On Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:03:20 -0400, "Virginia Tadrzynski"
> wrote:

>Back in the Stone Age, when I was in college (the summer of '80) we went to
>NYC and had dinner at Mama Leone's of fame and Billy Joel's singing. Had
>duck l'orange, was not impressed. Is it still there? I heard it closed,
>then reopened, then closed and is now open elsewhere. What's the 411? I
>figured there were so many 'experts' (tongue firmly planted in cheek) here,
>that I would ask.
>-ginny
>


The original one is long, long gone and anything that might have
opened with its name would was not the same and is gone, too..

When I got to NYC in 1971, I stayed around the block from the theater
where I was working and was in a hotel that faced Mama Leone's. It was
fun, it was boisterous, it had more than passable linguini and
eggplant parmigiana. Was it the Italian equivalent of haute cuisine?
Nah, but a good time was had by all.

It was also the basis of one of the most amusing little publicity/puff
pieces I ever saw (in either the Daily News or the NY Post). In those
days, there were columns that wrote up events and little info bits
about clubs and restaurants in the area. There might be 10 or 15
places mentioned in an article talking about renovations or some
singer who was appearing or a new dish being introduced, and each
paragraph that introduced a place put the name of it in bold letters .

Well, some typesetter put in the following, either by accident or
deliberately - what is within the ** ** below is what was in bold in
the article.....

**Mama Leone's Can** because of its enormous size, accommodate large
groups of diners. Call...blah blah blah for information.

That page of the paper is stored away in a box in the basement along
with all sorts of other nutty things I'd see and save.

Boron