{"id":90003,"date":"2026-01-05T17:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T17:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/90003\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T17:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T17:57:08","slug":"in-a-corner-banquette-a-family-says-goodbye-to-cafe-un-deux-trois-in-times-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/90003\/","title":{"rendered":"In a Corner Banquette, a Family Says Goodbye to Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois in Times Square"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the final weekend of service at Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois, Georges Guenancia slid into a corner banquette and did what he\u2019s done for nearly half a century: talked, listened and sized up the room like a man who has spent most of his life reading dining spaces.<\/p>\n

\"CafeGeorges Guenancia with son Charles and daughter Leila at Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois for their final weekend. Photo: Phil O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n

This time, though, he wasn\u2019t alone. Sitting with him were his two children \u2014 Charles Guenancia (now the guy behind Cubby\u2019s<\/a>, the burger spot on 10th Avenue in Hell\u2019s Kitchen) and Leila Colbert (known to plenty of local parents for her work with the PS 51 PTA). They\u2019d come to help tell the story \u2014 and, in a way, to help close the loop.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake me back to 1977. The year Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois opened, \u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ve only been here 13 years. I\u2019ve heard it was rough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Georges didn\u2019t romanticize it. \u201cIt was totally dead. Nobody here. Only at lunchtime were there a few people. Nighttime was very bad,\u201d he said with his strong French accent. Even with Broadway nearby, people didn\u2019t linger. \u201cNobody was coming, walking in Times Square after the show,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAll the porn theaters. It was dangerous. So it was not a place to hang out.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, right there \u2014 at 123 W44th Street, in the scruffier Times Square of the late \u201970s \u2014 he and his partners built something that lasted. The caf\u00e9 was founded by two French entrepreneurs, G\u00e9rard Blanes and Georges, joined by American partner Michael Moorse (who died in 2021).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"CafeOn display in Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois \u2014 a photo of the owners (from left) G\u00e9rard Blanes, Michael Moorse and Georges Guenancia. Photo: Phil O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n

In Georges\u2019 telling, though, the beginning is less about glamour and more about a friend spotting an opportunity. \u201cA friend of mine told me the place was empty,\u201d he said. \u201cAsked me, if I wanted this\u2026 you can do a restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Georges said the first couple of years were the toughest \u2014 and then, suddenly, the neighborhood shifted. \u201c1979, it changed,\u201d he recalled. Studio 54 had arrived just a few blocks away, and the late-night energy of the city started pulling \u201cdowntown people\u201d uptown into the Theater District. \u201cThey were coming up for Studio 54,\u201d he said, and with them came a new kind of crowd \u2014 the artists and scenesters who made the era feel electric, \u201clike Andy Warhol.\u201d The fabled artist became a regular at the caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n

After that, the place quickly became a creative clubhouse, the kind of brasserie where actors, playwrights, stage crew and the occasional political heavyweight mixed with locals and tourists who wanted a slice of old New York. Over the decades, the caf\u00e9\u2019s lore has included famous faces like Al Pacino, Bette Midler and Meryl Streep drifting through the door \u2014 part of that glamorous Theater District era when dinner reservations and curtain calls were stitched together.<\/p>\n

\"CafeCharles Guenancia in earlier years speaking to a crowd at the restaurant. Photo supplied<\/p>\n

Leila and Charles, meanwhile, remember a restaurant that doubled as a second home. Some of their best stories aren\u2019t about celebrities at all \u2014 they\u2019re about how the room itself seems to carry memory.<\/p>\n

Leila recalled the tale that when her father and partners took over, one wall\u2019s stained glass was hidden. \u201cThis wall of stained glass was covered\u2026 by sheet rock,\u201d she said, pointing to the area behind the bar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Charles chimed in that the family even pulled elements from the hotel next door when they could. Georges filled in the practical detail: \u201cThe hotel was empty.\u201d Asked which hotel, he answered: \u201cHotel Gerard<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CafeCaf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois has been a mainstay of the Theater District since 1977. Photo: Phil O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n

