“When it first started happening, I noticed it on Instagram,” he said. “I began seeing the old paintings on their walls and their booth seats appearing in people’s pictures, and I was like, ‘Are people starting to go to Forlini’s?’”
Since the 1950s, the family-owned restaurant — just down the street from the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building — was a standby for the courthouse crowd, serving lobster fra diavolo and chicken cacciatore to generations of judges, lawyers, secretaries and bail bondsmen. It underwent an unintended metamorphosis in 2018, after Vogue magazine hosted a starry pre-Met Gala party there, luring a new breed of regulars that included magazine editors, designers, stylists and skaters. The art crowd and the downtown literary set also adopted Forlini’s as a canteen.
As Eater reported last week, the Forlini family recently sold the building that housed their establishment for an undisclosed sum to an unknown buyer. The family had purchased 91-93 Baxter Street in the late 1960s, and it had been listed for $15 million in 2019.
Behind the restaurant’s locked doors, things have been busy since the owners’ rush to vacate the premises.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/style/forlinis-closing.html
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