Del Monaco's. Just saying the name has always brought back a memory or meant the expectation of an experience like no other.

Oscar Wilde thought that an evening there was the most remarkable bit of scenery in America next to Yosemite.

Edith Wharton mentioned it in her fiction.

Abraham Lincoln enjoyed the cuisine and the surroundings. Charles

Dickens was honored there on an American visit, and Mark Twain chose it to celebrate his birthday.

In more modern times, Gypsy Rose Lee danced on a table wearing only, it seems, a menu.

Lena Horn got up and sang, and along with presidents and royalty, Elizabeth Taylor,

Ava Gabor, Rock Hudson, and so many Hollywood royalty dined in elegance and in privacy.

From its early years, the imposing building found at 56 Beaver Street in Lower Manhattan

was called the Citadel, and even despite its

various other locations over the course of its history, as it followed society up the island,

this triangular seven-story fortress endured and remained Delmonico's most iconic home.

On April 10, 1923, just over 100 years since its first opening, the original Delmonico's

business served its last meal, accompanied only by mineral water, instead of the vintage wines and

champagnes that were usually savored along with the fine French cuisine. Prohibition enacted in 1919 had finally

shuttered this institution as well as so many others. In the closing of Delmonico's,

Prohibition had shut down in some ways the very soul of Social New York. The great dining and

entertaining empire of the Gilded age had fallen and vanished forever,

or had it. Most thought that the venerable Delmonicos could never rise, but rise again,

it did, at an unlikely time, still during prohibition, and ignited with the dreams of an ambitious

young man newly arrived

from Italy. This passionate dreamer not only resurrected a business, but transformed the old citadel

...