Sirio Maccioni, Susan Bennett and Tony Bennett (Photo - Dustin Wayne Harris/Patrick McMullan)

A restaurant opening in the chandeliered halls of The Pierre, flagship of Taj hotels, held much promise for some unrepentant gorging, but we were tragically left empty mouthed at Sirio’s grand unveiling on Wednesday evening, with not a crumb going spare.

“We have a lot of dear friends, and a lot of people who love us,” revealed handsome and ever-so-modest director of Le Cirque Mauro Maccioni, one quarter of the Italian-American epicurean dynasty.

Flanked by the new restaurant’s namesake, his father Sirio, and restaurateur brothers Mario and Marco, the quad were undeniably the toast of the food-less feast, palpably excited about the newest extension of their empire. With the patriarch first working in The Pierre’s La Foray some 50 years ago, there was much to celebrate, with celebrities and the nipped and tucked of New York popping in to offer their cheeks for much congratulatory air kissing.

Mayor Bloomberg generously graced the party with his presence for a fraction of a second before making a quick exit, apparently having to dash to the scene of a shooting in the Bronx. Fitting so many events into one evening can be such hard work. But at least his fleeting visit actually took place within the event’s scheduled timeframe, which is more than can be said for tardy Martha Stewart. America’s favorite foodie and home perfectionist eventually arrived to lend her support to Sirio, and reveal her excitement to The Observer about her upcoming Halloween celebrations.

“I’m looking forward to Bette Midler’s annual Hulaween, of course, and am dressing up as an organic sea.”

No, we’re not too sure either. In fact, we're not even sure she remembered to invite us!

Ms. Stewart was full of praise for the Maccioni family’s restaurant kingdom, particularly given some of her own culinary misadventures. “The worst food I’ve ever eaten was fried worms,” she revealed, although this unpleasant dish was served up to her in Mexico, and not prison, as we first thought.

Leading the parade of air kissers out of the door was Ivana Trump, who was hanging languidly on the arm of her perma-tanned boy toy throughout the evening.

“I know Sirio many years,” she drawled, having forced us into a secluded corner of the room to impart these words of wisdom.

The man of the hour, the elder Maccioni, clearly had quite the selection of groupies, although repeatedly forcing him out of his seat and into photos at times felt like a little bit too much. But the octogenarian remained reasonably upbeat throughout the evening, more so than we managed, although we might have fared better had we actually been given something to eat. Instead, we gobbled up all the people watching moments, which with the likes of Tony Bennett, Jean Shaffirof, Amy Fine Collins,  Somers Farkas, Sophie Theallet and Amy Sacco, left us pretty full anyhow.

Hotelier Jonathan Tisch and restaurateur Drew Nieporent also piled on, during a Friars Club-style roast of Mr. von Bidder and his charismatic partner, Julian Niccolini, in celebration of the renowned midtown power-lunching spot's 50th anniversary. It was a fitting tribute for a place where even the most high-profile patrons are served with a good ribbing from time to time.

"At the very least, these guys are extortionists," charged the gossip columnist Ms. Smith. "Have you ever examined your bill?"

Ms. Smith went so far as to suggest that the pair were somehow part of a post-World War II plot against America: "After World War II ended, those of us who weren't born yesterday thought all our problems with the Axis powers had ended. We thought we had the Italians and the Germans right where we wanted them. ... Their contemporary descendants have made a fabulous comeback here ... they are at the Four Seasons, where they pretend to be restaurateurs while plotting the downfall of our bank accounts!"

She added, "Alex will probably defend himself by saying he's Swiss, or something like that, and Julian will say he's from right at the top of Italy ... he's almost French!"

Most of the jokes centered on the restaurant's hefty menu prices—the domestic diva Ms. Stewart, for one, looked forward to the day when she would have to pay $85 for a baked potato—or, Mr. Niccolini's flirtatious modus operandi.

Bob Grimes, vice president of Citymeals on Wheels, the beneficiary of the evening's $300-per-person five-course dinner, asked Mr. Niccolini to promise to (a) stop hanging out with reputed sex addict David Duchovny, (b) stop calling his private parts "La Conquistador," and (c) remove the "oral exam" section of the female employment application.

Mr. Grimes also called on all the ladies in the room to prominently “return the keys to [Mr. Niccolini's] private apartment.” A lengthy line quickly formed to the podium. Prominent publicist Susan Magrino and even Mr. von Bidder's wife, Sandra von Bidder, joined in.

Italian chef Cesare Casella, nicknamed the "Swami of Salami," presented Mr. Niccolini with the gift of a four-foot-long sausage. Mr. Niccolini's wife, Lisa Niccolini, accepted it on his behalf, noting, "It's not as big as the original." Mr. Niccolini later used it to take a swing at Vanity Fair writer Frank DiGiacomo.

Mr. von Bidder's near invisibility next to his showy partner was another recurring joke. "Where's Andrew?" pondered Ms. Stewart. "Oh, it's Alex." She added, "This is what happens when you are the lesser of two evils."

Ms. Stewart also took aim at the famous eatery's decor: "The walls say Phillip Johnson," she said, "but the trees say Howard Johnson."

Blackstone Group co-founder Mr. Peterson presented a video in tribute to "the greatest restaurateur in New York." An image of Le Cirque owner Sirio Maccioni soon appeared on four giant flat-screens lining the pool room, drawing lots of laughs. Mr. Peterson then launched into another video, mockingly exposing the secrets of the restaurant's kitchen, where empty wine bottles with fancy labels are refilled with cheap boxed wine and steaks are served after time on the floor.

Perhaps the biggest laughs came during rival restaurateur Mr. Nieporent's profanity-laced spiel at the podium, during which the Nobu owner even took aim at other roasters.

"Sirio, I love you," Mr. Nieporent said to Mr. Maccioni, "but someone should have told you this is a roast, not a fucking wake! You would've been funnier reading from the fucking menu!"

And to Michael Mondavi, Mr. Nieporent advised, "stick to the wine business!"

He also took aim at fellow restaurateur Danny Meyer, who was not present. "Danny Meyer was supposed to be here, but the Zagats called," Mr. Nieporent said, referring to the couple behind the popular restaurant-rating guidebooks, "and he's walking their fucking dog!"

Mr. Nieporent complimented the Four Seasons owners—whom he called "the Siegfried & Roy of the restaurant business" and "the most unlikely pair since Rocco DiSpirito and Cloris Leachman showed up on Dancing With the Fucking Stars"—for their Robin Hood–like approach to fine dining. "Rob from the rich and give to the poor," he said. "Rob from Pete Peterson and give to [Four Seasons partner] Edgar Bronfman!"

“I can tell you one thing,” said Mr. Maccioni. “For me, a world without women would be impossible. But also I’ve never been stupid. I respect myself and I respect my wife and I respect my children. When we were at the other restaurant on 65th Street, we had the most beautiful women in the world. You know what was my satisfaction? I’d say, ‘Yes, you’re attractive, I’m sorry I cannot go with you.’ As a joke, that was for fun. It’s all mental what you do. I knew that I could have done, I know that I could do.”

I could smell the animal on him. I asked my new hero what his favorite sex act was?

“I like all of them,” he said, his leonine head inclining toward me. “I have done it all. I have done it all in the right way and most of all, always with beautiful woman—beginning with my wife.”

“No, no, no,” interrupted Mr. Maccioni’s biographer, Peter Elliot, who was standing nearby. “Ending with your wife.”

It was that kind of night. What was I doing there, anyway? I had, like, five bucks to my name, and here I was, at a fancy restaurant, when, to me, food just means Burrrrp! Pffffft! Plop! Flush! But sex still works when I can get it (twice a month max, thanks to the economy).

Well, I was just doin’ my job. The whiskey was sloshing inside but I was still nervous approaching socialite Debbie Bancroft, whom I’ve always wanted to spoon. I wagered a question: We all know New York men have gone flaccid; how can New York City women get these men back to old-school boning?

“I think if the women were less selfish, and less involved in things they can acquire, they might actually pay more attention to the man they’re with,” she said. “So this may all just jibe beautifully with the recession: No money, no shopping, so look at who you’re with, talk to him.”

What does she like better, food or fucking?

“Can I put a martini first, then food? Then fucking.” She said the word as if it had four syllables; my tape recorder was inches from her lips. I asked what was the best dish she ever had at Le Cirque?

“Foie gras ravioli.”

Favorite sex act?

“Are you serious? Holding hands. Nicole, here’s your wine glass.”

Nicole Miller, the glamorous fashion designer, was before me, looking sultry and in the mood.

“Food or fucking?” I blurted, spilling whiskey on my khakis.

“Oh my gawd,” she said. “I’m happy to have both.”

She talked about the time Mario Maccioni, one of Sirio’s three pretty sons, brought her bread crusts with lard and white truffle shavings—on the house! Zounds!

Her favorite sex act?

“Kissing.”

Blech!

