An Interview With Sirio Maccioni

Sirio Maccioni

Image: John Lei/The New York Times/Redux

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Sirio Maccioni, the founder of Le Cirque, is a force of nature—a simple Tuscan farmer's son who conquered New York by championing the idea that a restaurant is not only a purveyor of fine food, but is also a Darwinian arbiter of celebrity and high society. The seventysomething Maccioni—who has yet to shed his Old World ways or, for that matter, his magnificently fractured English—has reigned supreme over his little duchy (two restaurants in New York and others in Las Vegas, Mexico City, and beyond) for the past 34 years, collecting presidents, popes, moguls, and movie stars as friends and loyal customers.
           
The family business—Maccioni, his wife, Egidiana, and their three sons, Mario, Marco, and Mauro—is the subject of A Table in Heaven, a well-received behind-the-scenes documentary that premiered last month at the Sundance Film Festival, focusing on Le Cirque's big move from the Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue to the Bloomberg building on East 58th Street.

In the film's most searing scene, Maccioni is shown reacting with devastation to a less-than-glowing July 2006 review of the new establishment by New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni—a name that these days he can't bring himself to even utter. Never mind that Maccioni changed chefs, revamped the menu, and Bruni has recently filed a much rosier reassessment.
          
Over a ridiculously rich lunch at Le Cirque—foie gras ravioli, langoustine, and venison fallow, topped off by crème brûlée, and a chocolate soufflé—Maccioni gave Portfolio.com an exclusive interview in between barking orders to his staff, flirting with the ladies who lunch, and accepting effusive greetings from his most prosperous patrons.

Lloyd Grove: I have to ask you—you were in Sundance and went to Burger King?
 
Sirio Maccioni: Yes, that's true, because that was the only thing open. I arrived there [for the Sundance Film Festival screening of A Table in Heaven], it was one o'clock in the morning, and I hadn't eaten anything all day, not on the plane, they didn't have anything. And a very nice guy who was my driver, I told him, "I have a need to eat, and it's one o'clock, could we go to a place?" And it was closed. Across the street, there was a Burger King, so I went there.
                
L.G.: Did you have the Whopper?
 
S.M.: I had a hamburger there to bring to my room.
 
L.G.: In the movie about you and your family, there are scenes of eating Big Macs.
 
S.M.: I was not there. My sons, they were there.
 
L.G.: Does this embarrass you at all?
 
S.M.: Listen, I do many things that embarrass myself. I've been through a lot. One of the best things, when I don't know what to eat, is a hamburger. Here at Le Cirque, it's done really well. I think we do a great hamburger. We do one regular with a piece of foie gras, we do one with cheese, we do one with a side dish that is mostly Caesar salad. This is what you can get most of all at the bar.
 
L.G.: How much does the hamburger set you back?
 
S.M.: [Flagging a captain] Hello. Can we have a menu? How much is a hamburger?
 
Captain: Hamburger? It's $16. I'll double-check. [A "mini cheeseburger" at the bar is $18.]
 
L.G.: You've been in business here since the 1960s, when you were a maître d' at The Colony. You opened the first Le Cirque at the Mayfair Hotel in March of '74, and you got a 25-year lease from the Zeckendorfs [on East 65th Street between Park and Madison avenues].

S.M.: Yes, which is the best thing that happened to me-a thing that happened with nice people.

L.G.: And then, in 1997, you moved to the Palace [at Madison and 51st Street] with Le Cirque 2000.
 
S.M.: At the Palace, at that moment, I still believed in grandeur. And the Palace was grandeur. It was a good location.
 
L.G.: One problem was that you had to walk across the courtyard and it was slick when it was raining. People could slip. You'd have to get everybody to sign a waiver.
 
S.M.: Some of these big entrepreneurs—when they want you, they promise you everything. Fortunately, I still believe people when they tell you something. So they tell you many things. Then I find out that there was a war going on between the hotel and the church. [The Roman Catholic archdiocese of New York had offices on the premises.] And I tried to have a good relation with everybody, because it takes the same time to have a bad relation as a good relation. Some people enjoy to have a...
 
L.G.: Drama?
 
S.M.: I don't like drama. There are many things that people want from me.

L.G.: You don't like drama?

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