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The most popular man at the party was Graydon Carter.<\/strong> It was his party, after all: The legendary editor\u2019s digital publication, Air Mail,<\/em> hosted the dinner alongside Montblanc. (\u201cJournalism is not dead\u2014it\u2019s being revived,\u201d he diplomatically said of the Tom Wolfe Literary Prizes, which award a $10,000 honorarium to each winner.) Also, Carter owns the place.<\/p>\n In 2006, with partners Sean MacPherson<\/strong> and Eric Goode,<\/strong> he bought a dusty old tavern on the ground floor of a Greenwich Village townhouse and transformed it into a restaurant so hot that it became a de facto private club for the who\u2019s who. To get a reservation, you needed to email a mysterious ma\u00eetre d\u2019 named Fritz or dial a private phone line that the New York Post<\/em> once called \u201cmore secretive than the CIA.\u201d If Fritz answered (unlikely) or someone picked up (more unlikely), you\u2019d find yourself tucked in a red booth, with anyone from Fran Lebowitz<\/strong> to Lindsay Lohan<\/strong> potentially dining nearby. In fact, so strong was the see-and-be-seen fervor of The Waverly Inn that, at one point in time, Gawker<\/em> kept a running list of its mentions in Page Six, including who was spotted there eating dishes like the restaurant\u2019s chicken pot pie.<\/p>\n Every recent decade has had a Manhattan restaurant that encapsulates\u2014and often defines\u2014the zeitgeist, where entry is granted by the conversation you bring to the table, rather than what you can pay for it. Where, on any given night, a bohemian Brooklyn artist with overdue bills could be at a table next to an Upper East Side billionaire; where a movie star could mingle with an avant-garde fashion designer or perhaps someone whose multifaceted life had no neat descriptor at all.<\/p>\n In the \u201970s, that was Elaine\u2019s, the Italian restaurant where Mick Jagger<\/strong> and Saturday Night Live<\/em> cast members ordered mediocre pasta alla norma. (\u201cAnd they were all impressed \/ with your Halston dress \/ and the people that you knew at Elaine\u2019s,\u201d crooned Billy Joel<\/strong> in 1978\u2019s \u201cBig Shot.\u201d) In the \u201980s, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat ate steak tartare at The Odeon, while a young Jay McInerney<\/strong> asked owner McNally if he could use a photo of the establishment\u2019s neon sign for the cover of his book Bright Lights, Big City.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n