I grabbed another free Johnnie Walker Red. Over by the bar was comic actor Robert Wuhl. Dude’s been married to the same woman for 25 years. His favorite sex act?

“Getting some. Any. I just said I’ve been married for 25 years.”

Over by the buffet was Monica Crowley, the foxy Fox commentator. For the record, I have thought about her sexually.

She likes pasta. Her favorite sexual position? No dice.

During a recession: sex or food?

“Sex, because it doesn’t cost anything most of the time,” she said.

Eeegads! I did not want to think about this nice girl paying for a bone dance. So I moved on: What did she make of the fact that New York men are just whacking it to Internet porn?

“I think that holds true as long as the Internet porn is free and it’s not a pay site,” said Ms. Crowley. How can New York women get these limp cheapskates boning again?

“A visit to La Perla to replenish that top drawer,” she said. “It’s not socks, George.”

Favorite sex act?

“A great, passionate kiss.”

While in the missionary position?

“A great passionate kiss on the mouth—where the kiss moves to the back of the neck.”

Ms. Crowley caught me checking out her outfit: Ralph Lauren vintage silk wrap, Armani pants and Jimmy Choo black leather boots.

“And La Perla underneath, from the top drawer,” she purred.

Holy moly!

I was saved by Vanity Fair writer George Wayne.

“Fucking always works, honey,” he told me. He was wearing Oliver Peoples shades, Calvin Klein bespoke suit and Valentino pumps. He smelled like a saddle.  How can women get N.Y.C. men boning again?

“Put a half a Viagra in the mojito. Get a push-up bra, a nice pair of hot pants and no underwear.”

Did he think Internet porn was ruining sex lives?

“I just discovered Internet porn and I didn’t know what I was missing.  Before I go to bed, I have a good wank.”

Mauro Maccioni, another of Sirio’s strapping sons, told me his favorite food at Le Cirque was: His wife! And then the crème brûlée. He said he’d had sex in the private room upstairs at one of the family’s other restaurants—Le Cirque 2000. His favorite sex act is smearing crème brûlée over his testicles and then presenting them to his wife.

I nabbed Mr. Elliot, Sirio’s biographer, and asked him if there’s much boom-boom in his biography of the great man,

“The woman in question, his wife, is right there,” he said, swiveling his eyes. “There were lots of allusions in my book to the beautiful women who love Sirio and Sirio loves—but he always goes home. Because you know what, she’d fricking kill you with a pan. If Egidiana ever thought that her husband was ever actually really fucking around on her, she has a frying pan like this.”

KA-BON-N-N-N-N-GGGGG!

Everywhere I looked were yummy MILF-y women but one really stood out with her mink hat and sable coat. She was Sonja Morgan, a film producer whose 8-year-old daughter’s great-great-great-grandfather was J. P. Morgan. Ms. Morgan said she’s a good friend of Sirio’s. (“He always guests me, I never pay.”)  I asked her her favorite sex act.

“Kissing.”

Oh man!

I asked her how to get New York’s limp men to step up.

“Do not mention the stock market, do not mention shopping and don’t wear underwear.”

I asked if kissing really was the summit.

“Let’s just put it this way,” she said, sweeping up her fur coat and turning around. “I have the most amazing ass.”

Artist Brian Farrell was by the buffet. With his shaved head he resembled actor Billy Zane but much better-looking. Wildest sex he’s had this year?

“Three girls,” he said. “I wasn’t involved, but watching. It was a friend’s birthday party. By 12:30 a.m. I was being dragged out the door by three women, thrown into a cab. ‘You’re going to watch us all fuck each other.’ They wanted me to sit in a chair. Wasn’t allowed to touch ’em. One was 19, she’s a model. The other was 22, a model—so to speak—and the other was in her early 40’s, an Upper East Side socialite. Socialites are the worst. They’re dirty. They love it. They get in there.”

He said he also loves the monkfish at Le Cirque.

ggurley@observer.com

Grub Street asks: "Is there someone who is allowed to flaunt the 'jackets required' rule?'

"Yes," she responds. "I don’t want to say who it is, but he normally wears a sweater and a vest. He’s one of the richest people in New York City."

Guesses?

• Grub Street

“I remember hearing on the Boston radio, they were discussing the term ‘public intellectual,’” said Ms. Zanganeh, 29, in her precise, plummy English. “Perhaps being a public intellectual is being able to write, but also to be connected to the world. I mean, it sounds almost childish, but I would say that’s really, really my dream. And I hope that I can do it. I don’t have unrealistic expectations.”

Ms. Zanganeh represents a curious phenomenon in the New York literary world: the intellectualite, a person with highbrow aspirations who attends enough parties to make David Patrick Columbia’s head whirl. She turns up everywhere—at the annual P.E.N. gala, The Paris Review’s booze-soaked bacchanals, cocktail gatherings at the New York Public Library and myriad readings and talks, as well as any place where Salman Rushdie and his wife Padma are likely to drop by. And she seems to know everyone that it takes other people 10 years to meet.

“The New York literary world is incredibly monocultural,” said her friend and occasional editor Adam Shatz, The Nation’s literary editor. “But I think that when someone like Lila walks into the room, people wake up. They’re confounded and fascinated, because they don’t know people like her. And she has a sense of style that is woefully lacking in these parts.”

In this regard, Ms. Zanganeh, who was born to wealthy Iranian parents and raised in Paris, seems to hail from another era—or another continent, where the idea of a glamorous smart person isn’t an oxymoron. Ms. Zanganeh’s command of the role is intuitive. Tall and delicate, with a girlish voice, she speaks five languages and has a taste for dramatic makeup—generous amounts of mascara and lips painted a glossy red—and she always wears her hair parted down the middle in a distinctive black braid. She was educated at the elite École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where many of France’s academics are trained (she wrote her master’s thesis on Lolita), and she takes to the public stage like a soprano to Sondheim.

Naturally, ambition is part of the package. When she is not circulating among the New York literati, Ms. Zanganeh is interviewing its elders for Le Monde des Livres, the literary supplement of France’s leading newspaper, and occasionally for other European periodicals. (She has written articles about Mr. Rushdie, Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch, New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, Yale scholar Harold Bloom, Gore Vidal and Jonathan Safran Foer, among others, and her interview subjects often become friends, mentors or even assign her stories.) Last November, she organized a fund-raising reception for victims of the Pakistan earthquake at the Asia Society and persuaded several former subjects to participate. (The keynote speaker was Hillary Clinton.)

That such a person would choose to make her name in New York at a time when America is reviled the world over is somewhat comforting. “I actually miss Europe very much. I adore Europe in many, many ways,” said Ms. Zanganeh, who favors words such as “extraordinary” to refer to things she likes. “In America, at every level you have people constantly saying, ‘Well, why not this? Why not that?’ I thought that it was energetic. I wanted to do so much, but in Europe I couldn’t really do it.”

She described present-day France as “very medieval,” and said that when she’d attempted to volunteer for Amnesty International there, for example, no one would return her phone calls. (Despite the fact that she was born there and comes off as absolutely Parisian, Ms. Zanganeh said that at home she is looked upon as a foreigner and is not considered to be truly French.) New York, on the other hand, was downright hospitable: When she wanted to write a story about Nabokov for The Times, she simply dialed up Steven Erlanger (then the newspaper’s culture editor) and made her pitch.

“And you know what he said? He wrote back and said, ‘Why not?’ And I was off to Geneva,” Ms. Zanganeh said (she’s currently applying for a green card). “That, for me, could only happen in America—this feeling of childlike energy. There’s this cliché that Americans are always optimistic, but it’s true. Americans are always so much more optimistic than the French. In France, nothing’s quite possible.”

AROUND 8 P.M. ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, Ms. Zanganeh was planted on the stage at the New York Public Library with four hot Iranian women in chic black outfits, moderating a discussion about her first book, an anthology she edited called My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices. The mission of the book had been to “challenge Western (mis)perceptions about Iran,” and the contributors were explaining that they appreciate literature and makeup and hate being thought of around the world as bomb-toting Arabs. The audience was swirling with Middle Eastern women dripping with jewels and neo-intellectual men gawking at them (“No wonder they keep them covered up,” remarked one male writer). There was also a hint of European royalty: The designer Diane von Furstenberg was draped over a chair in the front row, with the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy not far behind. (Both are friends of Ms. Zanganeh’s.)

Before a packed auditorium, Ms. Zanganeh performed with extreme poise, although some in attendance found the event frustratingly light on the subject of politics. At one point, during a conversation with Azar Nafisi, a fellow “Nabokovian” and the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, Ms. Nafisi pointed to the fancy Persian ladies in the front row and burst out with: “These are Iran’s weapons of mass destruction!”

The night before, Ms. Zanganeh had attended P.E.N.’s black-tie gala at the Museum of Natural History with Ms. Nafisi. The next week was packed with events for P.E.N.’s festival of international literature; in between there were media appearances on NPR and CNN to promote the Iran book, as well as the book’s launch party.

