Zephyr 007: The Next Cecchi’s

In an interview, maître-d’-turned-restaurateur Michael Cecchi-Azzolina reveals plans for his new brasserie. Plus, bidding farewell to Donohue’s

Story /// Michael Cecchi-Azzolina arrived at his restaurant a few minutes before an interview, straight from the gym. He locked up his bike to a sign post outside and turned the key to the front door of the restaurant, which was about to open for service. Staff members were buzzing around in preparation. He asked them how the previous day had gone and instructed an employee to replace a tablecloth that was “in really bad shape.” Then he sat at a corner booth in front, below a mural by Jean-Pierre Villafañe, and offered a drink. “Water, still, sparkling? Soda? Martini?”

Cecchi-Azzolina’s backstory is well-known, thanks to his 2022 memoir, Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D’. He worked at iconic New York City restaurants including Raoul’s, The River Café, Minetta Tavern, and Le Coucou. The book, described as “a front-of-house Kitchen Confidential,” doesn’t hold back on decades of restaurant-world lore from a participant and eyewitness. It got media attention, sold out its initial run, and preceded other industry memoirs by Keith McNally and Drew Nieporent. “It’s just nuts,” Cecchi-Azzolina said. “It was translated into Chinese.”

Your Table Is Ready ends with Cecchi-Azzolina deciding to start his own restaurant and call it Cecchi’s (pronounced CHECK-ees). The modern bar and grill on West 13th Street opened around seven months after the book was published. It took over the former space of Café Loup, a French institution where New York City’s literati congregated before its 2019 closure. Cecchi’s retained some elements of its storied predecessor: the maître d’ stand, the cane-backed chairs, parts of the bar, even one of the servers.

Left: Michael Cecchi-Azzolina. Right: Cecchi's / Photos by Joe Kramm

If Cecchi-Azzolina writes another memoir, it would probably start here. Opening Cecchi’s in July 2023 took almost two years and cost around $2 million, according to its proprietor. “The place was in bad shape when I took it over, filthy,” he said. The design was important to him. “The lighting had to be great, the welcome had to be wonderful … and I wanted the murals to be sexy and titillating.”

The hard work paid off. Condé Nast Traveler said, “This is where you go to remember why you live in the city.” Eater said Cecchi’s “serves one of the best burgers in town.” “We’ve been busy from day 1,” Cecchi-Azzolina said, adding that the waitlist on weekends regularly hits 1,000 people. Part of the appeal is that the place has “heart,” he explained as Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” played over the sound system. But part of it is also him. Book clubs read Your Table is Ready and then go there to discuss it. “We had three book clubs last week,” he said. He makes a point to be there five nights a week. “I touch every table. People love to see that there’s an owner here, that someone cares,” he said. “If they read my book, they get so excited to meet me. It’s crazy, seriously crazy.”

That personal touch is what used to make restaurants great, according to the restaurateur. “When I came up in the business, every neighborhood had a restaurant that had one owner, and you knew the owner, or maybe you knew the chef,” he said. “They don’t exist any longer. I don’t know anyone like me who’s doing this in Manhattan.” Now it’s all hospitality groups, he said. “The restaurant business in New York has lost its personality. How many Dantes can you go to? And who’s there that you know? Is there an operator there? Almost never.”

Left: Photo by Joe Kramm. Right: Photo of the Cecchi's "New York Happy Meal" by Julian Bracero

Another gripe he has is with influencers. During one recent visit to Cecchi’s, a pair of young patrons appeared to spend half their time filming themselves eating, with phones propped up on the table, and the other half reviewing and editing what they had shot. There are plenty of videos online of others doing the same there. Cecchi-Azzolina said he would have stopped that behavior if he saw it. “If I open up my Instagram, there’s probably 20 people that want for me to give them free dinner so they can come in here and post on us. I don’t want that,” he said. “I don’t want influencers here. I really don’t.”

Running Cecchi’s hasn’t been easy. “It’s the first time in my life that I’m doing this myself, and all the decisions, good and bad, are mine,” Cecchi-Azzolina said. “But it was all my decisions, and I knew what not to do, pretty much, because I watched people make stupid mistakes.”

Now with Cecchi’s under his belt, Cecchi-Azzolina has news: he’s opening a new restaurant. He’s preparing to take over a space in the SoHo area, one that will be bigger than his current spot. “I’m doing a New York brasserie,” he said. “Two floors, two bars, two private dining rooms.” He doesn’t have a name for it yet, and he expects it will take about a year to open.

Why go through the process of launching a restaurant again? “I love creating things, and it’s an addiction,” he said. “I have one more in me.” He said he’s turned down offers to open restaurants in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and West Palm Beach, but doing one close by would allow him to retain control. “With a five-minute bike ride, I’ll go back and forth,” he said. He needs to be there. “The world’s getting more and more depersonalized and people are really grasping for human contact,” he said. “When you start to lose that, what the fuck’s the point?”

Related: Zephyr 004: Restaurant Postcards Are the New Matchbooks

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Dispatch /// Last Tuesday, exactly a month before its planned June 19 closure after more than 75 years, Donohue’s Steak House on the Upper East Side was full by 6:30 p.m. Owner Maureen Donohue-Peters, who was pouring Beefeater and Ketel One martinis at the bar, said there had been increased interest since the restaurant signaled its plans to close, but she’s more concerned with the regulars.

Indeed, over the course of an hour, Donohue-Peters said hello and goodbye to many of those people. She told some she’d see them out East, referring to the fact that she will keep the restaurant’s Westhampton Beach location that opened last summer. “Think of all the years,” she told one party on its way out, adding, “You have my number.” Multiple people left with newly purchased quarter-zip sweatshirts emblazoned with the eatery’s name.

From outside, the Lexington Ave. restaurant resembles an Irish pub, with a medium-size window, an aging red sign, and a green awning. It’s below an out-of-business eyebrow threading salon. But the inside is transporting, with a classic checkerboard floor, a wraparound bar in the front, and black vinyl booths and red tablecloths in the back.

Donohue-Peters’ father and grandfather opened the restaurant in 1950. The New York Times described it in 2015 as “a place dating to a John O’Hara period when gin joints and steakhouses figured large in the social and literary life of Manhattan, when the rich and powerful routinely rubbed elbows with hoi polloi.” It seemed to retain that spirit; The Infatuation last year called it “one of New York’s great antidotes to trend fatigue.”

Over the years, Donohue’s became an art-world haunt (dealer Robert H. Ellsworth bequeathed Donohue-Peters and her niece each a $50,000 tip when he died in 2015). Last Tuesday evening, TEFAF had just ended its six-day run at the Park Avenue Armory a few blocks away, and some of the fair crowd had migrated over. A gallerist from Ben Brown Fine Arts was eating a cheeseburger and scrolling through coverage of the previous night’s Christie’s auction. Another patron with a TEFAF badge was draining a martini before heading back to the Armory for the de-install. Dan Rosen, co-host of the podcast Middlebrow, was there, as was Vanity Fair art correspondent Nate Freeman. There was a two-hour wait for tables, and a landline phone was ringing and ringing.

Donohue-Peters said closing this chapter of her family’s legacy is the hardest part. “I’m saying bye to my father,” she told Zephyr. “It’s his baby.” Otherwise, she seemed at peace with the decision. She said she was even thinking of opening another location out East in a year or two. “New York City isn’t the same,” she said. “It’s time to go.”