There are Nobu restaurants in London, Miami and the Bahamas, and there are plans to open soon in Hong Kong, Hawaii and Australia.Īll of which means Richie Notar is a busy man, fielding requests for decent tables from hip-hop princes and Middle Eastern kings. His own chain reaches from Manhattan, west through Dallas and Las Vegas to Southern California. Notar likes to say that restaurants have quickly taken over from nightclubs when it comes to having fun. The problem is that the night is not what it used to be, though Mr. The first seating’s over and the night can begin.” “The best thing,” he said, “is that they usually leave by 8 to get back to the suburbs. It was, in the best sense of the word, a club.” “It was so tight-knit and everybody knew each other. Thus was born a 54 tradition: busboys showing naked chest. He was mortified, though Steve Rubell, the owner, was seized by intuition and ordered the other busboys to remove their vests as well. On opening night, he said, his uniform was supposed to have included a gray vest, gray striped shorts, sneakers and tube socks, but in the fury of the crowd he lost the vest. Notar was in fact involved in important moments at Studio 54. “If I bragged too much my friends would tell me, ‘Hey, I was just in the schoolyard with a six-pack,’ so I didn’t rub it in.” “Your boys from the neighborhood will always keep you straight,” he said.
Still, among the disco music and cocaine, he never quite lost sight of where he came from, and this accounts for his attitude today. Notar, right rear, was in the middle of the big flashes of the day, including Andy Warhol and Truman Capote. Notar is the juggler who must make sure that a certain real estate tycoon is never seated next to whomever he is feuding with that week.Īs a busboy at Studio 54, Mr. Now, at 47, he oversees an elegant, if less debauched, domain patronized by the elites of the film, fashion, music and, of course, financial worlds. A decade later he had moved on to Morgans, the boutique hotel on Madison Avenue, where he claims to have once smoked pot with the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. By age 16, he was a busboy at Studio 54, where, he said, he consumed Quaaludes by the fistful and enjoyed the company of older women. Notar’s résumé is in part a thumbnail history of fun. “Now it’s all people making money on Wall Street. Notar, who took time from his busy schedule to discuss the relationship between the bottom line and pleasure. “The designers, the music people, the movie people, and, of course, the gay crowd they were fun,” said Mr.
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