However, Ms. Zanganeh was already feeling burned out on Iran. “After this, I don’t believe I will write about Iran for some time,” she said, explaining that she is wary of “the quintessential American intellectual trap” of being expected to write only about your own kind. “It was just bizarre for me—Iranians on Iranians, Arab-Americans on Arab-Americans, fat people on fat people. I thought, ‘That’s strange—I want to write about Africa, I want to write about anti-Semitism, about French literature …. ’”

As they were shopping the proposal for the anthology, publishers kept suggesting that Ms. Zanganeh simply write a memoir, which inflamed her. “I thought, ‘But I have no memoirs—I’ve never been to Iran!’” she said. “It’s just this trend; Iranian women have to write their memoirs of Iran. I thought it was a bad joke. ‘What are you talking about? Memoirs? No. No way.’”

Her next project, in addition to her journalistic contributions, will be a book about Vladimir Nabokov, which is her true passion. (Her agent is Nicole Aragi.) “My interest in Nabokov was really, purely a literary one. I just adore him,” she said, adding that any parallels between Russia and Iran were not the source of her admiration. “It took me four months to read Ada, or Ardor, because I read every page five times. I can’t read it normally—I can’t help it. I remember, just to give myself a break while I was reading Ada, I began reading The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster, and it was like drinking water with a little bit of dust in it after having eaten the most exquisite kind of mille feuille, with all kinds of creams and the most refined pastry in the world.

“Just purely the language, the style … ,” she continued, becoming all dreamy-eyed, “I really have the feeling that [Nabokov] is phantasmagorique—it’s an imaginative, phantasmagoric landscape that belongs to me. That speaks to me. That is me. And it had nothing to do with Iran.”

HER FAMILY BACK-STORY IS appropriately intense. Ms. Zanganeh’s father founded Iran’s domestic airline under the Shah; the family left the country for France just prior to the revolution of 1979. Her mother—who writes Italian poetry in her spare time—escaped on the last Air France flight out of Tehran on the day that the Ayatollah Khomeini arrived.

Ms. Zanganeh’s mother taught her English by making her watch Hamlet with Laurence Olivier, and she also imparted Italian, Persian and French. But Ms. Zanganeh said she felt like a misfit for most of her youth. It wasn’t until she reached the Lycée Henri-IV, a demanding preparatory school (Jean-Paul Sartre is an alumni), that she finally felt comfortable.

“For the first time in my life I was actually happy, because I was with people who were exceptional, who were stimulating, they were funny, they were not conformist,” Ms. Zanganeh said. “For the first time I met students who thought it was interesting that I was Iranian. It wasn’t ‘Oh, my friends were dark and my parents were weird, and why did we speak with accents or foreign languages?’ It was like, ‘Oh, really—how exotic!’ And they began asking me questions about Persian poetry.”

After university, she spent two years as a teaching fellow at Harvard, then enrolled at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in 2000. She thought she might want to go into television and spent a summer interning with CNN in Russia (CNN was “completely horrible,” but she “adored” Russia.) She also hated the BBC, where she was an intern. (“I certainly wasn’t going to do the blond lettuce hair.”) During this period, she took a class at Columbia’s journalism school and was inspired to try writing by its famously draconian instructor, the film critic Judith Crist.

“I had always thought before that I can’t write,” Ms. Zanganeh said. “The thing is also, when you study literature, I mean, how can you write? You know how bad it is, you know? I think this whole American thing gave me the humility to be able to write, meaning that the French think that writing comes with a stroke of genius—you have it or you don’t have it—and the Americans really see writing as a craft. And that way you can work and improve.”

On Saturday, April 29, Ms. Zanganeh was basking in these various turns of events at her book party. It was held in a penthouse apartment overlooking the Hudson that belonged to two corporate attorneys, Virginia Davies and Willard Taylor, whom Ms. Zanganeh had met through a former boss from an internship at NPR. She was wearing a little silk jacket with intricate buttons and a towering pair of pumps, and was boasting of a recent journalistic “get”: an exclusive interview for Le Monde with the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who was in town for the P.E.N. festival and who had allegedly backed out of an interview with The Times Magazine but had agreed to sit with Ms. Zanganeh. (Salman Rushdie had even told her that it was hopeless.)

“He’d been refusing everyone, apparently,” she told two male admirers. “I sent him an e-mail anyhow, and he agreed!” (She said that she found Mr. Pamuk to be extraordinary.)

“I’m sure he just took a look in your eyes,” joked one of her friends, a documentary filmmaker recently returned from Iraq. “I’m going to refrain from saying something sexist.” A moment later in the conversation, he said: “My ambition is nothing compared to this woman. She’s here to conquer the world.”

Le Cirque 3.0

On the afternoon of May 16, workers busily mopped, vacuumed and tidied up in preparation for the opening of the latest incarnation of Le Cirque, now located in the shimmering rotunda of celebrity-filled One Beacon Court.

Outside the soon-to-be-opened restaurant’s entrance, a sprawling white tent was erected for Manhattan’s art-loving elite, who would be attending the Whitney’s American Art Award gala later that evening. It seemed like, once again, Le Cirque was providing refuge for the city’s social set.

More than three decades have passed since Sirio Maccioni first opened the storied eatery in the Mayfair Hotel, and later relocated in the 1990’s to a larger space in the New York Palace Hotel. But the seasoned restaurateur is not slowing down just yet, and was on hand to deal with some finishing touches.

“You have to be crazy,” said Mr. Maccioni, of taking on yet another restaurant opening. “But it’s worth it!”

The Whitney fête is really just the pre-opening party, sort of a dry run for the gala event that Mr. Maccioni is hosting two days later. There are countless boldface names already confirmed for that event: Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Martha Stewart, Ron Perelman, Donald Trump.

“We have 2,000 people coming Thursday night for the opening,” said Mr. Maccioni.

But on May 31, when the doors open for the public, Mr. Maccioni will have to appease the money set’s next generation.

“I want to do a restaurant where New Yorkers want to go a minimum once, or maybe twice, a week,” said Mr. Maccioni. “I think I know what New York people want. The people want to come in and feel at home.”

If by “home” one means fine dining amongst circus-inspired decorations, located in a glass-and-steel tower, then Mr. Maccioni might be in luck.

Once you enter the 16,000-square-foot restaurant, the main dining room is located to the left. Since the Whitney crowd will be eating under the tent outside, most of the dining-room tables were moved to the perimeter of the semi-circular room in order to vacuum the dark red carpet. (By Thursday, tables will be set with Greggio and Ricciarelli silver, Reidel stemware and Villeroy & Boch china). Also, a massive “big top” light shade covers the high ceiling, and miniature Alexander Calder–like, bent-wire sculptures adorn the walls.

Although still playful in the old Le Cirque manner, Mr. Maccioni’s longtime aesthetic guru, Adam D. Tihany, has made things oddly more mature in hopes of drawing in a younger crowd of affluent foodies.

“There is clearly an evolution when it comes to the look and the feel of the place,” said Mr. Tihany, who has worked on six restaurants with Mr. Maccioni beginning in the early 1980’s. “The original Le Cirque was more of a French style—where the circus motif was largely represented by murals of monkeys having tea parties and stuff like that. It was very 18th-century French-type décor.”

Upon leaving the dining room, more of the modern touches are evident.

“There is a 27-foot wine tower that is part of the complex,” said Mr. Tihany, regarding the tall white structure that—at this point—had yet to be filled with wine bottles. “We call it the iPod wine tower. It creates a very powerful focal point.”

Along with the wine tower, the restaurant’s glass bar is also located in the 140-seat café section.

“The bar itself is a magic bar,” said Mr. Tihany. “It has a dual personality. At night, it reveals colorful bottles that you cannot see during the day.”

In the back hallways of the restaurant leading to the bathrooms, custom wallpaper is printed with snapshots of Le Cirque’s cherished past, with pictures of Ronald Reagan, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Sylvester Stallone and Henry Kissinger.

Past the famous-faces wallpaper and up the stairs, what Mr. Tihany considers the two sections of the restaurant—both the proper Le Cirque and the café—becomes dramatically apparent. Gazing down from the 80-person private-event mezzanine, the new setup provides a distinction from the restaurateur’s previous forays—not to mention that the “iPod wine tower” protrudes into the mezzanine, helping to unify the various spaces.

Overall, the design presents a stark contrast to Mr. Maccioni’s 1997 venture, the futuristic-sounding Le Cirque 2000.

“Le Cirque 2000 was really an exercise in creating tension between old and new,” said Mr. Tihany. “It’s not unlike how Italians deal with their monuments. They restore them, and then drive a Ferrari and park in the courtyard. It was that kind of dynamic.”

“It’s certainly a big departure from the old Le Cirque,” said Mr. Tihany. “It has grandeur, but it has grandeur in a contemporary key. I think that will appeal to the younger generation. It’s a modern restaurant.”

