Restaurant with opera singing waiters
 

Can you help. I was last in NY 9 years ago and was taken to a great restaurant that had opera singing waiters. I can't remember where it was or the name but would love to take my family there when we visit NY in April. Any ideas of name/location?<BR>Thanks

The restaurant you are probably thinking of was Asti's Italian Restaurant which was on the east side below 14th Street (East 12th I think?). Alas, it closed a year or so ago. Another one of New York's great traditions to take a graceful bow and slip away.

Won't help for your trip but try to rent "Perfectly Normal", available on VHS. It's a Robbie Coltrane movie, in which he plays a con artist who befriends a brewery worker and convinces him to open a restaurant with an operatic theme/decor and waitstaff who sing arias. Highly entertaining and a touching story beneath the comic veneer.

I'm not sure if it's still around, but there used to be a place called Carolina's located on Mermaid Avenue in Brooklyn that had singing waiters.

It's probably awful, but there's a 50's diner-style restaurant on the corner of, let's see, Broadway and 51st, I think it is. Not sure of the name -- Stardust Diner, maybe -- but they have a sign hanging outside about their "singing waitstaff". Beware, it could be fun or it could be as close to torture as one can come without being strapped down to anything. No guarantees.

I haven't lived in NY for MANY years but there used to be a place on West 4th Street in Greenwich Village. Maybe<BR>this will job someone's memory if it's still there.

Check out Rossini's on East 38th Street. Excellant Italian food and opera singers on Saturday evenings. Unfortunately, it don't come cheap.

You could get lucky - I was at the Upper West Side French Roast late one night and a tenor from a Lincoln Center gig gave us a free concert.

Or you could just come on down to Philadelphia for a little while and go to Victor's Cafe on Dickinson street in South Philly to be serenaded by the opera singing waitstaff and visit the Mario Lanza museum plus attend a production by the Philadelphia Opera Company and enjoy the beautiful city in the springtime!

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