Songs, toasts and tales of the past at a Broadway bartender's very last call

New York

THE post-matinee crowd began streaming into Sardi's restaurant on Saturday, just as it had for decades. After passing through the Chianti-red facade, many patrons entered the Little Bar, an alcove-like room to the left of the entrance. Then they settled in for drinks and conversation in the company of a tall man wearing a maroon jacket, a white starched shirt and a black bow tie who had long been a steady presence there.

In the years after World War II, Sardi's, on West 44th Street in Manhattan, was practically synonymous with Broadway. People such as the playwright Tennessee Williams and the actors John Barrymore and Helen Hayes frequented the restaurant, and opening-night theatre reviews in The New York Times and The New York Herald Tribune were distributed to diners when the ink was barely dry. Some of the restaurant's glory may have faded since that heyday, but it remains a staple of the neighbourhood, cherished especially by those who see tradition in its red walls, lined with drawings of famous patrons.