when the Daily Transom popped in for a bite around 2 p.m. on the day of the Times review.

Mr. Lahey walked in about a half-hour later, dressed in jeans, a black shirt and a brown winter cap covering his shiny bald head.

It had been quite an eventful week already for the loquacious chef.

Two days earlier, his wife gave birth to a beautiful, 8-pound, 6-ounce baby girl named Anjali. "I'm in love," the proud papa said, flipping through photos of the child on his iPhone.

The good-humored Mr. Lahey added that he had taken some "really gross birth pictures," which he intended to someday use to scare off his daughter's future boyfriends.

"My brothers made a joke at my expense, saying, 'How are you going to deal with your daughter when she comes home at 15 years old with a boyfriend three years older than you?'" Mr. Lahey told the Daily Transom. "And without a beat, I said, 'Well, I'll probably start doing some of her girlfriends!'"

He added, "Woody Allen can do it."

The conversation inevitably turned to the day's disappointing review.

Mr. Lahey said he was surprised that his tiny, laid-back pizzeria even warranted a full-on critique, especially one so soon.

"We've been open only 90 days," he said. "We have not had a chance to even breathe in 90 days. What the fuck are we being reviewed by The New York Times for, you know, 90 days into being open? It makes no sense.

"If I knew we were going to be under the microscope, I would have possibly treated the opening of the restaurant a lot differently," he continued. "I didn't open this restaurant to get reviewed by The Times. Otherwise, I would have made the food a lot differently. I would have bought really nice plates and beautiful stemware. And we would have done slightly less informal service, know what I mean?"

Mr. Lahey was nonetheless heartened by a much more flattering review, published two days earlier, by The New Yorker's Lila Byock.

"That to me is worth more than The Times," he said. "This means if I do a book deal—a second book deal—I'm at least at $700,000 now, because that's all they care about: 'Were you in The New Yorker?' Gabrielle Hamilton got an $800,000 advance on a book just because she was in The New Yorker."

Ms. Byock "gets it," he said. Mr. Bruni? Not so much.

Even some of The Times' positive comments irked the chef.

"The pizza bianca, I think, sucks," Mr. Lahey said of his own highly touted appetizer, which Mr. Bruni loved. "I think it's dogshit! I don't think it's a good product. And he praised it to the high heavens! That's one of the products I desperately need to upgrade and work on because it's not where I want it to be.

"But," he added, "I just had a baby this week, so I have to stay focused on that. The business won't burn in a week. Not with all this buzz."

e

apartment. She was wearing slippers and complaining about the weather-the penthouse's

360 degrees of windows usually offer stellar views. The day before, Ms. LeRoy

had held what would be the last gathering at the 8,200-square-foot home of

Warner LeRoy, the legendary owner of the Russian Tea Room and Tavern on the

Green, who died of complications from his lymphoma on Feb. 22 at age 65.

On March 29, the 16-room apartment, on the 59th and 60th

floors of 3 Lincoln Center, had gone up for sale for $24 million, and Ms. LeRoy

had played host to 80 real estate brokers-tapped because they might know

someone in the mood to spend that kind of money. Emilie O'Sullivan and Daniel

Douglas of the Corcoran Group, who beat out four other firms for the

commission, had organized the elite open house, hand-delivered the invitations

and flooded the space with every variety of roses.

But on this day, in the foyer lined with blond burled wood,

it was just Ms. LeRoy, 28, the two brokers and her husband of three months,

Stephan Moise. The couple is still living in the apartment-actually a

combination of five units that Mr. LeRoy cobbled together for $6.37 million

before moving there in 1995 after 23 years at the Dakota, 1 West 72nd Street.

Ms. LeRoy has always occupied a bedroom in the western wing of the apartment

(past the screening room, her father's office and the gym), and her sister

Jennifer, 22, now the chief executive of the Russian Tea Room, lived upstairs,

where there are just two bedrooms and one bathroom, until last year. Bridget,

the oldest sister, lives on Long Island, and brother Max has moved to Los

Angles to become an actor.

"When he first moved in, he was one of the only people moving [over] to Amsterdam Avenue," said

Ms. LeRoy. "He said, 'Wow,' and bought

what he could."

Looking down at the marble under her feet, Ms. LeRoy said

that her father had often turned the entryway into a dance floor and that his

close friends, like Michael Douglas, real estate developer Marshall Rose and

author and editor Michael Korda, were known

to shimmy there to a hired band. In the foyer, in the screening room, in

the double-sized family room; for a Knicks Game, the Oscars, the Olympics, the

Super Bowl-you name it-Mr. LeRoy threw parties. And he threw lots of them here

in this massive fishbowl that towers over the city.