—Michael Calderone

"I wish I didn't have to go [to the restaurant] tomorrow night, but I have to go," he grumbled to me the day before. But he became animated as the topic turned to his ideas for the new Le Cirque, one that he maintains will be more intimate and manageable, and less histrionic. And to carry out the project, located in the Bloomberg Tower on East 59th Street, he has turned to his longtime architect Adam Tihany, with a tentative opening at mid-year.

Le Cirque 2000 went out with a flourish Friday night, more festively than three other classic Manhattan French restaurants that were embalmed in 2004: Lutèce, La Caravelle and Le Côte Basque (which has been retooled as an upscale brasserie).

Alone for the evening, I had intended to drop into Le Cirque 2000, sip a flute of Champagne and pay my respects, then depart. Within two minutes of arriving, though, I made the acquaintance of three buoyant international businessmen-André Backar, his son, Max, and Gordon R. Larson-who had come to pay homage as well.

Upon disposing of my third Champagne, I accepted their offer to dine in the handsome wood-paneled dining room adjacent to what is now the country's most expensive idle kitchen. There were sure to be a gaggle of celebrities on hand, but I had no idea how close until I slammed my chair into Paula Abdul's upon being seated (she took it good-naturedly). At nearby tables dined comedian Robert Klein, Jill St. John (I think) and Neil Sedaka, whom I did not at first recognize. As a mariachi band worked the room, he hopped up and sang a Mexican love song, in Spanish. I congratulated him for having the courage to perform in what must have been an intimidating setting.

"Are you Spanish?" I asked.

"No," he replied genially. "But I know a few Spanish songs."

The room was so loud at this point that I had to ask him to repeat the answer.

"Really? Well, you're very, very good," I reassured him. "You should sing here more often."

The prix-fixe last supper was exceptional, especially for a hectic New Year's Eve: sliced baked potatoes with smoked salmon and osetra caviar, lobster and vegetable ravioli in fennel sauce, venison noisettes with pumpkin purée, chestnuts and caramelized pears and white truffle sauce. And it would not be Le Cirque without one of its towering Euclidean desserts, in this case a massive chocolate mousse cake impaled with chocolate triangles. At the stroke of midnight, the kitchen crew marched through the dining room banging pots and pans-a surprisingly sanguine troop of cuisiniers, considering they were about to join the unemployment line.

Le Cirque's first (and more sedate) going-out-of-business sale was in 1986, capping a glorious 23-year run. Located in the Mayfair Regent hotel on East 65th Street off Park Avenue, it possessed the glamour and electricity of no other restaurant I'd been to around the world, owing largely to Mr. Maccioni's charisma and his star-packed Rolodex. Le Cirque was the first port of call for scores of stars arriving from Europe, everyone from Gérard Depardieu and Anthony Quinn to the king of Spain.

Like a painting that only you can love because of its emotional attachment, the first incarnation, which was cramped, overlit and adorned with bizarre tropical sconces, kindled the devotion and imagination of its aficionados. And the food was consistently superlative under successive chefs Alain Sailhac, Daniel Boulud and Sottha Khunn. That first curtain closing was attended by, among many others, Mr. Depardieu, Rudolph Giuliani, Ron Perelman, Ed Koch and Ivana Trump, to name a few. I spotted a few misty eyes in that room.

The spring of 1997 saw the debut of Le Cirque 2000, a curious name that suggested a short sprint to obsolescence. Located in the palatial Beaux-Arts Villard Houses (part of the Palace Hotel) and bankrolled by the hotel's owner, the Sultan of Brunei, it could not be more different-some would say bizarre-from East 65th Street: swirling neon tubes, futuristic etched glass, playful undulating banquettes.

Or, as designer Adam Tihany called it in Mr. Maccioni's recently published autobiography, a "Ferrari parked in the middle of the palazzo."

Judging by many of the old regulars I spoke with over the years, they, too, eventually warmed up to it, in no small part due to the stellar cooking of chef Khunn.

There was one thing, however, that I could never understand: the large television suspended overhead behind the bartenders. It seemed to me that installing a television at the romantic Le Cirque was like bringing a video game to the drive-in.

At 11:30 p.m. New Year's Eve, we donned our silly cardboard hats and neon necklaces. The mariachis reappeared, and I turned to toast my new friend Neil, as if to reveal that I was pulling his leg and had known who he was all along. Before leaving, I bumped in to Mr. Tihany and asked him jokingly if the famous neon tubing in the bar would be auctioned off.

"Forget about that," he replied. "Take the flat-screen TV-that's the only thing left with any value."

The 38-year-old actor closed in mid-March on a $1.925 million condo on far West 22nd Street. Actually, there are two signatures on the deed: Mr. Cumming's and that of his former longtime boyfriend, theater director Nick Philippou-but only Mr. Cumming is moving in. The two men contracted to buy the place while they were still an item, but they broke up before the closing date.

"At the time, the separation was too fresh for them to consider going through everything over again and take names off the lease," said Mr. Cumming's rep, David Nesmith of PMK/HBH. "They also own other property together in London and upstate New York, so it didn't seem to be an issue."

According to city records, the two men signed a contract on the Chelsea apartment on Feb. 5. About one month later, however, they broke off the relationship, as the Daily News first reported March 16, and as Mr. Nesmith confirmed to The Observer . Despite the split, they both affixed their signatures to the closing deeds on March 17.

"They only had a few weeks between [breaking up] and signing the lease, and they just went ahead with it," said Mr. Nesmith.

Mr. Cumming's new home is a duplex condo in a recently converted commercial-use building. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit sprawls over 2,254 square feet of interior space and has a 974-square-foot, planted wraparound terrace. The fifth-and-sixth-floor apartment has 13-foot-high ceilings, maple floors, and what is described as a gourmet designer kitchen with top stainless-steel appliances.

It's a far cry from Mr. Cumming's last place, the 430-square-foot second-floor studio at the Sequoia, located at 222 West 14th Street. The Scottish-born Mr. Cumming bought that condo in 1999 for $219,000, right on the heels of landing a lead role in the 1998 Broadway production of Cabaret . He and Mr. Philippou have been sharing those close quarters ever since. And even though they are no longer romantically involved, both men are still partners in their fledgling theater company, the Art Party.

"It's vibrant and going," Mr. Nesmith said. "They're still working together and collaborating on their next project."

Mr. Cumming has also decided, for the time being, against selling the studio. Broker Helene Luchnick, of Douglas Elliman, had the exclusive on the West 22nd Street apartment.

JOCELYNE WILDENSTEIN'S TRUMP DEN HITS MARKET FOR $10 M.

Jocelyne Wildenstein is ready to cash out of Trump World Tower. The famous divorcée recently put an investment property that she owns at the building on the market for a cool $10 million.

The apartment combines two original units on the tower's 51st floor, both of which Ms. Wildenstein bought in 2001 and then renovated into a large two-bedroom apartment. Listing broker Eva Mohr of Sotheby's International Realty declined to comment on the sale.

Ms. Wildenstein bought the units as a place to stay while her townhouse at East 82nd Street was being renovated, and it was always her intention to sell or lease the Trump units once the construction at 82nd Street was completed, according to her broker, Robert Haberman of Douglas Elliman.

"She wanted to move out during the renovation, so I sold her the two apartments at Trump," Mr. Haberman said. "She got special permission to break through and make one big apartment."

Mr. Haberman also sold Ms. Wildenstein her townhouse, a five-story building off Fifth Avenue. She bought it in February of 2000, in the wake of her very public and very messy divorce from international art dealer Alec Wildenstein.

While married, Mr. and Ms. Wildenstein had lived together-along with other members of the Wildenstein clan-at a limestone mansion at 11 East 64th Street. But when Ms. Wildenstein came home one night and allegedly found Mr. Wildenstein in bed with another woman, an explosive divorce saga ensued that spilled across tabloid covers throughout much of 1997 and 1998. Ms. Wildenstein didn't vacate the 64th Street residence until the spring of 1999, when a judge finally granted her a divorce on the grounds of sexual abandonment.

Ms. Wildenstein bought the two units at Trump World Tower, located at 845 U.N. Plaza, in July and September of 2001. Combined, the seven-room, 3,500-square-foot apartment has three and a half bathrooms, a media room, a den, and separate living and dining rooms. The apartment offers sweeping river and city views, and some of Ms. Wildenstein's touches include dining-room chairs covered in ostrich feathers.

BACK TO BETHPAGE WITH $2.3 M.: DOLANS DITCH MANHATTAN DIGS

Cablevision chairman Charles Dolan just unloaded his only permanent Manhattan residence-a 43rd-floor perch at Trump Tower, located at 721 Fifth Avenue. According to a company spokesman, Mr. Dolan and his wife weren't getting a lot of use out of the condo, so they've decided to become full-time Long Islanders.

"They reside on Long Island, and they weren't using the apartment enough to justify it," said the spokesman.

