New York City boasts an unparalleled wealth of restaurants, but surviving the city’s fiercely competitive culinary world remains a challenge. Economic pressures, rising food prices and changing food and beverage trends test the tenacity of even the most iconic venues. Despite these obstacles, a tenacious group of restaurants have persevered against the odds, some with roots dating back more than a century.
Several iconic restaurants will be celebrating important milestones in 2024, and No Taste Like Home will highlight some of our favorite influential restaurants that laid the foundation for New York City’s food culture today.
Era
In 1984, Mayor Ed Koch would ask, “How’s it going?” Literary and film gangsters flocked to the Odeon, the McNally brothers were cementing their It restaurant status, and lunching ladies were nibbling at Mortimer’s uptown. Le Cirque was the place to see Jackie O, power lunches were booming at the Four Seasons, Larry Forgione’s An American Place was just getting started, and Jonathan Waxman was bringing California cuisine to New York with Jam’s, both on the Upper East Side. Their openings invigorated the downtown dining scene.
Indochina
November 1984
430 Lafayette Street, Astor Place, NoHo
The Beginning
Brian McNally opened his first solo establishment without his brother Keith, in a row of rundown auto repair shops on Lafayette Street. McNally’s then-wife, Anne, came up with the concept to resemble her favorite restaurant in Paris, Au Coin des Gourmets, a stylish French-Vietnamese eatery. Through McNally’s magic, Madonna, Anna Wintour, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and Keith Haring all visited, and Brian Miller, in his two-star review for The Times, noted that an evening at Indochine offered “a chance to rub napkins with the city’s chic artistic peers… tasting the stimulating cuisine of Southeast Asia.”
Celebrities kept coming, but in 1992, “the tax man put padlocks on it,” according to New York Magazine’s Gail Green. But three staff members came to the rescue: waiter Huy Chi Ly, manager Michael Callahan, and manager Jean-Marc Oumar pooled their savings and renegotiated the lease. Le ran the kitchen, Callahan took over operations, and Oumar resumed serving customers, remaining the face of the restaurant to this day. Oumar says it was tough to bring back a top-notch clientele after McNally left, but Indochine remains a thriving place.
According to Park magazine, opening night
“Andy Warhol showed up looking like the coolest Hell’s Angel daddy on the planet, accompanied by a discovery: Jean-Michel Basquiat, still wide-eyed and before he had dreadlocks. Julian Schnabel was still with his first wife Jacqueline, and Kenny Scharf looked crazier than he did in Caddyshack, wearing a garish patchwork red shirt, an equally garish paisley jacket, and lime-green pants that clashed with the now-iconic Indochine wallpaper.”
Menus then and now
In 1984, entrees cost between $8 and $12.75; today they cost between $29 and $55. Some dishes, like Vietnamese ravioli, spring rolls and fish steamed in banana leaves, have been on the menu for 40 years.
Why it persists
“At the time, there were surprisingly few Vietnamese restaurants in the city, and none outside Chinatown,” Oumar points out. “This was just nine years after the fall of Saigon.”
Indochine was one of the restaurants that cemented the shift of cool to downtown: Warhol, for example, could often be found within Indochine’s banana-leaf-decorated walls rather than at Mr. Chow. Indochine used the restaurant’s cachet as a runway to dress its racially, ethnically, and gender-diverse front-of-house staff in its own unique style.
“I’ve always encouraged my staff to be creative and flamboyant, and not to hide who they are,” says Oumar. Indochine has helped transform the neighborhood, which has spawned spinoffs such as Bond Cent, Acme and The Nines, and will one day welcome Il Buco, Atla and Lafayette. It still draws A-listers; recent sightings include Pedro Almodóvar, Tilda Swinton and Victoria Beckham.
“The beauty of Indochina is that it hasn’t changed much in the last 40 years,” Oumar said.