At those parties, said Ms. LeRoy, a buffet dinner, usually

prepared by a chef from one of her father's restaurants, would be spread out in

the dining room, with its cherrywood table, coated in 42 layers of lacquer, and

the six-panel painting by Jim Dine, part of his "heart" series. About 70 people,

including guidebook publishers Tim and Nina Zagat and 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt, attended Mr. LeRoy's last

big party, for the Super Bowl, in January.

"I was a regular at his Super Bowl party and for the Academy

Awards," said Mr. Zagat, who still has the invitation to this year's Oscars

party, which Mr. LeRoy had planned before his death. "The people there were

amazing …. When his apartment was dressed up and filled with people and filled

with food, it was amazing."

The Oscars parties were held in Mr. LeRoy's screening room,

a mix of Hollywood and New York-just like him. Mr. LeRoy's father produced The Wizard of Oz , and his mother was the

daughter of one of the four Warner Brothers; he moved to the city after

graduating from Stanford University. Located just off the foyer, the screening

room, which seats about 25, is filled with red velvet chairs, sofas and Saul

Steinberg prints. "It felt like you were in the front row at the [Academy]

Awards itself," said Phil Suarez, co-owner of Jean Georges and Vong, about the

annual party, where guests included Barbara Walters, Mike Wallace, Art

Buchwald, Ron Delsener and Mr. LeRoy's sister, Linda Janklow.

"I was there a lot," said Paul Goldberger, architectural

critic for The New Yorker , whose last

visit to Mr. LeRoy's apartment was the day after his funeral. Mr. Goldberger

said he sometimes attended the big event parties, but preferred Mr. LeRoy's

smaller dinner parties. "They were always wonderful," he said. "You had this

feeling that his parties were often full of people who are used to going to

things out of obligation, but would go to Warner's out of pleasure."

Guests would drift in and out of the kitchen. "A

free-floating glitterati," Mr. Goldberger called the group, which he said

included developer Alfred Taubman, Michael Lynne from New Line Cinema and

Democratic fund-raisers Alan and Susan Patricoff. "Elegance and aloofness were

combined."

As with his restaurants, Mr. LeRoy was his own interior

decorator at home. When he moved out of the Dakota, which is only slightly

farther from Mr. LeRoy's franchise restaurants than this apartment, friends

figured that he wanted a smaller space and the spectacular views. "To go around

the apartment and see the entire city in one space is pretty amazing," said Mr.

Suarez. "You felt like you were in one of those hotels where the room revolved,

except it didn't revolve-you just walked around and you saw everything."

The screening room aside, Mr. LeRoy did relatively little

work on his new home, save for combining the units and designing some of the

furnishings. "It was a funny thing how seamlessly his style, which seemed to

have almost been created for his apartment in the Dakota, how naturally it

translated into this completely different kind of space," said Mr. Goldberger,

who lived in the Dakota when Mr. LeRoy did.

Looking around the living room, a 43-foot-wide space looking

east off the foyer, Carolyn LeRoy said that many of her father's most valuable

artworks and antiques had already been removed by the family. "The favorites

are hidden away," she said. Some will be auctioned off, probably individually,

starting in the fall. But hanging in a corner was a portrait of a woman that

looked like the work of Picasso. No, it was a LeRoy, she said. Her father

"liked to dabble in painting," Ms. LeRoy continued, indicating a girl in a blue

dress holding a duck-a very early LeRoy-and an imitation Seurat landscape on

the other walls. "He loved it so much," said Ms. LeRoy of the latter, "but he

couldn't afford the original."

On a much bigger scale,

there was a Sam Francis splatter painting that Mr. LeRoy acquired in his days

at the Dakota. There was also, next to a pressed bamboo side table, a large

twisted metal sculpture by John Chamberlain titled Jack Warner's Cab , made for Mr. LeRoy's uncle. There  was a Leroy Neiman drawing of zoo animals

closer to the foyer and two Tiffany lamps that once lit up Mr. LeRoy's first

restaurant, Maxwell's Plum, on either side of one of the couches. Photographs

from Ms. LeRoy's wedding to Mr. Moise, a former sous chef at Tavern who now

works for Tommy Hilfiger, also adorned the walls. Held at the restaurant in

January, the reception included an impressive emerald ice sculpture.

