“Joe Allen was right in the spirit of what people in the theater want – a glass of wine, a hamburger,” Mimi Sheraton, a former restaurant critic for The New York Times, said in an interview. “It was that simple food. The atmosphere was very relaxing, there was not much decoration, the food was not very expensive. “
Next to it is the most elegant, but still comfortable Orso, which Allen named after a Venetian gondolier dog. And just above it is Bar Centrale, a smaller, unidentified version of Joe Allen that serves drinks, tapas and bar food and is a kind of reverence for old New York nightclubs like El Morocco. Allen’s unofficial swan song, the intimate Bar Centrale, opened in 2005 and tends to attract people from within the theater, especially actors who appear at shows.
Upstairs is also Mr. Allen’s house. He bought the four-story buildings that would eventually house his three restaurants in the 1970s and lived in an apartment above Joe Allen when he was in town.
Although he was a successful owner, the laconic Mr. Allen – a divorced father of two who was in the restaurant business only a few years ago when he opened his first restaurant – was not comfortable playing the gracious host, or any kind of host. .
In contrast to some renowned restaurant owners who delighted their customers – Elaine Kaufman, of Elaine’s on the East Side, for example – Allen preferred anonymity. (He once described his personality as “minimal.”) He could often be found sitting at the bar, a thin, unassuming man, sometimes in a basic T-shirt, looking like anything but the owner of the place.
Once, when asked to explain his success, he cited his shyness. “Maybe it’s because I don’t impose myself on customers,” he said.
Not that he was a disconnected boss. “I paid attention,” he once admitted. For what? “Everything. The salt, the ketchup, the menu, everything. This is a retail business. I always said I had no ambition – but that doesn’t mean I was lazy.”