Mr. Dolan bought the two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom unit in 1996 (just one year after Cablevision paid close to $1 billion for the purchase of Madison Square Garden and its accompanying sports teams) for $1.3 million, and then sold it this March for $2.3 million.

Mr. Dolan, 76, founded the Bethpage, N.Y.–based cable company 30 years ago. The company, which Mr. Dolan now manages with his son, chief executive James F. Dolan, has hit a rough patch in recent years with its forays into industries outside of television. Particularly troublesome have been its wrangles with the sports industry: Mr. Dolan has lost bids on the Mets, the Red Sox and the Yankees in the past five years.

But this recent quarter found the venerable mogul on a rebound, with a 12.6 percent surge in stock prices resulting from Cablevision's spinoff of costly investments like the satellite-television service Rainbow DBS, the Clearview Cinemas chain, the Bravo cable channel and the Nobody Beats the Wiz electronics chain.

His latest spinoff is a 1,509-square-foot apartment with northern, southern and western exposures, giving views of Central Park and a choice bit of the city skyline. The dining and living rooms are combined in a large "L," and the master bedroom measures 20 by 14 feet.

WALK TO WORK, THEN SIESTA AT HOME: LE CIRQUE'S MACCIONI BUYS FOR $1.175 M.

Sirio Maccioni recently bought an apartment so close to his two New York restaurants, Le Cirque 2000 and Osteria del Circo, he can practically keep an eye on all his customers from his bedroom. In mid-April, Mr. Maccioni closed on a $1.175 million condo at Museum Tower, which is located at 15 West 53rd Street-about four blocks from both restaurants.

"I can walk to Le Cirque in three and a half minutes, and I can walk to Circo in three and a half minutes," Mr. Maccioni said. "I always believe in living close to where you work."

The famed 69-year-old restaurateur said the quick commute allows him to take a much-needed mid-afternoon break.

"I get to work around 10, I come back home for an hour or two in the afternoon, and I get back around 6," he said. "For me, it's very important to be closed for a few hours during the day."

When The Observer reached Mr. Maccioni on June 19, he was in Mexico City, playing host to a gaggle of journalists at the official opening of the Mexican branch of Le Cirque. It's the third version of the New York original; Las Vegas' Bellagio Hotel houses the second.

Though his expanding empire now keeps him hop-scotching around the world, Mr. Maccioni said that he's never been able to understand how people who run Manhattan restaurants live in the suburbs.

"In this business, you never finish before 11 o'clock, and if you live an hour or an hour and a half away from the city, you get home, at best, at midnight-or most of the time at 1 o'clock," he said. "And then, to get to work at 10 in the morning, you have to leave around 8."

Mr. Maccioni said he picked Museum Tower in particular because it has the spit-and-polish features of a luxury building, but "it's not some pretentious place, like some of those very strictly run apartment houses." At the same time, he would just as soon do without the manned elevator.

"Usually I like the automatic elevators, but they say it's chic to have a man running the elevator. I don't know," he said.

Mr. Maccioni's new apartment has 1,917 square feet, two bedrooms, two and a half baths, and south and east exposures. As you might expect, he installed a near-professional-level kitchen, although he said the addition was really more his wife's idea. He is particularly fond of the windows, which he said completely insulate his apartment from midtown traffic snarls.

"We're on the 25th floor, and there's never any noise," he said.

The walk-to-work ethos has been a Maccioni trademark for nearly the last 20 years. When Le Cirque was at its original location at the Mayfair hotel at 65th Street and Park Avenue, Mr. Maccioni and his family lived in a duplex apartment at the St. Tropez, a condo building at 340 East 64th Street. The celebrated restaurant-and the Maccioni clan-remained in the East 60's until 1996, when Mr. Maccioni began making preparations to move the restaurant to its current location at the Palace Hotel, on Madison Avenue between 50th and 51st streets. At that point, the family moved to temporary housing in midtown, spending the last 18 months at 136 East 55th Street.

Currently, two of Mr. Maccioni's three sons also live in the neighborhood. (The third lives in Las Vegas.)

"My one son lives one block away at Rockefeller Tower, so sometimes from his window he can see my window," Mr. Maccioni said. "My young son rents a small apartment on 56th Street, but most of the time he comes home anyway. He told me he keeps that apartment for different reasons. He's young, so you can imagine what are the different reasons."

ALEXIS, NOT MARTHA, LISTS BUNSHAFT BUNGALOW FOR $10.5 M.

There seem to be a few issues that need clearing up regarding Martha Stewart's unfinished modernist house in East Hampton. First, it did officially hit the market last week, a listing that the New York Post reported as imminent in its May 15 issue. However, Ms. Stewart isn't asking $12.5 million; she's asking $10.5 million. Secondly, it isn't actually Ms. Stewart that's doing the asking; it's her daughter, Alexis. The brokerage house selling the property claims that, contrary to popular conception, Martha Stewart doesn't own the house; rather, she transferred sole ownership of the property into her daughter's hands shortly after purchasing it in 1995 for $3.5 million.

"It is Alexis Stewart's, it has been Alexis Stewart's, and it is she who has contracted us to sell it on her behalf," said Alice Bell, manager of the East Hampton office of Sotheby's International Realty. "It's always been referred to-at least to us-as 'the Alexis Stewart house.'"

The Suffolk County clerk's office didn't have any record of that deed change on file; but because Martha Stewart purchased the house under a corporate name, she didn't necessarily have to notify the clerk's office.

"If you transfer the stock of the corporation, there would not be a public record of it," said Stuart Saft, chairman of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums. Mr. Saft was not familiar with the specifics of the Stewart case.

Martha-um, Alexis-Stewart's house has been an object of interest, speculation and even scorn throughout its four decades of existence. Noted architect Gordon Bunshaft built the 2,600-square-foot house in 1962 for his family. It was the skyscraper enthusiast's only residential design. The squat, thin, rectangular building has a windowless marble façade and sits on a 2.5-acre lot that borders tony Georgica Pond, which itself fronts the Atlantic Ocean. Bunshaft died in 1990, and when his widow died in 1994, she left the entire estate to the Museum of Modern Art. Martha Stewart bought the property from MoMA the following year.

Shortly after purchasing the property, Ms. Stewart began a years-long feud with her neighbor, real-estate developer Harry Macklowe. What began with small-time border disputes eventually escalated into full-blown litigation. The legal quagmire effectively halted Ms. Stewart's renovations on the house and, as a result, she never moved in. Today, the house stands as a gutted shell that residents routinely call "an eyesore." Ms. Stewart's main residence in East Hampton is a traditional shingle-style house on nearby Lily Pond Lane.

Despite the fact that it was always Martha's name that surfaced in press accounts of the Stewart vs. Macklowe spat, brokers at Sotheby's insist that all bids on the property will be vetted by its current owner, Alexis. When The Observer asked Mr. Macklowe if he'd be interested-if only to ensure against the possibility of having to sling more mud over the eight-foot fence he erected between the properties-a Macklowe spokesman told us that "he's not making any comments on this."

The village has already approved Ms. Stewart's renovation plans, so whoever does end up with the property won't have to re-apply; that is, of course, as long as they want a Bunshaft design as interpreted by Martha Stewart. If so, the plans call for a renovation of the main house, a separate studio and a garage. Also approved is the installation of a 60-foot-long pool and three more small buildings that won't be connected to the main house. Ms. Bell of Sotheby's envisioned them as an office, a library and a gym.

"These plans were filed, and probably they could all be re-enacted," said Ms. Bell. "What we're saying is: He who buys it can do what they want-but in case somebody would like something like that, there were original plans for it."

Zitoune is Arabic for "olive," another commodity of the souk, where there are stalls that sell only olives-heaped in glistening piles of variegated hues, from blue-black to pale green-which the vendor spoons into cones of rough brown paper. Here, the olives are in a small tajine-a traditional glazed pottery dish with a conical lid-that's brought to the table when you sit down, along with anise bread, olive rolls and the pungent leather menus.

Three months ago, Zitoune took over the premises formerly occupied by the unprepossessingly named (and short-lived) Menu, which before that was a French bistro, Le Gans. It took two years for the co-owner, Alain Bennouna-who got tired of staring at the crowds piling into Pastis across the street while the tables in his restaurant remained empty-to look to his Moroccan roots for inspiration. The decision has paid off. The new place finally has a buzz. It's filled not just with the young and hip, but also older Village intellectuals with their grizzled hair and baggy sweaters. Maître d' Saad Khal-laayoun, Mr. Bennouna's nephew, patrols the floor, presiding over the room and greeting customers like a downtown version of Le Cirque's Sirio Maccioni. The dining room still looks much like that of a bistro, with large mirrors hanging on bare brick walls, a long bar, and mullion windows giving onto the corner of Gansevoort and Greenwich streets. But Moroccan lamps with cheerful red and blue shades have been added, and traditional tajines, unglazed pottery, blue-green ceramic plates and hand-woven baskets are used for serving the food.