At the far end of the living area stood a large gold-plated

statue of the goddess Diana wielding a bow and arrow. Ms. LeRoy said it came

from the old Madison Square Garden, one of six statues that went to auction

about five years ago. "Five were pure-no messiness or anything-and they went

like that," Ms. LeRoy said, snapping her fingers. "And this one was left

behind, and my dad thought it was the most beautiful one because this was the

one that had actually been outside and is weathered."

But to Mr. Suarez, the pièce

de résistance was the player piano, a Steinway baby grand tucked into an

alcove near the front door. It "played nothing but show tunes and great movie

hits," he said. "As soon as you walked in, you thought Liberace was in the

room, but it was the baby grand playing, and this was before anyone knew this

thing existed," said Mr. Suarez. "Only Warner."

In addition to being a party guest, restaurateur Sirio

Maccioni, who owns Le Cirque 2000, would often visit his good friend in his

apartment in the morning. He would arrive bearing bomboloni, the Italian donuts

that are the specialty of Mrs. Maccioni. "I would have a coffee with him in the

living room, sometimes in the bedroom," said Mr. Maccioni about his last

visits. "I would go whenever it was possible. It was always a treasure to see

him and to be with him. In a sense, he was my best friend."

Another close friend, Café des Artistes owner George Lang,

also visited Mr. LeRoy at home often. "I sat with him in the office," said Mr.

Lang, who had tea with Mr. LeRoy there a few months before he died. Mr. LeRoy's

home office was past the screening room, down a hallway lined with bookshelves

filled with cookbooks organized by ethnicity. The two would sit on one of the

comfy couches and talk. "I especially treasure that," said Mr. Lang.

Standing in the office, a corner room lined with windows,

Ms. LeRoy said, "You have to imagine that he sat and talked for hours." She sat

in the spot her father used to favor. "And usually it's a beautiful day with

the bluest skies you've ever seen, and you're sitting here, trying to listen,

sitting on these comfortable couches with the heat on … you fall asleep!"

On one desk rested a glass bear head-the prototype for the

Russian Tea Room's revolving bear-shaped aquarium. Next to it was a large gold

eagle, which Mr. LeRoy bought about four years ago at the Winter Antiques Show

at the Armory and had replicated for the front desk at Tavern on the Green.

Ms. LeRoy turned back through the living and dining rooms

into the master suite. She walked into her father's bedroom, small in scale

compared to the rest of the apartment, but with huge windows on two sides that

he liked to open in summer so the music from Lincoln Center could float up. A

blue-and-gold Versace comforter covered the bed, where about 10 pillows sat,

perfectly fluffed, many with lion prints. "He loved anything about the king,"

she said. On the wall next to the bed was her favorite piece of art, a black

ink drawing on paper of a tree with intricate branches done by Herb Gardner, an

old friend of Mr. LeRoy's. Mr. Gardner gave it to the restaurateur in November

1998, when the latter visited the artist's studio. When Mr. LeRoy got sick, he

had the drawing moved there, to the right of his bed, just an arm's reach away.

Ms. LeRoy tried to give the drawing back to Mr. Gardner

after her father died, but the artist wanted her to keep it. "He called it The Survivors ," she said.

The master suite also included a guest room with a treadmill

in it, a master bathroom and several locked closets. "His wardrobe was

extensive," said screenwriter and playwright Peter Stone, who knew Mr. LeRoy

for 45 years. "It was very glittery-a lot of metallic materials and flower

patterns."

Mr. Stone remembered going to a Christmas party at Mr.

LeRoy's apartment a few years ago and seeing a giant Christmas tree in the

foyer, near a pair of oversized Chinese cast-bronze lion-dogs. "Because of the

way he was dressed, I couldn't find him, because he was in front of the

tree-[wearing] the same colors, the same shine, the same glitz as the tree had.

"I think he kind of discovered something, and you need money

to discover it: If you pushed bad taste far enough, if you had the resources

and courage to do it, you came out the other end with good taste," said Mr.

Stone, who owns a house right next door to Mr. LeRoy's in Amagansett, N.Y. Mr.

LeRoy's homes were, he continued, a "very, very extravagant part of his

life-advertisements for what he presented at his remarkable gathering places.

His house and his apartment was just another extension of that."

Mr. LeRoy's life in the apartment, said Mr. Suarez, "was

like him looking down on his city and saying, 'Thank you,' and the city saying,

'I'm with you-take a peek.'"