One recent chilly night in the NoLIta neighborhood of Manhattan, crowds squeezed into Cafe Gitane to attend a launch party for a book dedicated to the downtown institution, which in the 1990s became an intimidatingly cool canteen for the city’s models, actors and artists.
Guests mingled in the dimly lit French-Moroccan cafe while hits by Cocteau Twins and Air blasted from the speakers. People spilled out onto the sidewalk to converse over cigarettes and red wine. Hanging out by the bar was the 1990s supermodel Helena Christensen, a longtime Gitane regular.
“I have so many memories when I come here,” Ms. Christensen said. “The downtown landmarks like Cafe Gitane signify a time and vibe in New York that once was. Yes, the city has changed so much, but I still think Gitane is as cool as it always was.”
The book, “Cafe Gitane: 30 Years,” published by McNally Editions, is a coffee table tome that gives Gitane its due alongside haunts like Fanelli’s, Lucien, Raoul’s and the Odeon. It was written by Isobel Lola Brown, who worked as a Gitane waitress in her teens and studied literary journalism at Bennington College in Vermont. The book features interviews with glitzy regulars like Norman Reedus, Serge Becker and Inez van Lamsweerde, and it was photographed by Melanie Dunea.
There’s a recipe for the restaurant’s avocado toast (widely said to be the first served in New York City), an ode to the little green dress worn by Gitane waitresses and a Q&A with the reporter who wrote the Styles section article in The New York Times that was its first write-up. It also includes tales about how Cat Power was the cafe’s first server, how David Bowie loved the couscous so much he would have it delivered to his apartment and how Albert Hammond Jr. of the Strokes wooed a waitress he went on to marry.
As the book party grew rowdy, Luc Lévy, the restaurant’s owner, took in the scene. Born in Casablanca, Morocco, and raised briefly in Paris, he moved to New York at 18 and worked as a cabdriver and a nightclub doorman before he opened Gitane. It was 1994, back when the neighborhood was still considered part of Little Italy. He remembered the social clubs and butcher shops in the area and how he used to hang out with the old men who sat and ate lunch along the brick wall of the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral.
“The book is a validation of everything that’s happened here,” Mr. Lévy, 74, said. “I never thought we’d still be relevant 30 years later, but it seems to be that way. We still get lots of creatives here. Sure, things might be less bohemian — and maybe they meet up now with more of an agenda — but the vibe still feels real.”
These days, he said, he leaves much of the cafe’s daily operations to Ms. Brown, whom he hired as his general manager a year ago while she worked on the book. Because she’d waitressed at Gitane during college, and because she had started spending so much time there to conduct her research, he thought she’d be a good fit.
“She’s helping bring a young crowd here, too,” Mr. Lévy said, “including lots of Bennington students.”
Ms. Brown, 22, helped sell copies from a tiny table that was swarmed by guests sipping watermelon mimosas.
“When I was a kid, my father’s apartment was on Prince Street and Gitane was his spot, so I grew up here,” she said. “At 17, I begged Luc to let me start working here, mostly because I wanted to wear the green dress.”
It was during her time at Bennington, she said, that she became an intern to the writer Jia Tolentino, who fostered a love for the craft of interviewing. When she started a project on Cafe Gitane, she sent Ms. Tolentino the first 40 or so pages of what she thought might be a feature article for a newspaper or a magazine.
“She was like, ‘This isn’t an article. It could be a book,’” Ms. Brown recalled. “Things went from there.”
As Mr. Brown interviewed more than 30 subjects, she grew accustomed to hearing lamentations about a vanished NoLIta.
“Lots of people I interviewed talked to me about this beautiful pre-internet downtown Manhattan, and how genuine it was, and how they don’t recognize it anymore,” she said. “I’m sure there’s truth to that, and everyone loves the New York that they got, but I think that’s a sad perspective. I don’t think it’s gone. New York just evolves.”
“I’ve started bringing my friends from Bennington here and we’re making it our own spot now,” she said. “If Gitane isn’t as well known as Fanelli’s, that might have to do with changes in how people go out. I think in the early aughts people were eating more. Gitane has always been more of a day hang and lunch spot.”
The tiny cafe filled with downtown characters like Zac Bahaj, who runs the scene-y French bistro Lucien, which his father opened in 1998; Sarah McNally, the owner of McNally Jackson bookstores; and James Jebbia, the founder of Supreme.
Mr. Jebbia’s wife, Bianca Jebbia, remembered Gitane’s arrival onto the scene.
“You could feel intimidated by the waitresses, who were always drop-dead gorgeous,” she said. “You didn’t want to get turned down if you couldn’t get a table or reservation.”
“I miss the downtown spots that closed, like Lucky Strike and Pravda, but Gitane is still here, and it has weathered the storms of change in New York,” she continued. “Coming here is like putting on a warm and cozy coat, like a Levi’s jacket full of holes I’m never getting rid of.”
Ms. McNally, who is also the publisher of McNally Editions, opened the first of her independent bookstores on Prince Street in 2004. She recalled Gitane’s predigital mystique.
“NoLIta was impossibly cool back then, all my coolest customers went to Gitane, and at first I was even a little nervous to enter,” she said. “So many of the downtown places everyone used to go to, now you’ve got to wait an hour and a half to get into them, because they’ve been totally colonized by social media. Gitane still has some of the privacy it always had.”
As the night waned, hordes of Ms. Brown’s young friends began to mob Cafe Gitane’s sidewalk. They leaned up against the Citi Bike stand just outside, resting their Modelo beers on bicycle baskets as they held court. They sat at the little blue tables in the cold while they rolled cigarettes.
Among them was the writer Fiona Alison Duncan and the artist Matt Hilvers. They considered Gitane’s position in the current downtown power rankings alongside haunts like Emilio’s Ballato and Fanelli’s, which have surged in popularity as Instagram hot spots.
“I think Gitane’s star eventually faded as a kind of trendy thing, but now there’s a new generation coming here because of Isobel,” Ms. Duncan said. “If Gitane has become a little under the radar, that just means it’s ripe again.”
“People have been saying New York was always once better for the past century,” Mr. Hilvers groused. “Is Gitane the last spot that doesn’t have a TikTok? If so, that makes it the best one. I don’t even go to Ballato’s or Fanelli’s anymore. They’ve become too busy and popular.”
Hanging out with his friends at one of the little blue tables was Kal Kapur, 26, who had a gold tooth and wore a black Margiela beanie. As he saw it, Cafe Gitane was anything but a 1990s downtown time capsule: It was a new contender for the top spot.
“Fanelli’s used to be the fly place, but now I can feel this is becoming the fly spot,” he said. “Gitane is the new Fanelli’s.”
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