The service is friendly, although there can be waits between courses. At the next table one Saturday night, six cool-looking young Asians posed for pictures, which the waiter had offered to take for them. The waiter sported an impressive calligraphic tattoo on his upper arm, and I asked him what it was. "It's my name, Yaseen, in Korean." Why Korean? "Because I'm in love with a Korean woman," he replied simply.

Zitoune's chef and co-owner, Julian Clauss-Ehlers, is an Englishman who trained in France. He has subtly updated Moroccan cuisine, adding details and refinements to many of the traditional dishes. Moroccans like to combine savory with sweet, which they do in their tajines (stews), mixing meat and fruit, as well as in their pastries and pies. Briwats are little phyllo tubes that Mr. Clauss-Ehlers pan-fries after filling with crab and mungbean vermicelli. Delicate and light-better than spring rolls-they're served with a spicy orange dressing and a thick tomato chutney that sets off the crab nicely. B'istiya is a flaky round pastry, usually stuffed with pigeon, that's sprinkled with confectioners' sugar and cinnamon. Mr. Clauss-Ehlers fills it with shredded duck, nuts and raisins. It's disappointingly bland, like the sort of thing dished up for tourists in second-rate Moroccan hotels.

But there are no complaints about the crisp chunks of deep-fried cod served with a relish of diced cucumber (wrapped nouvelle-style in a paper-thin cucumber slice) and a creamy, rich mayonnaise made with a blend of Moroccan spices, cilantro and parsley. I like this dish better than the skewered shrimp, grilled and served hot on a cold wild rice and avocado salad-a strange mixing of temperatures. The platter of traditional Moroccan salads-carrot, chickpea and spicy eggplant-is perfectly pleasant. But the updated carpaccio of lamb res el hannout is a gem: thin circles of meat sprinkled with a Moroccan spice mixture and served with a mound of couscous salad with cinnamon and raisins, and a dressing made from fresh mint and harissa.

Short ribs, which are painstakingly emptied onto the plate from a small earthenware vessel that looks like a miniature Ali Baba urn, are overwhelmed by cumin. Grilled marinated lamb, on the other hand, suffers from a lack of spices. The person eating it reached over for my harissa sauce, which comes with the couscous. The grains in this dish are light and fluffy, but the seven vegetables piled on top of them are virtually indistinguishable (almost like British vegetables in the old days). Even the traditional bowl of broth on the side fails to perk up this lot.

But all is forgiven when you taste Mr. Clauss-Ehlers' lamb tajine. This is a great dish, made with melting pieces of lamb in thick, dark sauce, with caramelized quince and toasted Israeli pearl couscous. It's hard to choose between this and the veal cheeks, which are simmered with dates, almonds and honey, a concoction out of the Song of Solomon. The Cornish hen is juicy, enlivened by a side dish of spinach bakoula, simmered with preserved lemon and green olives. It's worth getting a side order of merguez, too, a spicy lamb sausage that arrives in a coil.

The inexpensive wine list has plenty of good choices in the $30 range to go with this food. I'd like to see some Moroccan wines, too.

For dessert, the chocolate-cappuccino mousse is outstanding, zapped with res el hannout spices that bring out the flavor of the chocolate. Poached figs look pretty but are tasteless, served with Moroccan pancakes and honey and black currant sauce. I am not bowled over by the spiced couscous with vanilla ice cream (a Moroccan answer to rice pudding, and not nearly as good), or the orange cake, made with layers of sponge alternating with orange mousse, which seemed to have lingered too long in the refrigerator.

Zitoune is a welcome addition to this rapidly changing neighborhood. The prices are right (there are no main courses over $20), and so is the friendly atmosphere. If it gets too successful, who knows? Maybe Keith McNally will have to follow Mr. Bennouna's example and start serving British food at Pastis.

Zitoune *

46 Gansevoort Street

675-5224

Dress : Casual

Noise Level : Fine

Wine List : Reasonably priced, mostly French and American

Credit Cards : All major, except Discover

Price Range : Brunch, main courses, $7 to $13; lunch, $7 to $13; dinner, $16 to $20.50; $25 prix fixe (includes glass of wine); tasting menu, $42.50

Lunch : Monday to Friday, noon to 3 p.m.

Dinner : Monday to Thursday, 5:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, to midnight; Sunday, to 10:30 p.m.

Brunch: Saturday and Sunday, noon to 3 p.m.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

Five years later, the crowd is less garish. It was after 10 when I arrived, and American Ballet Theater programs littered the tables (the restaurant is directly across from City Center, where the company had just begun their two-week fall season). Given the circus aspect of much of the program we'd just seen, with its warhorse pas de deux and superstars flying through the air with the greatest of ease, it was an apt setting. Beneath a trapeze that hangs from the ceiling, the Rus-sian dancer Vladimir Malakhov was presiding over a table of three beaming young ballerinas. Would he go for the three-course prix fixe for $30 (it was Restaurant Week), or, given the lateness of the hour, would he stick sensibly to a steak, for four more bucks?

Osteria del Circo, the West Side sibling of Le Cirque 2000, is owned by Sirio Maccioni, his wife, Egidiana, and their three sons, Mario, Marco and Mauro. The freshly painted dining room, designed by Adam Tihany, looks like the inside of a big top. After five years, they felt the place was ready for a face-lift, so they closed it for the summer and reopened at the end of September with new circus-motif fabric on the banquettes and more trapezes. Panels of red and yellow silk fan out across a double-height ceiling, anchored by a central pole. Bronze monkeys are perched round the room, some holding a magnum of champagne tilted over the large mahogany bar. Metal circus figures prance on a shelf above the open kitchen in the back, and now a lion stands over the coatroom with a moving tail (the signal of trouble in the cat family, so watch out).

There's also a new chef in the kitchen. Albert Di Meglio, who was formerly sous chef at Le Cirque under Sottha Khunn, has taken over for Sandro Giuntolli, who went back to his native Montecatini to open his own restaurant. Mr. Di Meglio spent time in Italy with the Maccioni family (Mrs. Maccioni is Osteria del Circo's executive consulting chef), who introduced him to top Tuscan kitchens as well as the legendary female cooks of Montecatini. The menu is now more firmly rooted in the Tuscan tradition and includes simple, rustic dishes like veal chop Milanese, chicken roasted under a brick, trippa alla Fiorentina and handmade pasta.

The chicken (listed on the menu as "brick-pressed free-range," which sounds like an oxymoron) was the main course on the Restaurant Week menu. It was a good deal-including pizza margherita and dessert-so, always ready for a bargain, I ordered it. To my surprise, the pizza crust, topped in the traditional way with basil, tomato and mozzarella, was soggy. Had it been sitting around? The focaccia in the breadbasket was dry, as though it too had been out all day. (On another night it was fine, as was the pleasant flatbread brought to the table.) The chicken was juicy and had a crisp skin, and was served with fregola (Sardinian pearl couscous) and spinach. My companion insisted she'd had better at Frank on the Lower East Side the previous evening, but I thought it was pretty good. The dessert was terrific, but more about that later.

Like this initial bargain meal, the food at Osteria del Circo, I went on to discover, was as unpredictable as the behavior of a lion you're trying to tame. I couldn't guess what I'd be in for just by looking at the menu. Marinated tuna with white beans and red onions sounded interesting, but it was mashed together like the filling in a deli sandwich and tasted like it, too. But fritto misto was excellent, an interesting mix of smaller seafood-whitebait, bay scallops, crevettes grises and baby calamari-served with two kinds of aioli, one made with black olives and the other with fennel. The antipasto platter was a run-of-the-mill selection of mixed bruschetta (chicken liver and tomato), marinated artichokes, olives and Pecorino, along with salami and prosciutto. But the roasted fennel soup was stellar, one of those dishes you associate with the mothers of Montecatini, a dense mixture with layers of flavor that opened up with each mouthful.

Mamma Egi's ravioli, soft pillows filled with spinach and ricotta and served with butter and leaves of sage, is a classic, and beautifully done. Not so the pappardelle with rabbit ragu, vin santo and olives, a combination that sounded great but was disappointingly dull, made with dry, stringy meat.

Veal chop Milanese, perfectly cooked under a light, crunchy coating of bread crumbs, came with a small arugula salad served in a copper casserole (a nice touch) and lemon-parsley sauce. It couldn't have been better. But a couple of dishes were like bad hotel banquet food. Monkfish Livornese with tomato and spinach was overcooked to a mush. Boned rabbit loin was rolled and stuffed with fennel sausage and prosciutto cotto, a fussy, overwrought dish served with damp chickpea fries and a zucchini timbale.

