It's hard to say. But it's worth noting, as the Observer does, that one month before jumping on board with Carter, Lewis and his wife, onetime MTV News reporter Tabitha Soren, were treated to their first dinner at the bon vivant's West Vllage restaurant Waverly Inn. That sort of thing shouldn't matter to a writer who reportedly nets $30,000 for each of his Times pieces. But then one shouldn't be able to get away with charging $55 for a plate of macaroni and cheese, however adorned, and people still jam the secret phone lines for a Waverly reservation.

It is not only Wall Street that is susceptible to the whims of fashion, or to panicked flights from troubled institutions.

It should be no surprise that the lords of private equity like Stephen Schwarzman, Steven Cohen and Henry Kravis are among the biggest losers; they're dragged down by the credit crunch. Nor will Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly of Fox News be that surprised to have been marked down by Bush-hating Graydon Carter. But the Vanity Fair editor will have a harder time explaining why his irascible movie producer friend Harvey Weinstein, a regular at Carter's Waverly Inn, has been knocked back 46 places. Nor should he expect to get George Clooney (down 28 points) on the cover any time soon.

• DO have neighborhood clout. The president of the local block association, Marilyn Dorato, has her own table at the restaurant, which she occupies weekly. Graydon wouldn't want to much of a fuss over the limos and paparazzi and drunken revelry and so forth.
• DO NOT complain about your food. "The reservations system has miniprofiles on clients: the number of times they have eaten at the restaurant... whether they complained about the food, whether they yelled at a waiter..."
• DO NOT work in reality TV or hedge fund management. "'For that reason, we screen calls from the 203 area code,' [Carter] said, poking fun at chateau country in the Connecticut suburbs."
• DO NOT notify the paps of your reservation. "Mr. Varda admits that there is one group [blacklisted]. 'B-list stars who call the paparazzi from inside the restaurant... They are not invited back.' (Privacy is so sacred at the Waverly that Mr. Varda says he has stopped a major film star from photographing his own family at dinner.)"
• DO NOT take a seat in the garden. It is Siberia. Carter claims it's great but "no one is buying it."
• DO NOT sit out front, oh God: "There is also a tiny outside area out front with tables in summer, but that is irrelevant — one frequent diner called it 'tragic.'"
• DO NOT brag about hanging out at the bar. No one cares, because that is also Siberia.
• DO perhaps try just asking at the front desk. It worked for the Kaufman. Go figure.
• DO be Harvey Weinstein, a very close personal friend of Mr. Carter. "Weinstein, for example, lives nearby and, according to Mr. Varda, frequently arrives for dinner without calling ahead to reserve. 'He is family,' Mr. Varda said, 'so we make room anyway.'"

Or just wait for the restaurant to become less fashionable, or for your ego to stop caring, both of which will happen eventually. (Until that day, you can scour the restaurant's blog for still more tips.)

[Times]

(Photo by Pistols Drawn on Flickr, who managed to do what the Times could not and get a picture inside the theatrically secretive restaurant.)

New York According to the Waverly Inn [Blackbook]

Ye Waverly Blog, one tipster claims, is written by Carter's onetime executive assistant Jon Kelly (pictured below), recently replaced in that gig by the Observer's David Foxley. Here's Kelly's profile in the June 2007 Vanity Fair (from this):

Though it's sad to lose the mental image of Spy co-founder Carter anonyblogging, Kelly does a mean impression, and his ghost writing frees up Carter for host duty at the Waverly. In the April 1 video below (via Grub Street), Carter welcomes Bianca Jagger, first wife of former Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger — and rescues her from heading up the wrong flight of stairs, to the townhouse above the restaurant.

New York's Adam Platt said last year that it was worth "fighting your way inside for a little bite" at the Waverly "maybe just once," but that "when the Waverly finally opens for business, the food won’t taste half as good."

And here's Frank Bruni's prediction in the New York Times:

Someday the people who know you and the people who know your key staff members and the recognizable or attractive people who take the trouble to stop in, willing to submit to a visual once-over and try to make a reservation in person — someday there won’t be enough of these people to fill the seats, and you’ll have to take all callers and comers, and it will all be so much different.

It's probably premature to declare Waverly over, given that Carter can still throw the showbiz world into conniptions by canceling a single party. Hold any condemnation, at least, until people stop trying to scalp Waverly reservations.

(Photos via Splash News, DListed)

[Splash News, DListed]

Steverino's new line beats the original, Genovian Royal Makes Lewd Thrusting Motions At Passersby.

