PARK Magazine

Below: John Galliano & André Leon Talley
Above: Anne Slater, Glenn & Aileen Mehle ( a.k.a. Suzy) Below: Sami Ali Sindi birthday party 1996
Glenn & Billy
Norwich.
book compiles memories of Mortimer’s in a specific time
and place: New York City in the late 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.
Remembrance of Things Past
Cornelia Guest
Uncle Glenn would always make me a delicious Flight
Kit for my travels: Sandwich, salad, chips, tons of goodies,
and a sweet note to send me on my way. It kept me wellfed
for a few days. I was always the envy of everyone on the
plane!!! A lady once asked me where my yummy food was
from, and I said Mortimer’s. She called, got Uncle Glenn,
and he said, ‘No way... Only for Cornelia.’ Uncle Glenn was
the best... Everyone at Mortimer’s was wonderful. I miss
them all and wish Mortimer’s was still there.
David Patrick Columbia
Quality was at the forefront and those who possessed
what Glenn considered “quality of qualities” were given
the table in the window and those close to it. You couldn’t
make a reservation for that or any other table, although
“no reservations” was for the hoi polloi. C. Z. Guest or Babe
Paley or Jackie Onassis always had their social secretaries
call ahead. Glenn was otherwise democratic with the rest
of us, although it might have required waiting at the bar
(which was part of the main room and not a bad place to
wait and people-watch).
André Leon Talley
I remember C. Z. Guest of Old Westbury drove in and
held her daughter’s debutante dinner at Mortimer’s. She
took over the entire restaurant. It was a black tie, and Cornelia
went rogue modern, wearing a blue Fabrice spangled
short evening sparkler. The heavy candelabra with white
candles burned down and almost spilled onto my table,
seated jammed up to the main bar in the large room.
Bob Colacello
I think my most memorable time at Mortimer’s was the
night Reinaldo and Carolina Herrera invited me to a little
dinner for Princess Margaret in the side room. Glenn had
ordered a centerpiece of pink and lavender sweet peas for
their table, which he thought was very English. I got there
early with Carolina, who hated the sweet peas. . .But she
loved the peonies on the table reserved for Betsy Bloomingdale,
so she switched the arrangements before Betsy arrived.
Michael Gross
As the years went by, and I started covering life in the
city’s tonier precincts for magazines like Manhattan Inc.
and Vanity Fair, and then The New York Times and New
York Magazine, it seemed that somehow, I’d been issued
a membership card, and given a second-row seat at the
circus of vanity, ambition, wealth and insouciance that
was Bernbaum’s boite.