{"id":24355,"date":"2025-10-31T17:59:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24355\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T17:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:59:15","slug":"how-union-square-cafe-helped-shape-nyc-dining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24355\/","title":{"rendered":"How Union Square Cafe Helped Shape NYC Dining"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a Saturday afternoon in 1970 in St. Louis, Missouri, an entrepreneur named Morton Meyer put his young son Danny to work as he wrote newsletters to his clients. Danny was 12 years-old and tasked with stuffing those newsletters into envelopes, licking them closed, and stamping them to be mailed. It\u2019s a memory that bubbled up when he opened his first restaurant, Union Square Cafe<\/a>, on October 21, 1985, when he was 27 years old.<\/p>\n

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Danny Meyer in front of Brownie\u2019s before it became Union Square Cafe. Union Square Cafe<\/p>\n

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Nathan Rawlinson<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Meyer celebrated its 40th anniversary; today Union Square Cafe is still a New York City icon. It\u2019s one of nine restaurants outside the Shake Shack empire under Meyer\u2019s umbrella, a group that includes Gramercy Tavern, the View, Daily Provisions, Ci Siamo, Manhatta, The Modern, Porchlight, and soon its first Detroit property, Hudson\u2019s Detroit, set to open in 2026. (His group also launched Tabla, Blue Smoke, and Eleven Madison Park).<\/p>\n

In October 1988, a couple years after the opening, Meyer sat down at his electric Smith-Corona typewriter in his basement office of the original East 16th Street location, where upstairs chef Michael Romano cooked tuna burgers and Bibb salads, and typed his first newsletter. It was the beginning of a monthly ritual, after which he\u2019d mail them to 100,000 people whose addresses he collected through written comment cards diners would fill out at their tables after eating.<\/p>\n

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Inside Union Square Cafe today. Peter Garritano<\/p>\n

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Max Flatow<\/p>\n

Meyer found the old newsletters from the 1980s to 2009 (available here)<\/a> in his mother\u2019s home after she died. \u201cShe had them all kept in this big bracket. It was like hitting the jackpot,\u201d he said. The collection shows the world of dining and the city\u2019s milestones from the smoking ban to the fall of the Twin Towers.<\/p>\n

In those newsletters, he included invitations to events like Morning Market Meetings (recently revived<\/a>) and wine dinners. In an analog version of Resy\u2019s \u201cnotify\u201d feature, those who wanted to attend had to fill out a form and mail it back to enter into a lottery for seats.<\/p>\n

The newsletters ranged from proud to self-depricating in tone. In the summer 1989<\/a> newsletter, for instance, he wrote about being reviewed by every one of the area\u2019s major restaurant critics, including the Bergen Record, Newsday where Molly O\u2019Neil was the critic, and the New York Times. Following the Times\u2019s two-star <\/a>Bryan Miller\u2019s review, Meyer wrote, \u201cEach of us at Union Square Cafe intends to keep working hard to be your favorite restaurant and we\u2019ll always keep looking for ways to improve our act.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also kept a sense of humor, such as the time he recalled a lunch service when the dining room flooded, which he called the Greatest Anguish and Embarrassment\u201d of 1990. <\/a>\u201cWe scrambled for buckets and then ran upstairs, where we found our plumber struggling to shut off an out of control gushing water pipe, as four different parties arrived for lunch announcing names that were not on the books.\u201d The plumber involved with the waterfall had apparently taken it upon himself that morning \u201cto answer our telephone and to take the reservations for us, without writing any of the names down!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Danny Meyer with Michael Romano on his last day of service. Daniel Krieger<\/p>\n

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Francesco Sapienza<\/p>\n

The newsletters also tracked the culinary zeitgeist. One from 1990 addressed protecting the dolphins<\/a> through buying sustainably caught tuna, while another a year later focused on low cholesterol and dairy-free sauces<\/a>. Some newsletters were like an analog version of Page Six in which Meyer shouts out star appearances like Matthew Broderick, JFK Jr, Kevin Kline, and Tom Brokaw.<\/p>\n

Meyer didn\u2019t shy away from spotlighting conflict, either. Under \u201cThe Best Decision of the Year,\u201d in 1991, Meyer wrote about implementing a smoking ban in all three of Union Square Cafe\u2019s dining rooms, and included excerpts of regulars who disagreed. \u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that you\u2019re turning your restaurant into a health club,\u201d he quoted one. Meyer looked at the positive. \u201cWe have gotten better acquainted with some of our regulars who smoke as they often keep us company at the bar while taking a puff between courses.\u201d (Smoking was not banned in NYC restaurants until 2002<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

One of the most solemn newsletters was printed after September 11, 2001<\/a>.\u201cThese have been sad uncertain times in New York, and it has been difficult for any of us to find appropriate words for all that has occurred,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIn the hours following the attack it was quite natural to question the significance of one\u2019s life role or professions. I know I asked myself, after all this, who really cares about restaurants?\u201d<\/p>\n

Quickly though, I answered my own doubts. In their ability to nourish and nurture, restaurants \u2013 as a healing agent \u2013 are more relevant than ever.\u201d Decades later, his words still ring true.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Liz Lignon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a Saturday afternoon in 1970 in St. Louis, Missouri, an entrepreneur named Morton Meyer put his young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2372,9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-24355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-dining-out-in-ny","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}