PARK Magazine

MORTIMER’S, THE UPPER EAST SIDE SOCIETY WATERING HOLE,
was, simply, legendary, as was its proprietor, Glenn Bernbaum. “Mr. Bernbaum
built Mortimer’s on the sheer force of his personality. An unassuming,
brick-walled, moderate-size restaurant at Lexington Avenue and 75th
Street, it became virtually a private club to the sort of fashionables whose
names fill the gossip columns,” the New York Times wrote in Bernbaum’s
1998 obituary. The Gray Lady dubbed Bernbaum the “Solomon of bistro
seating” because on the rare occasions when his regulars - Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, Brooke Astor, Gloria Vanderbilt, Bill Blass, Reinaldo
and Carolina Herrera, weren’t occupying table 1B, at the front window,
Bernbaum had to make decisions that would stump Solomon. The hot
spot, with only 19 tables, was a roaring hit with New York’s movers and
shakers from its start in 1976 until its 1998 demise, with Glenn Bernbaum
the arbiter of who was admitted to this elite “club.”