Ummwhat's new line beats the original, Heiress Tries To Make Sense Of Mysterious Balls Of Fire That Glow In The Dark, Dark Heavens.

mathnet, who later said "OK I hate myself right now," came up with the line that beat the original, "Ha Ha Ha. Oh My God Help Me It's Getting Closer."

Chaim_Gnadelstein's new line beats the original, Whimsical Fellow Waits For The Valet To Retrieve His Dirigible. (Again!)

PeenScene's new line beats the original, Brave, Dead Hooker Waves Goodbye To Grover's Corners

hypocriteoath's new line beats the original, Padma Lakshmi Is A Calm, Deathly Santa Claus

UPDATE: Under what circumstances could Carter's elite spot become one of the most queried terms on the Internet on a Friday in January? Why if Regis and Kelly guest host Howie Mandel went there last night with producer Michael Gelman and discussed it on the show today of course! The restaurant had 86'd two menu items by the time Mandel arrived, which rankled him a touch. Howie, honey, if you're going there for the food, you're missing the point.

Who did make it out to pay tribute to the Steve Florios at St. Ignatius? Anna Wintour, who showed up arm-in-arm with SI Newhouse: David Remnick, who said a few words, some of them kind and Graydon Carter which means for a brief time on Monday, you could actually walk into the Waverly Inn and get a seat. [NYO]

Michael Wolff was talking to lefty media blogger Rory O'Connor at the bar.

We asked him if he'd been asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement for Newser.

He laughed. "Never! No NDAs, never," he said. "That's the rule of the road."

So there might very well be a tell-all in his future. Rory laughed and said, "It's inevitable!"

Wolff agreed: "Inevitable."

"It could be called, "I can't believe those idiots gave me money to do it all again!" Rory said.

We asked Wolff about the algorithm that is Newser's kind of main claim to fame. Users can move an indicator on a continuum that runs from hard to soft news. "I have no idea how it works," Wolff said. "The tech guys explained it to me but I zoned out halfway through. Go ask that guy," he said pointing into a web of white-haired bespectacled men. "The one with white hair and the glasses."

Later, Caroline Miller was lingering by the door, ready to escape. Man, why didn't she get an NDA out of Wolff? "Because I'm feckless!" she said. Nice.

"Michael doesn't even have a contract," she said. "This whole thing is all on a handshake."

So what exactly does Wolff do for Newser? Here's what he does not do: "He's not allowed to talk to anyone on the inside," Miller said. "He's not allowed to manage anybody. What he discovered a long time ago about himself is that he likes to fire people. He has the ideas but I make them happen."

So he has ideas. And did he bring the money? No. "It's all Pat's money anyway!" That would be Patrick Spain, the CEO of HighBeam and soon to be the main character of a really harsh book about how the internet sucks.

We've heard all this and more for a while now—and we haven't believed any of it or thought any of it was true. Sure, we wouldn't put anything past any of these tin-eared mini-masters of the universe and their surround-sound systems of yes-men publicists and self-important lawyers either, particularly the ones with a taste for the flavor of teen girl. But do you really think John Connolly's going to be worried about either his editor or his subject? Once you've been threatened by infamous P.I. Anthony Pellicano, well, it's just hard to get a thrill from being leaned on by anyone else.

Back in the real world and away from the rumor mill, the piece has not yet run, at least in part, simply because Epstein's court date in Palm Beach on the Florida charges for felony prostitution was scheduled for mid-November. When Epstein went for a plea deal earlier this year and it became public in July, well, hi, it's September. It's not like Vanity Fair moves that fast. And wouldn't you imagine there's more than a few Epstein loose ends that have still gone unreported? (Pun unintended, really!)

*Seriously, is he even a "financier" any more?

She sent her I guess boyfriend in 2-3 times to make sure table was ready (place was half-full so no need) and voila, three paparazzi appeared to snap about five hundred pics in the 20 secs it took for Mariah to walk from curb to restaurant. The best is she sent everyone in ahead of her, and then she stopped before the door, turned to paparazzi and gave them a hundred more pics; she looked really good, wearing a long purple sleeveless gown, she smiled and thanked the paparazzi, and her fellow diners (in garden seating in front). The only time she faltered was when one fellow diner said out loud "We love and support you Britney" to loud laughs. And to make it worse, when the sarcastic diner was told that she wasn't Britney he replied "Oh sorry, Lindsay, good luck with your demons."

First he takes me to the Waverly Inn....And that's the foreplay...Then we walk right into Gramercy...And then, just when it gets really hot, he takes me to Beatrice! And just when I'm about to explode, we go back to his Park Avenue apartment and have tea."