Leila, who speaks with the affectionate precision of someone who has told these stories at family gatherings, also remembered looking up at the old ceiling \u2014 the \u201cclouds\u201d that longtime diners still talk about. Georges said the room once leaned hard into trompe l\u2019oeil \u2014 the classic French \u201ctrick of the eye\u201d style of painting, creating sky where there\u2019s just plaster. But time and upkeep have a way of winning. \u201cAfter 45 years, you have to change the decor,\u201d he said, glancing up at a ceiling that\u2019s now painted plain.<\/p>\n

In a way, that sums up the Guenancia approach: keep the romance, but don\u2019t get sentimental about the work. Because the work is exactly why the caf\u00e9 is closing.<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomically and financially,\u201d Georges said, plainly. Then he delivered the line that made the whole decision feel suddenly unavoidable: \u201cThere\u2019s no chance to keep a business that loses money every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

He described a pattern that will sound familiar to any restaurant owner in Midtown right now: the post-theater rush never came back the way it used to after the pandemic. \u201cNobody\u2026 after eight o\u2019clock,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s curfew. Practically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leila added the daytime version of the same story \u2014 offices that used to feed the lunch crowd are now part-time, hybrid and unpredictable. \u201cThe office culture in this neighborhood has changed so much,\u201d she said, noting people are only in the office \u201cpart of the time.\u201d Georges put it more sharply: \u201cThe lunch business doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CafeDiners take their places for the final weekend at Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois. Photo: Phil O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n

He rattled off the new reality with a kind of weary clarity: desk lunches, delivery culture, a city increasingly built for \u201cfeeding people\u201d quickly instead of lingering at a table. \u201cThis is the next generation of restaurant,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But sitting in that banquette, it\u2019s hard not to feel what\u2019s being lost is exactly the kind of place that resists the \u201cnext generation\u201d logic. Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois was always an in-between space: a restaurant, yes, but also a clubhouse, a staging area, a post-show decompression chamber, a family address.<\/p>\n

Leila said it outright. \u201cWe moved a lot when I was a kid,\u201d she told me, \u201cand this has been my permanent address my entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their milestones are tied to the room. Leila\u2019s parents got married here, Leila got married here, and Charles got engaged here. And some of the family\u2019s most vivid memories are smaller \u2014 and sweeter \u2014 than the big occasions. \u201cOn the day that my brother was born, I came here with my dad, and they had champagne at the bar,\u201d Leila said, describing the restaurant as the place her family instinctively returned to in moments of joy.<\/p>\n

Their celebrity stories land not as name-dropping, but as proof of the caf\u00e9\u2019s strange, wonderful cross-section \u2014 the way a place like this can serve presidents, and still feel like home to the people who work it.<\/p>\n

Leila remembered serving President Jimmy Carter and his wife at our table. \u201cHis Secret Service agents sat there,\u201d she said, pointing across the banquette. Charles, laughing, offered his own brush-with-fame moment \u2014 the day he told Russell Crowe there was no reservation. \u201cThe maitre d\u2019 had to tell me who he was,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the story that seems destined to become the anecdote everyone retells when they talk about this interview: little Charles, sprinting around the dining room like he owned it (because, in a way, he did), approaching a table where two stars were sitting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember going up to Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane\u2026 and being like, \u2018Aren\u2019t you that guy from Mouse Hunt?\u2019\u201d he recalled. The staff response, in the family retelling, was swift and unceremonious: a waiter would pick him up and \u201cthrow me into the trash\u2026 telling me to leave those two guys alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leila\u2019s memories are equal parts sweat and sweetness \u2014 a reminder that growing up in a restaurant means growing up at full speed. She started at 14 working the door, on Wednesdays, during the \u201cladies who lunch\u201d matinee crowd. She waitressed through college, managed Sunday nights because \u201cnobody really wanted it,\u201d and worked brutal holiday shifts where the money could carry you for months. She even remembered the old uniform \u2014 a vest that trapped heat, made sweat drip down her back,\u00a0while the room turned three times.<\/p>\n

