Культура роскоши Condé Nast: как еда и рестораны определяли статус в мире глянца

In Mike Grynbaum’s Empire of the Elite (Simon & Schuster, 2025), the media reporter delves into the culture of luxury that was Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ and the other splashy titles of Condé Nast during the salad days of print media. A surprising amount of that culture revolves around food—and not simply within the pages of Gourmet and Bon Appétit. You weren’t alive unless you were awarded a prime seat at Condé power spots like 44, or the Four Seasons. Status and dining were so essential to Condé Chairman Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr. (aka “Si”) that he had starchitect Frank Gehry design the cafeteria when the company moved to 4 Times Square in 1999. As his book bows in paperback, Grynbaum tells Edible Manhattan editor-in-chief John Ortved about the dishy, decadent, expense-account laden world that once was glossy magazines. Full disclosure: I worked at Vanity Fair from 2003 to 2008. I spent a lot of time in the cafeteria, the cafeteria. How did that magnificent and oddly-shaped room come to being? When Condé Nast first moved to Times Square from 350 Madison in the late ’90s, Times Square was still pretty grimy. A lot of the employees were really chagrined to be moving to such a declassé neighborhood. Si Newhouse and editorial director James Truman came up with the idea of commissioning this incredible cafeteria so that the employees would have a glamorous place to eat lunch. Si had been talking to Frank Gehry about a summer home in Bellport, Long Island, and asked Frank if he would consider this corporate project. Gehry was attracted by a couple things: The budget, because Si was willing to spend $35 million, which is outrageous today and was even more outrageous then. And second, he was told how dining rooms were kind of an important part of the Condé Nast culture. In order to fully understand the cafeteria, I think we have to talk about the Royalton Hotel—around the corner from the old Condé Nast Building at 350 Madison. Ian Schrager bought it in the mid ’90s and created this very cool restaurant called 44, which became the lunch hangout for all the Condé Nast editors. There were a couple booths that were reserved for Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter and Si Newhouse. The seating chart every day was picked over as sign of how important an editor was based on their proximity to the major Condé figures. When Gehry heard about this, he liked the idea of making a cafeteria that was filled with banquettes. At 44 there were only four banquettes—and those were the most important seats. Frank said, “Well, I want every seat in my cafeteria to be important.” That’s why the design had these buttery leather banquettes throughout the cafeteria. And he created a lot of nooks and cozy corners for employees to trade gossip and share notes in the cafeteria. Si would eat in the cafeteria. He would walk up you—at a prepared food station—and ask you, “Is there any garlic in this?” Because he didn’t like it, and it was banned. I can confirm that garlic was banned from the cafeteria because of Si’s aversion to it. Si would walk around in his New Yorker sweatshirt and New Yorker baseball cap, dressed frumpy, wherein these were like the best-dressed people in New York at the Condé Cafeteria. By the way, Frank Gehry installed these skinny mirrors at the exits and entrances, because he thought that girls who worked at Vogue and Glamour would appreciate a flattering mirror for when they would check themselves out. You think it was just the girls checking themselves out? Fair point. I stand corrected. James Truman, the editorial director you mentioned—he left Condé Nast and opened a restaurant. Yes, a vegetarian place [Nix]. Restaurants were always a big part of the Condé Nast lore. The old Four Seasons in the Seagram Building, was the unofficial cafeteria of Condé Nast, dating back to the ’80s. I interviewed Alex von Bidder, a former maître d’ there, and he told me that when there were staff changes at Condé Nast—if an editor was promoted or demoted—somehow it would get communicated to the host and their seating at the Four Seasons Grill Room was adjusted accordingly. Alex von Bidder was a “maître d’” like Lenin was a “communist.” Exactly. One of the great legendary restaurateurs. Before the Internet, there was more of a need for these gathering spaces where the powerful figures from different industries would meet and trade notes and gossip. Having a physical space was all the more important for a company that advertised itself as being on the vanguard of culture. Does where one eats carry any of the same weight as it once did? As a newspaper reporter, I can tell you there’s no substitute to a face-to-face meeting. If I have an important interview, I’ll always want to go to lunch with them. But I do think specific restaurants feel less important nowadays. One of my favorite stories from the book involved a woman who was interviewing for a big editor job, and she went to a very formal French restaurant with [formal editorial director] Alex Liberman. The appetizer dish was asparagus. She began eating the asparagus with her fork and knife, and Alexander Liberman started eating it with his fingers. She later learned that in formal French tradition, it is appropriate to eat asparagus with one’s fingers. And she was convinced that she didn’t get the job because she was ignorant of this wrinkle. Keith McNally gave a quote once, maybe on an anniversary of The Odeon, about how they don’t deliver, but they deliver for Anna Wintour. Keith McNally’s whole journey in New York City restaurants has a real connection with Anna Wintour, who first came to New York in the late 1970s. She would go eat at One Fifth [McNally’s first restaurant job]. Anna came to New York to work in fashion magazines and flailed out. She got fired from Harper’s Bazaar. She worked for a soft porn magazine called Viva, and then she basically gave up. She moved to Paris with a boyfriend who needed a manager for his clothing store. She thought Keith was a good manager. Keith spent a whole week in Paris with Anna, eating at these old-school brasseries. And he was so inspired by them that when he got back to New York, he decided to open his own restaurant. And so the Odeon, which was Keith’s first restaurant, was inspired by where he ate in Paris with Anna Wintour on this trip. How in the world did Bon Appétit survive and Gourmet close? That’s something people have been asking for many years. Bon Appétit was perceived as a younger brand at a time [2009] when they were desperate to find that in magazines. Gourmet had a real history to it, and it was quite expensive to run. It’s still surprising to me that they decided to close it. You know, Condé’s first real experiment on the internet had to do with food: Epicurious. It was one of the earliest recipe sharing sites and a frustration to the Gourmet people that the company didn’t want to brand it as Gourmet.com. In fact, they wouldn’t even let Epicurious use the Gourmet recipes, because they thought it would create some kind of brand confusion. Anything I’m missing? We didn’t talk about Art Cooper, the longtime editor of GQ, dying at the Four Seasons. He was a real gourmand. And he ate at the Four Seasons almost every day. And by the way, when a Condé bigwig would eat at the Four Seasons, there was never a check. He would just stand up and walk out. Art was forced out of GQ after a long and successful tenure, and he was heartbroken. There was always a rumor that Si said that he could keep his expense account at the Four Seasons. A few months after he was pushed out, Art was eating there with another editor, and he started to feel unwell. He ended up having a heart episode,and was taken away by ambulance. He died shortly thereafter. I talked to his friends about it—it’s a very sad story—but they all said that it was exactly how Art would have wanted it to be. Did you ever get to eat out on Si’s dime? I went to some sort of dinner with Vanity Fair employees. And I’m not certain the dinner had any professional purpose. But I am certain that the check was put onto a Condé Nast corporate card.