The vibes were off at Balthazar.
The famed brasserie is not just a restaurant, but in many ways, a great equalizer, at least where beloved New York City restaurants are concerned: Locals, tourists, celebrities, NPCs, editors, interns, service industry, students, himbos, cougars, the fashion crowd, dirtbag skaters, dirtbag bankersâtheyâre all there, always. Last night, they werenât. Iâm not sure who was. I once worked at the restaurent; Iâve had countless meals there. I can definitively say: Last night, things were plainly weird.
We decided to go to witness The Great Champagne Bet of Keith McNally. Earlier in the week, the restaurantâs mercurial mastermind took to Instagram to offer up a free bottle of champagne to every table if it looked like Kamala was going to take it during dinner service. A bottle of Taittingerâthe champagne wageredâruns about $55 retail, probably less in bulk, but by no means a cheap outlay for a 180-seat restaurant.
My girlfriend, who beat a friend and me there, already had a martini in front of her when we arrived. She looked like a deer in the headlights, the way nobody should look with a martini in front of them. She was also the first to mention it: The crowd was off. Even more: The martinis were weak. We ordered one for each of usâsame thing. Who sends a martini back? Balthazarâs made a million martinis, and theyâve all been good, and tonightâof all the goddamn nightsâtonight was the night we had to sack up and tell someone that not one but all three that came to the table were watered down? This is a freak incident at a bar that pumps out nearly flawless vodka and gin cocktails, enough over a single year to get this entire city shitfaced, probably, and theyâre probably in aggregate as flawless as youâll find anywhere in the world. You try not see omens where you really donât want toâdefinitely not at the shimmering rim of glass barwareâbut at this point, it was half past nine, and the early counts were starting to come in.
The next round that showed up were boozy, sharp, normalâsome balance, restored, or maybe just the edge taken off. The needle moved again.
McNally sat in a booth in the rear of the restaurant, a laptop open in front of him. A guy dressed in full Uncle Sam regalia was hanging out nearby. Fun, sure, but in that kind of David Lynch-esque way, where things just on the precipice can turn on the dime further towards the profoundly strange. At one point, McNally decided to suddenly crank, at earsplittingly loud volumeâas service was still very much kicking, as some diners covered their earsâboth âHey Judeâ and Woody Guthrieâs spare rendition of âThis Land Is Our Land.â At the peak of the songâs sadistically loud climax, someone shouted something from the large party seated in the âuptown eastâ side of the dining room. We looked at each other, and quietly acknowledged what we all believed we heard: âTRUMP!â
A friend of ours, an art reporter, came through, assuring us that the latest returns werenât so badâheâd been out reporting that night, and he, too, had run headlong into some strange vibes. A guy next to us was streaming MSNBC from his iPhone, holding the phone up to his ear so we could only hear the frantic, stressed anchors trying to make sense of their night, too. Another group of friends we ran into told us about the bootleg Steve Kornacki sitting at the barâbasically, a guy, with a laptop, also holding his forehead, also reading down the latest returns, flanked by a cadre of attractive women. They were hustling out of there. McNally had also, at that point, seemingly left the premises.
Nobody finished their dinners. We asked for the check. The champagne got us in the door, but it wasnât going to showânot, in any way in hell, on a service shift like that.
Read all our election night dispatches here.