There's a long list of desserts from pastry chef Stephane Weber, and it is well worth investigating. Caffe latte gelato with a warm dark-chocolate tart was spectacular, as was the zucotto alla ciocolatto, a chocolate dome filled with ganache and decorated with a sheet of dark chocolate. Key-lime panna cotta had too much gelatin, but the coconut gelato was exceptional. The rum baba was fine, with rum mousseline and vanilla-pineapple chutney, but the torta caprini, a cheesecake served with cassis sorbet, was superb, made with tangy goat cheese. Bombolonccini-hot Tuscan doughnuts filled with vanilla and chocolate cream and raspberry marmalade-are justifiably a signature dish of the restaurant. Get them.

Service can be slow, with a long intermission between first and second courses. But Osteria del Circo is fun and lively. The kitchen ringmaster, however, while clearly capable of turning out great food, needs to crack his whip more often.

Osteria del Circo

120 West 55th Street

265-3636

Dress : Casual but smart

Noise Level : Fine

Wine List : Well-chosen, fairly high-priced Italian wines

Credit Cards : All major

Price Range : Main courses, lunch $19 to $28; three-course prix fixe, $26; dinner, $19 to $34, three-course prix fixe, $39

Lunch : Monday to Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Dinner : Monday to Thursday, 5:30 to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, to 11:30 p.m.; Sunday, 5 to 10:30 p.m.; bar menu, 11:30 a.m. to closing

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

The night before the party, Max walked into the restaurant and saw his dad–the son of Warner Bros. potentate and The Wizard of Oz producer Mervyn LeRoy–crouched on the floor, examining paintings that were to be hung on the restaurant's walls. Max remembered there was a thick layer of gold dust from the freshly gilded ceilings in his father's hair. Just a few feet away, Max's sister, Jennifer LeRoy, 21, who had worked at their father's Tavern on the Green for two years, was dusting, polishing and vacuuming and would continue until dawn.

"It woke me up," said Max, who on this July afternoon was dressed in a dark suit and sitting at a banquette in his father's newest restaurant. Max, who has spiky brown hair, brown eyes and a slim frame, hadn't thought much about going into his father's line of work. He currently plays guitar in a band, Lil' Red, that he has with Samantha Ronson. "I always thought I'd be a rock star. For real," he said. But seeing his old man immersed in the final stages of opening his restaurant, "I saw how much work my father had put into it and I was filled with a real family pride." That night in October, Max rolled up his sleeves and entered the family business.

Ten months later, Max and his sister Jennifer are managing the Russian Tea Room while their 65-year-old father battles a curable lymphoma that, at press time, had him hospitalized. ("He is responding well to treatment," said Mr. LeRoy's spokeswoman, Shelley Clark.) The LeRoy children said that he communicates with them via approximately 30 memos a day. They send him photos of the flower arrangements and report on the state of the Tea Room's carpet. They also make sure the 15-foot bear aquarium keeps rotating, that the ice sculptures aren't melting, that the glasses are spot-free.

"We keep up the standard," said Jennifer, who has long brown hair, hazel eyes and who wore a tan suede suit. "But we have a lot to learn."

The LeRoy children were both sitting at a front booth in their father's baroque reinterpretation of the Tea Room, and as they scanned the restaurant looking for potential problems, there was the sense that a transition was underway–a change that was far from complete but one that was happening all over the city. The vivid impresarios of Manhattan's meritocracy were graying and slowing, and they were being replaced by their own children.

After decades in which the children of Manhattan's rich and powerful graduated from posh, vaunted universities, took their trust funds and, like Oliver Barrett in Love Story , set out to carve out an independent niche that was as far away as possible from Mom and Dad's bony-assed shadows, something different is happening. More and more, it seems these privileged offspring–often after brief stints away–are following in Dad's or Mom's Gucci footprints. In addition to Mr. LeRoy's children, Le Cirque 2000 owner Sirio Maccioni's sons are working to keep the Maccioni name prominent in the city; so are Tim and Nina Zagat's son Ted Zagat, fashion designer Betsey Johnson's daughter, Lulu, Hard Rock Hotel owner Peter Morton's son Harry Morton, real estate developer Donald Trump's son Donny Trump and various heirs apparent who go by the appellations of Lauder, Lauren, Speyer, Nederlander, Murdoch and Plimpton.

And there are others–surnames that have come to be equated with brand names in Manhattan and the world. If your surname already carries weight in one area of enterprise, the current reasoning seems to be, why break your neck trying to establish some new foothold? Especially in an economy where it takes a helluva lot more dough to live the good life that your guilty parents showered upon you during your prep-school years.

Everyone could learn a lesson from David Lauren, the 28-year-old son of fashion designer Ralph Lauren. David is currently the chief creative officer of Ralph Lauren Media, a partnership with Polo and NBC that's about to launch polo.com. But before he took that job at his father's company, David toiled for years in his own wilderness trying to make Swing , his slim magazine for twentysomethings, work.

Will these beneficiaries of the New Nepotism combine pluck and luck to prolong the familial cache and power for another generation, insuring that they will continue to live the vivid, privileged lives that their parents' success created?

As they sat in the Tea Room, Max and Jennifer acknowledged that, during their childhood, they didn't understand that their father's ownership of Maxwell's Plum and Tavern on the Green as well as his reputation as New York's showman restaurateur was a big deal, but they knew their lives were unique. "I definitely wanted to own Great Adventure when we were young. It was the coolest thing to have," Jennifer said, referring to the New Jersey amusement park that her father owned, but sold to Time Warner in 1993.

But now their thoughts were of a more down-to-earth variety. Max's band is playing Roseland in August but he works at the Tea Room five days a week. Jennifer works at the Tea Room at least six nights a week. Earlier, Ms. LeRoy worked for two years at Tavern on the Green, where, she said, she worked every job from cutting lemons to dishwashing. At 19, she oversaw the kitchen's 85 male cooks.

Jennifer picked up a wineglass that a waiter had set on the table and inspected it. "There will definitely never be anyone but a LeRoy owning Tavern or the Russian Tea Room," she said. She explained that approximately 30 years ago, her father leased the Tavern site from the City of New York for 100 years. "Dad started it, we'll keep it going," she said. "We'll definitely expand, that's the biggest thing Max and I want to do," she said. "Our Dad has always done that and we want to keep it going. Create new boundaries."

LeRoy père declined to be interviewed, but, from his hospital bed, he issued a statement via his spokeswoman: "My restaurants have always been like second family to me, so it's terrific to have my children involved. Jennifer and Max have really taken to the business. They have a great future in it."

Mr. LeRoy makes an interesting point about how important his business is to him, and therein lies the rub of children jumping into the family business–especially in the pressure-soaked environs of Manhattan where reputations rise and fall on the fickle, petulant tastes of pampered people. It's a less-than-ideal way for Junior to learn the ropes when it's at the expense of Dad's hard-won, A-list clients.

Just ask Mauro Maccioni, 28, the youngest of three sons of restaurateur Sirio Maccioni, the owner of Le Cirque 2000 restaurant. When he was 7 years old, Mauro remembered, his father would dress him in a bowtie and have him serve champagne to the diners at Le Cirque, which at the time was located in an architecturally cramped space where the airier Daniel now sits. Mauro and his brothers, Mario and Marco, virtually grew up in their father's restaurant, where the elder Maccioni could often been seen barking orders or looking askance at his sons as they scurried about the room serving the Kissingers, the Kempners or Cindy and Joey Adams. Part of it was an act, of course, Mr. Maccioni's role as ringleader of the culinary circus, but, eventually, Mauro said, with a smile on his face: "We wanted to get out from actually working in the same restaurant–it would have driven us nuts."

In 1996, the pressure lessened, a bit, when Sirio opened the $2.5 million Osteria del Circo at 120 W. 55th Street for his sons. Papa Maccioni invested a fortune in Circo, because, Mauro said, "He wanted us to do something on our own, but didn't want us to have to answer to an investor."

This afternoon, July 20, the lunch crowd had left, Circo was practically empty and Mauro sat down at a table with a glass of water and a portable phone that wouldn't stop ringing. He signed a $35,000 check for payroll. He was wearing a body-hugging custom-tailored suit and a spotless pair of tan leather shoes that he picked up on a recent trip to Italy.

Mauro handed over his business card, which features the logo of Circo on one side and Le Cirque on the other. He and his brothers still oversee the restaurant when his father is on vacation and, with a second Le Cirque recently opened at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, the understanding in restaurant circles is that eventually, each of the Maccioni sons will inherit a restaurant.

Asked why he decided to go into the family business, Mauro smiled. His bright eyes did not yet carry the skepticism of his father's gaze. "They put a gun to my head," he smiled. "I really didn't have any sort of epiphany," Mauro said. "I decided because it was something I was very familiar with. As a young child, I was sort of encouraged into thinking that … I probably had the same knack. I never thought twice about doing something else–for the time being."

Mauro smiled again. "It's not easy," he said. "My father is a very intense person, he always wants things his way. Sometimes, you can feel the heat of Le Cirque from over here." And when his father gives son the speech about growing up poor in Montecatini, Mauro said that he tells him: "Dad, it's different for us. We don't have to be slaves."

