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\n The famous Prince Street exterior.
\n Photo: Courtesy of Raoul\u2019s\n <\/p>\n
Raoul\u2019s<\/a> \u2014 \u201cRestaurant Francais,\u201d per its famous outside sign \u2014 is celebrating its 50th birthday. Inside the long, narrow room, with its pressed-tin ceiling, art-covered walls, and vertiginous spiral staircase promising ascension to the restroom, time seems to have barely passed. On the slate board, in that immediately recognizable French handwriting, the menu has remained largely unchanged (artichoke vinaigrette, steak au poivre, foie gras chaud) since an Alsatian filmmaker named Serge Raoul opened the spot in 1975. But of course, nothing stands still, especially not in Soho. The restaurant used to be filled with the artists who lived in the nearby lofts; now those lofts go for millions and many of the artists have passed away. Serge himself died last year at age 86. Today his son, Karim Raoul, himself a filmmaker, has become the guardian of the restaurant. On the eve of Raoul\u2019s big 5-0 party \u2014 hosted by Chloe Sevigny, age 51 \u2014 Raoul sat down to discuss the magic of the room, the inescapable pull of their burger, and the impromptu burlesque performances that made the restaurant what it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tell me about Raoul\u2019s at 50. How would you characterize old New York, and how would you characterize the time into which New York is entering? Along those lines, when you think about what Raoul\u2019s was back in the \u201970s and \u201980s, one of the things that made it special is that there was this mix of artists from the neighborhood and the connection with French public television, where your father had worked as a filmmaker and sound guy before opening the restaurant. And I wonder if you feel like that mix is still possible as the financial realities of New York mean that it is hard to find a room full of creative people \u2014 not \u201ccreatives\u201d \u2014 who can afford not only to live in New York but to eat out in it. Raoul\u2019s is a very New York restaurant. In fact, the documentary you just made is subtitled \u201cA New York story,\u201d but there\u2019s a fascinating pre-history of Raoul\u2019s that begins in early 20th-century France. Tell me a bit about the pre-Raoul\u2019s Raoul\u2019s. Did you think you were going to be involved in the restaurant? That is the ballad of all middle-aged men: You look in the mirror one day and realize you\u2019ve become your father. One of the reasons your dad took over this space, back in 1975, was because for years before it had been Luizzi\u2019s, an Italian restaurant, and he was drawn to how cinematic it already was. It\u2019s impossible to find rooms like that. Somewhere along the way, the chain of custody that keeps that spirit alive is broken. Of course, there are restaurants in former stables or speakeasies or in buildings where Basquiat once partied but, after a million-dollar renovation, they are at best homages. The thing about Raoul\u2019s is that it isn\u2019t an homage to itself. It just is. And yet the room isn\u2019t what made Raoul\u2019s Raoul\u2019s. It wasn\u2019t even just the customers. It starts with the ma\u00eetre d\u2019. Tell me a little bit about Rob Jones, whose portrait still hangs by the coat check. Do you remember him? \n Rob Jones. It\u2019s almost like the East Village Russian and Turkish Baths: There is a David week and a Boris week. The ma\u00eetre d\u2019 is like the central nervous system. Rob was famous for his drag performances, descending down the spiral staircase dramatically. Are there still performances today? I would imagine that people are more cautious today, professionally. In the 1970s and \u201980s, things were a lot looser. Of course, there was a downside, but there was also an unpredictable and magical energy. Food has become the entertainment, which, I guess, is cool but also a bit of a bummer. The menu at Raoul\u2019s has always been straight-ahead bistro, right? How has it changed over the years? Tell me about the burger. You didn\u2019t want to create a nuclear weapon. Why 12? \n Raoul\u2019s featured in the December 25, 1989 issue of New York.<\/p>\n EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Grub Street newsletter.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n
The restaurant is going through a transition. It\u2019s representative of the fact that old New York is slowly fading and entering into another era.<\/p>\n
Old New York was a time when businesses were in control of what they were. Businesses like ours had an identity, and people came to visit those places because they liked that identity. They just accepted being in that world. Now, people are in control of what businesses become. The point being that back in the day, money wasn\u2019t the only thing on your mind. You had a certain freedom to do what you wanted, to get together with your friends \u2014 or brother in the case of Raoul\u2019s \u2014 open up a restaurant, and see how it goes. Things worked out, or didn\u2019t work out, organically. These days, you just don\u2019t have the ability to do that because you just can\u2019t open any restaurant for less than a million bucks. You need to really be ready to do something, plan for it, get a bunch of money behind it, execute it, and then keep the public\u2019s opinion in the back of your mind as to whether what the identity is going to work.<\/p>\n
Raoul\u2019s got lucky in the sense that all those people from the beginning grew as the restaurant grew. They became richer too. There was more money going around. Luckily for us, they kept coming back. So the restaurant grew with them. Now, 50 years later, those people are dying off. But we\u2019re also lucky to have those people\u2019s kids and grandkids who still come. The link is naturally fading. It\u2019s like veterans from D-Day or something. But to answer your question, that scene is still happening, but just not in New York. We were the model for that, and I think that\u2019s pretty cool.<\/p>\n