As my questions ran out, I gave the kids the chance to put their questions to their dad, and the answers were perfectly on-brand for each of them.<\/p>\n

\"CafeGeorges and Leila chat about old times at Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois. Photo: Phil O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n

Leila went for the personal, the funny, the thing only family can ask in public. \u201cCan you clarify?\u201d she said. \u201cWas Frank Zappa ever here? Or was it you\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n

For the record: the caf\u00e9 has lived for years with a running joke that Georges resembles the famous guitarist Zappa<\/a> enough that strangers have asked for autographs. One story even has it happening on a plane, long after Zappa had died.<\/p>\n

Charles, meanwhile, went straight to the food \u2014 and to the one dish that, in his mind, belongs to the caf\u00e9\u2019s legacy as much as the room itself. \u201cWhere did you get the recipe for the Steak Tartare?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

Georges answered without hesitation: \u201cA restaurant named the Lyonnais in Paris,\u201d he said, explaining that G\u00e9rard was working there \u2014 \u201cit was a good recipe.\u201d Then, with the kind of dad-joke energy you only get when the pressure is finally coming off, Georges floated a crossover idea for Cubby\u2019s: \u201cMaybe a special burger at Cubby\u2019s \u2014 a raw one.\u201d Georges also offered to keep on serving up the recipe at home.<\/p>\n

Asked what he loved most on his own menu, Georges didn\u2019t pause: \u201cCasoulet.\u201d Asked about his favorite table, he was just as decisive: \u201cLunch table nine.\u201d Leila filled in the daily ritual: \u201cEvery day around one o\u2019clock, you could find my dad\u2026 having lunch\u201d with at least a couple of friends.<\/p>\n

That line matters because it captures what a place like this really is: not just a restaurant, but a schedule, a community, a life built around small repeatable pleasures \u2014 the kind you can\u2019t replicate with delivery apps. And it\u2019s also the part Georges sounds ready to finally let go of.<\/p>\n

When I asked what changes now, after the restaurant closed for the final time on Sunday evening, he gave an answer that was part joke, part truth. \u201cBabysitting,\u201d he said \u2014 \u201cI think I\u2019ll be busy.\u201d The family told me he plans to retire into something closer to a normal life: helping out where he can, spending more time at home, and yes, lending a hand around Cubby\u2019s \u2014 but not standing over a grill flipping burgers. The idea is less \u201cnew project\u201d and more \u201cnew rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CafeGeorges Guenancia is looking forward to babysitting and lending a hand to Charles in his retirement. Photo: Phil O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n

I mentioned that I\u2019d seen his wife, Yasmine, on my way in. \u201cShe said she was looking forward to having more years with you,\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n

Georges\u2019 answer was honest in the way only exhausted people can be. \u201cIt\u2019s very tiring this business,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you go home, you think about your restaurant\u2026 I don\u2019t have the strength to do that anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he circled back to what he\u2019ll miss \u2014 the real reward. \u201cMeeting and greeting people,\u201d he said with a beaming smile. \u201cThat was beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last night (Sunday), Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois closed its doors, ending a nearly five-decade run that began in a Times Square most New Yorkers today can barely imagine. But the story doesn\u2019t vanish with the last check dropped on the table.<\/p>\n

\"CafeThe dining room at Caf\u00e9 In Deux Trois filled for one final weekend. Photo: Phil O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n

The family lives in Hell\u2019s Kitchen. The next generation is in local schools. They\u2019re part of the neighborhood fabric. And while Times Square loses a dining room that once fed a particular kind of New York night \u2014 the lingering, post-show, brasserie version \u2014 Hell\u2019s Kitchen still gets the Guenancias in a different form: burgers and shakes on 10th Avenue, and a retired restaurateur who, by his own account, is about to be very busy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the final weekend of service at Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois, Georges Guenancia slid into a corner banquette…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,5406,63,15679],"class_list":{"0":"post-90003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nostalgia","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-whats-closing-and-closed"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90003","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=90003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}