They don't exactly spend all day sipping Montepulciano in the back room either. Ask Mauro who his girlfriend is and he will reply giddily, "Circo!" Six days a week, he manages the restaurant and the mercurial egos of his customer during two shifts that last from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and then from 5:30 p.m. until 11:30 p.m.

And always his father is watching. "My friends joke: 'Uh-oh, he's late for work, his dad's going to call now." And there is the day-to-day reality of living in his father's substantial shadow. "People come to the restaurant and see how hard we work," Mauro said. "But it took three sons to do what he did as one father."

Expansion is one way of working the offspring into the family and the technological revolution of the last few years is helping that expansion, especially when Dad can't figure out how to e-mail his clients or even turn on the friggin' computer monitor. According to Ken Preston, adjunct professor of management a the New York University Stern Graduate School of Business, "More people are working for their parents and the main reason is that with the advent of technology, younger people feel that they have an immediate platform in the family business."

Mr. Preston added that "Historically, one of the big problems with family businesses has been the issue of simultaneous roles. Children have certain roles in the family–a woman may be Daddy's Little Girl at home even when she is 25, 30 or 35, and even when she has an M.B.A. from Wharton," he said. When Dad the C.E.O. treats daughter Missy, the C.O.O. like Daddy's Little Girl during the quarterly sales meeting, trouble inevitably follows, which is why, Mr. Preston continued, "children who ordinarily might have entered the family business haven't done so." But now, he added, "technology gives children identities that transcend the family roles." In other words, ungrateful, good-for-nothing Junior suddenly looks a whole lot more valuable when he can get the modem to work for Dad.

The digital revolution has also figured in a cultural revolution which, overnight has made a lot of the touchstones of Manhattan power, sex and glamour look so, well, 20th century . So, it would seem that Mr. Preston's observation would also apply to the extremely with-it children of Manhattan's rich and famous. Pater LeRoy's reinvention of the Russian Tea Room has not exactly faired well in the press. No matter how many times Mike Nichols eats lunch there, he, nor Ms. Walters, nor many of the other celebrities that Warner LeRoy has cultivated over the years can make the place hip again.

So when Max told his father he wanted to have a party at the restaurant where his roommate, Mark Ronson, also the brother of Max's bandmate and New York magazine cover subject, would spin records, Warner happily said yes.

Max has thrown two parties so far, on May 7 and June 7. "He wants us to do it weekly," said Max about his father, who didn't seem to mind that the May 7 party was attended by Sean (Puffy) Combs and his entourage. (Paging Mr. Nichols!) Max admitted that he was worried during the first party about possible cigarette burns on the $30,000 bars, but once he sat down and had a drink, he said, he started to enjoy himself. "The young crowd reminds you of how this place used to be," he said.

It's hard to be hipper than your mother when Mom's the one with the orange hair, but Lulu Johnson, 25, spends just about every waking moment with her fashion designer mother, Betsey Johnson. "She's always asking me my opinion on things," said Lulu from her mother's new house in East Hampton, where last Saturday they attended the Polo match in Bridgehampton like a true society couple.

Lulu started working for her mother right out of high school, back when the company didn't even have assistants. She's worked in jobs ranging from public relations, to managing the East 60th Street store, to fittings and styling models for shows.

"As soon as I hit 14 [years old], I wore mom's clothes...I realized I wanted to be in fashion," said Lulu. My mother never forced me into it, she was extremely happy." But, when she was 23, Lulu realized that she needed a break, to figure out if she wanted a career of her own. She took some acting classes and taught at a preschool, but she missed working for her mom. "It wasn't the craziness and the energy of the fashion industry, that I realized I really missed."

Ted Zagat began working for his parents Tim and Nina Zagat's guide book empire when they began to expand onto the Internet, but after using his technological know-how to find a role in the family business, it was his knowledge of the city's hot nightspots that secured him his coming out, so to speak, when he spearheaded the Zagat New York City Nightlife guide that was published earlier this year. Currently, Ted works between 60 and 70 hours a week for his parents, creating, "strategic partnerships, negotiating contracts and developing the web site." But there is a buffer zone. Ted's office, while in the same building, is two floors below his parents'.

"Frankly I wanted my own space," he said, adding that "sometimes it's a little weird being the bosses' kid." Still, he said, "It must be self evident to people that I've earned my stripes. I went to respectable schools [Exeter and Harvard] ... everyone here knows how hard I work." Some of those stripes were also earned when he worked in Paul Bocuse's restaurant in Lyon, France–peeling potatoes for a summer when he was 16 years old. He got the job through "connections"–the chef is a good friend of Ted's parents. So is Wolfgang Puck, who gave Ted a gig at Spago in Los Angeles the following summer.

"I've always known I wanted to be involved in this," said Ted. "I never wanted to be a firefighter or an astronaut. There's no one I can think of off hand that I would trade with right now. I feel blessed."

Who wouldn't feel blessed having a surname with the clout to score last-minute reservations at practically any restaurant in town? Certainly this isn't lost on any of the kids. As Jennifer LeRoy put it, "We haven't been to Ducasse, yet." She was referring to the impossible-to-get a reservation restaurant that vaunted chef Alain Ducasse recently opened in the Essex House hotel. But, she added, "we will." Indeed, the LeRoys, Zagat and Maccioni children have been enjoying the fruits of Manhattan's culinary scene since their childhoods. Max and Jennifer LeRoy's Dalton School classes took field trips to Tavern on the Green's pastry kitchen, where the chefs taught the grade schoolers how to flambé.

And Mauro Maccioni remembered the birthday when Le Cirque's renowned pastry chef, Jacques Torres, baked a fancy dark chocolate cake which was delivered to Mauro's school. "The kids were used to Betty Crocker," Mauro recalled. "All my friends said, 'this cake sucks.'"

Harry Morton, the 19-year-old son of Hard Rock Hotel and Casino owner Peter Morton has had similar experiences, but his experiences with the New Nepotism have been a bit tougher on him. "Brutal" is the word he used to describe the hotel staff's attitude toward him during his first summer there, three years ago.

"I did one too many summers of sitting in bed all day and my parents decided it was time for me to get my ass in gear," he said, adding that "being 16 [years old], it was nice to get away from my parents for a summer." Currently, Harry manages to jet off to his father's East Hampton estate every other weekend, but he insists that he works hard during his summer vacation from N.Y.U., where he has completed one year of school–an experience he called a disaster. "I'm not a huge supporter of college," he said.

Harry speaks to his father about four times a day. "I don't consider it really working for my dad. It's not like I'm reporting to him. He turns me over to the manager of the hotel." Mr. Morton fils said that he's earned himself some respect in the three years he's worked at the hotel. "They realize maybe I'm not fucking around," he said. Still, he says, "a lot of people say, oh yeah you went to work for your dad, it'll be easy." The opportunity to work for his successful father makes Harry "feel leaps and bounds ahead of people." But, he added, "It's not always easy … There's a lot of pressure. I'm always living in his footsteps. I want to branch out on my own."

Although Harry's also taking summer-school classes in Vegas, he does manage to take advantage of his run of the hotel by importing friends from New York, Europe, L.A. to party at the Hard Rock. "Vegas isn't all it's cracked up to be," said Harry. "It's brutal, I miss New York like mad right now ... There's a seriously doggy group of people here."

And Mr. Morton, sir, please don't ask your son to share an office with you any time soon. "That'd be awful," said Harry.

Dr. Robert Katz would probably agree. Dr. Katz is not the guy with the Comedy Central cartoon series, but rather a psychologist trained in psychoanalysis with an office on the Upper East Side. He often counsels children victimized by nepotism–and he said he doesn't think working for the family business is so great for mental health.

"It's very similar to not leaving home, to what it means psychologically to not leave home," said Dr. Katz. "There's always the potential of lost opportunity to become more yourself and develop yourself apart from the feeling of making it on your own … it's a way of remaining in the family. Full growth involves leaving the family," said Dr. Katz.

Donald Trump would have you believe that neither is he. Mr. Trump's son Donny, 21, graduated from his father's alma mater, the Wharton School of Business in May and he plans to work for his father when he gets back from a summer trip to Alaska. Donny wasn't available for comment, but his father was, and he sounded a protective note. "Leave my boy alone," said Mr. Trump. "It's a lot of pressure on children when they go into a business like this. A big factor towards their success is whether or not they like it. If they don't love it as Vince Lombardi would say, it's not going to work." Mr. Trump said that he hoped his children "ultimately do something they love."

Back at the Tea Room, Jennifer and Max LeRoy were thinking about the future.

"I want to have something smaller," Max said of the restaurant he wants to open one day in New York.

"I want something big!" interjected Jennifer, with a smile.

Max laughed and thought a bit. "I can't believe my Dad ran Tavern for so long," he said, noting that the restaurant had 800 employees. "It's like a town."

He said it as if maybe one day it would be his town too.

Additional reporting by William Berlind.