The first iteration of Raoul\u2019s was in Altkirch, a small town in Alsace. My great-grandfather, a mailman, opened a little caf\u00e9 across from a cement factory serving coffee and schnapps in 1937, the same year my father was born. A year later, when my great-grandfather died of heat stroke, my grandfather, a baker, took over. During the war he was conscripted to join the German army, captured by the Russians, and sent to prison. While he was in prison, his best friend \u2014 who had escaped to England and joined the army \u2014 returned to Alsace as part of the liberating force. My grandmother, who was taking care of the restaurant in his absence, fell in love with him and, shortly after my grandfather\u2019s return, abandoned the family for Paris. My grandfather remarried, raised my father, and ran Raoul\u2019s. Neither my dad nor Guy, his younger brother, wanted anything to do with the caf\u00e9. When he turned 17, my dad left for Paris to work for French television. Eventually he moved to New York and got a job with the U.N. Guy moved to New York in 1972. My dad opened Raoul\u2019s a few years later, and I\u2019m sure my grandfather was very surprised.<\/p>\n
No. Like my dad, I didn\u2019t want to be in the business. Like him, I wanted to be a filmmaker. In fact, I was in Bali making a documentary when he had a stroke. That was in 2012. I came back to take care of him. But to take care of him was to take care of the restaurant. All of a sudden you look up and it\u2019s 15 years later. History repeats itself.<\/p>\n
Even when I started getting into Raoul\u2019s again, I didn\u2019t think this would be my path forever. I thought I would go back to making movies. After a couple years, I saw the writing on the wall, but I didn\u2019t really mind it so much. It was very similar to making movies. The restaurant business and the movie business are very similar: They\u2019re structured the same way. There\u2019s a top of the line and a bottom line. There\u2019s a creative aspect, but there\u2019s also a big logistical aspect to it.<\/p>\n
The restaurant is a movie set. Actually, it\u2019s more like a theater set: It\u2019s the same room where people come in every night. There\u2019s also an energy to it. The first iteration of this space was a horse stable, and then it became a Portuguese dance hall, and then it was a string of Italian restaurants for a long time. Even those restaurants lasted 30 years, 40 years apiece. There was an energy that got built in here through the past 120 years that has become palpable. It just looks like a room that was from another time, and it\u2019s hard to find rooms like that in New York.<\/p>\n
My dad was smart enough to not touch the room, and it hadn\u2019t been touched 30 years prior to 1975. You\u2019re talking about a room that\u2019s potentially been here for 120 years. To go through all those iterations of restaurants and nobody had ever said, \u201cI think it\u2019s time to rip out this tin ceiling\u201d is very rare.<\/p>\n
Something that has always been a little bit particular to Raoul\u2019s is that it has never been an owner-centric restaurant. My father and I were very aware of the idea that it was probably not us who would be the point person in this room. It should be someone else. We needed somebody to represent the restaurant in the restaurant. It\u2019s always been the people who have made it work. I know that\u2019s sort of stupid to say that, but it\u2019s true in every restaurant. I think Rob was our first iteration of that.<\/p>\n
Rob? Yeah. He died in 1989; I was born in 1978. I remember him as a child., But each of the ma\u00eetre d\u2019s bring their own character, and the place becomes defined by those people. For Eddie, it is his 47th year with us. When he started, he had ties to the Wall Street crowd. The nights he was working it became a sort of Cheers thing going on. When he wasn\u2019t working, Philip was the other ma\u00eetre d\u2019, and he was connected to the downtown art world because he was friends with Rob.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0b3d6bedd3cf8e7b5c29930eaa4a96df5e-image-courtesy-pepe-diniz.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Courtesy of Pepe Diniz\n <\/p>\n
It\u2019s exactly like that. And it brought in totally different people. And so it was cool because at the end of the day, they were all mixed together in the room, and everybody had their point person, but together they were all in the same thing. That\u2019s one reason we\u2019ll never get rid of the ma\u00eetre d\u2019. Ever since they changed the rules with the tip pool, it\u2019s been really hard for them to have the role that they used to have. The simple solution would just be to have a couple of hostesses, but then we\u2019d lose the connection.<\/p>\n
Yes. You don\u2019t call Raoul\u2019s to get a reservation \u2014 you call Eddie or you call Corin, or in the past you\u2019d call Rob. You need a personal connection with the restaurant.<\/p>\n
A lot less than there used to be, because the staff too has changed and it was always through the staff that it happened. It was never like my father saying, \u201cOkay, let\u2019s get this burlesque act in here for a hundred bucks.\u201d It was more someone who worked here and happened to do burlesque or had a friend who did saying, \u201cI\u2019m just going to do it.\u201d It\u2019s harder now because when you tell people, \u201cHey, if you want, you can just get up on the bar and start dancing,\u201d people are taken aback. It\u2019s hard to describe how you represent yourself in a restaurant, how you become yourself in a restaurant.<\/p>\n
Another aspect is that people just aren\u2019t going out to restaurants to be entertained the way they used to even ten or 15 years ago.<\/p>\n
Guy, my uncle, was the chef here for the first ten years. And we\u2019ve had many people come through the kitchen. Most famously Thomas Keller, with whom my dad opened Rakel<\/a> in 1986. But for the last 20 years our chef has been David Honeysett. When he started, the menu was more Americana, but ironically we\u2019ve been veering back to the classics, albeit without as much heaviness.<\/p>\n
I had been bugging David to do a burger for years, but I never had any clout so he refused. Eventually, around 2014, he finally relented. We discussed doing a burger riff on steak au poivre and, after a while, he came up with the current burger. But we had seen what damage the burger at the Minetta Tavern<\/a> had done taking over the menu so we had to be careful.<\/p>\n
Exactly. So we decided to just put it at the bar, do it as a verbal, and only make 12 a night.<\/p>\n
There are only 12 buns in a pack. Then Josh Ozersky came in and wrote a crazy article about how the burger was the best in America, and the next day there were lines out the door.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/6ed7b7dfc9079009728c19e0684b86d812-raouls-90s-scan.rhorizontal.w900.jpg\")
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