The other striking feature of the sexual interior life of these women is that there isn't much of it. Despite the teasing, not one of the ladies could come up with more than three fantasies. And these mostly involved at least one having to do with skinny dipping, one having to do with shopping and one having to do with lesbians. After that though, the fantasies devolved into having long hair, a kiss on the cheek and a night home alone with the Rabbit. We're finally thinking that Maureen Dowd has been right all along.

So that's who he is. The woman in charge of the party's RSVPs was a tall, tanned publicist named Annabelle Dunne, who used to do PR for the West Village-y fashion designer Catherine Malandrino. She has moved up in the world, to guarding Graydon Carter's interests, and she and her nervous boy-assistant were not interested in letting us in. Annabelle's superior, a woman named Lizzie, had hemmed and hawed about whether we would be allowed in to chronicle the foibles of the overpaid editors and writers that make up the VF masthead, and whether Graydon would be wearing a blue blazer with gold buttons, and whether he would be holding court in the corner of the front room, his hair doing that thing that it always does, and whether there would be a sentry stationed at the entrance handing out glasses of white wine from a tray.

There was! Because they allowed us in for the briefest of moments before Annabel's associate came inside, all apologetic, and asked us to step outside again, because there was one more person Annabelle needed to check with before we could be allowed in, and he was very sorry, but they didn't think they were doing press, and could we just wait one moment? We briefly regretted not taking the chip with tuna tartare on it that had been offered to us in the 30 seconds that we had stood there in the low-ceilinged bar room of the Waverly, trying to get our eyes adjusted to the darkness before we were thrust so cruelly back into the light. Annabelle was on her cell phone; no one wanted to make eye contact with us. As they entered, a young man asked Doug Stumpf whether his book had gotten a bump from the reviews that had recently been published. We recognized him as the same young man we had once seen at another book party, who had told us he was picking up books for "his boss," and told us he was a reporter at Vanity Fair. Funnily, we never saw his name on the masthead! Anyway, he and Stumpf entered the party together.

Then! "David Margolick!" exclaimed one of the publicists, upon that editor's arrival. He seemed both pleased and embarrassed by this show of recognition. It was deceptively warm outside, in a pre-storm humidity kind of way, and we were sweating. Inside had been very nicely air-conditioned.

Annabel returned from the vestibule, where she had finished her phone call, and apologized, but there was no press at the party, really, and we were not going to be allowed in. So we went to Morandi and had a perfectly pleasant drink outside (iced tea for Josh, since he was going boxing afterwards, a glass of wine for me, since I was going home and watching recorded episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen afterwards), where we discussed how the restaurant is basically like the Italian version of Pastis and maybe Keith McNally just has this, like, build-a-restaurant game on his computer where you just plug in what kind of restaurant you want (French, Italian, American, what have you) and the computer spits something out for you. Next to us was a group of four women who looked like ladies who lunch, except it was dinner time, and then Betsey Johnson walked in, looking exactly like you would expect Betsey Johnson to look, and she seemed cheerful and like she didn't give a shit about not being invited to Doug Stumpf's book party, anyway.

At the front bar is a mixture of beautiful young women and somewhat less beautiful and less young men who are accompanying them. "Rich, Rich," one man who looked like a dumpy George Lucas called to his friend at the bar, "Sauvignon blanc!"

Few people were alone—except at the very end of the bar, a very tall and forlorn-looking Mark Warner, the former Virginia governor and momentary presidential contender, sat drinking a glass of white wine. A man at the bar, surrounded by skinny and cute girls, laughed and said, "Ha, it's just like the five-year-itch!"

At the tables, a bit after 9 p.m., the shining lights of Manhattan's social mantle began to stand out. In one corner by the window, Anne McNally (of Vanity Fair fashion fame) sat with New Yorker writer Michael Specter and beautiful model-actress-painter Anh Duong. McNally clutched a white alligator print Prada bag; Specter sported his trademark weirdly-folding spectacles. The waiter was pushing the "famous macaroni and cheese."

Across from the McNally fourtop, Spike Carter, Graydon's kid, and a couple of his teenaged-looking friends sported the ruddiness of white kids who had been drinking. One of the girls in that party wore an oversize gray Batman t-shirt, another an Adidas jumpsuit. Spike himself sported a scruffy beard and was by far the least well-dressed man in the room.

There is a coveted horseshoe-shaped banquette, located, oddly enough, near the bathroom in the front room. This is where Graydon usually sits when he's there. Last night that space was occupied by Graydon's dear friend Ron Perelman. Next to him sat Penny Marshall and a couple of young girls. Ron and Graydon are as close as Penny Marshall and Ron's ex Ellen Barkin; those two were in a 1985 off-Broadway production of Eden Court.

By 11:30, the crowd had thinned considerably. The average weight dropped as the literary types went to bed and the model types came to "dinner." Outside the black town cars gave way to white limos. Through the slatted blinds of a neighboring townhouse, a leery resident peered out at the scene with suspicion. Her crow-footed eyes glittered with hostility. The diplomat jumped on his motorcycle and sped away down Bank Street.

So in this week's column, when McInerney runs into the big-faced Tom Hanks, we learn Hanks supposedly auditioned for the movie, or tried to, but didn't make the cut. (Hanks later that year filmed the Oscar-nominated Big).

Back on June 12th, McInerney runs into his old friend Michael J. Fox at Del Posto. Fox played Jamie Conway in the movie but the two hadn't seen each other in years. Perhaps, McInerney writes, "the movie probably hadn't been everything we hoped it would be."

Why all the mentions? As far as we can figger, the 20th anniversary of McInerney's celluloid masterpiece rolls around next year—and perhaps the hobbled boy-prince is trying to drum up support for a re-release? That way, it can be viewed by more than the 19 people who saw it back in '88. After-party to be held at the Waverly, clearly.

Another Night at the Waverly [HG]

First the visiting Frenchie Beigbeider, working on a Salinger documentary, lures some young ladies back to McInerney's 9th Street penthouse. (Chances that the girls were NYU English freshman? Nearly 100%!)

Feeling festive, I decided to invite them all over to my apartment, and before too long their group, along with the Fisketjon/McGrath table and several friends of Frédéric's, were on their way out the door to my place on 9th Street. Trying to flag a cab for one of the young ladies Frédéric had been chatting up, I ran out into Bank Street, putting my foot down on the very edge of the curb and wrenching it nicely.

How I Broke My Foot On A Full Stomach [HG]

HB-OK [NYP]

Last weekend, an ambulance trying to get to St. Vincent's hospital was held up for more than five precious life-saving minutes as drivers for wealthy patrons slowly inched their limos out of the way. One cop tells us that wasn't the first time it happened.

LIMO BLOCKAGE [NYP]
[Image via]

Much ink (virtual and otherwise) has been spilled on how to get into the Waverly Inn (call Graydon's office at Vanity Fair) and its $55 mac and cheese, which comes with shaved black truffles. But what became apparent last night was that the restaurant, in its new incarnation, is nothing if not a clubhouse for Graydon and his friends. (And no one was venturing into the back room, which has been deemed the Siberia of the restaurant by several reviewers and bloggers, though it seemed quite pleasant back there.)

So there Graydon was, in his double-breasted navy blue blazer with the gold buttons, his shock of white hair wildly akimbo, holding court at the edge of the bar, perpetually lit cigarette in hand. Various Vanity Fair editors demurred when asked if he continues to smoke in his office. Guests entered and made beelines for him. He was co-hosting the party with former Time managing editor Jim Kelly (Time, we hear, is publishing an excerpt from Mr. Andersen's new book in the next issue), and the place was packed with a crowd who all seem to have known each other, or worked together, for eons. There was Walter Isaacson! And Time editor Rick Stengel, and Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, and newly engaged Times exposer Seth Mnookin, and novelist and crazily prolific book reviewer Walter Kirn, who used to work at Spy with Mr. Andersen. And... was that Kurt Vonnegut? And lots of Vanity Fair staffers, and gal writer Sloane Crosley, who showed up with gal web publisher Elizabeth Spiers. They weren't old! They were the New Guard, perhaps?

The era in which Kurt Andersen set his book is one, he said, that Americans are not as familiar with as Europeans are. "In weird and surprising ways, it's a parallel moment to today," he said. "Today there's this high-tech, new media explosion. Then, you have newspaper proliferating like crazy—they invaded the country. You also had communes—well, those aren't around today." No?

We asked what else he was working on. "Another novel," he said brusquely. About? "It's not a historical novel. But I'm not going to tell you what it's about." We looked offended. "Not you! I'm not telling anyone." On his blog, he has written that he will be more careful about naming his next book, because he only found out recently about two other books who share a name with his newest.

Andersen is also a partner with Barry Diller's company in the daily email service Very Short List, which is now or is shortly losing its lead man, Simon Dumenco. "We did it because we wanted it for ourselves," he said. "I'm a clueless old person. I needed someone to tell me where to go." Well, at least he made it to the Waverly.

Before we left, we went to say hello to Graydon Carter. He said he was pleased to meet us, but his eyes said otherwise. "You have a lovely restaurant," we said.

You Can Call Your Book Heyday, Too [KurtAndersen.com]

Earlier: 'New Yorker' Visits Waverly Inn, Avoids Mentioning Conde Connection