The past is present at new Greek eatery
With the opening of Pappas Taverna on MacDougal St., Stratis Morfogen is following in his grandfather’s footsteps. Morfogen’s granddad opened the original Pappas on W. 14th St. in 1910. Before it closed in 1974, it was home to such varied regulars as Jackie Robinson and Arthur Miller.
“It was the first Greek restaurant in the city,” said Morfogen, who has Brooklyn Chop House and 160 branches of Brooklyn Dumpling Shop in his portfolio.
His partner in the new Pappas, with 220 seats and a 9-foot wood-burning oven, is Todd English, whose hospitality empire includes Olives and Figs.
Morfogen first tried to get his chef brother Nick in Los Angeles to head the kitchen, but Nick said, “I’m not moving to New York.”
So Morfogen contacted English. “I told him, ‘Your talent is great, and I need you to come back and be an artist.’ ” And English agreed.
Maybe Pappas will inspire a sequel to Morfogen’s memoir, “Be a Disruptor,” that tells how, when he had the nightclub Rouge, he turned away Madonna, who was in a Yankees baseball cap, and Tupac Shakur, who was wearing gold chains.
With folks like Henry Kissinger inside, Morfogen said, he told his door people, “If they’re not in black tie and they’re not on the list, they don’t get in.”
Summoned to the front, Morfogen eyed the underdressed couple. “I said, ‘No way.’ I didn’t recognize them.”
As if former President Donald Trump doesn’t have enough to worry about, one of his most feared biographers has moved to a loft in West Palm Beach, Fla., within minutes of Mar-a-Lago.
Harry Hurt III, author of “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump,” was famously kicked off the nearby Trump International golf course by Trump himself back in December 2016.
According to Hurt’s account, Hurt approached Trump on the driving range to respectfully congratulate him on his election to the presidency, only to be met with a profanity-laced diatribe about his book. “You were rough on me, Harry, some of that s—t you wrote,” Trump reportedly said. “I think it’s inappropriate that you play here.”
At the time, Hurt was a guest of the late billionaire industrialist and philanthropist David Koch, a longtime golfing partner, who elected to leave with Hurt and play at another golf course.
Hurt has told friends that he is writing a nonfiction book about a doomed romance set in his old haunts in the Hamptons, Miami Beach and Palm Beach, with the working title “Love & Money.”
The cast of characters reportedly includes Trump, Koch, a Russian spy and “all sorts of other bold-faced hookers and slicers who may or may not be named later.”
Richard Kind is such a good friend of George Clooney he refuses to tell the story of how Clooney once pranked him by defecating in his cat’s litter box.
Kind — a character actor known for “Mad About You,” “Spin City” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” — was asked about the feline fakery on “The SDR Show” podcast.
“I never tell the cat story,” Kind declined. “George tells it better than anyone.”
When they roomed together, Kind’s cat was constipated, so Clooney decided to play a scatological scam on Kind and started going in the box. So there were large deposits Richard thought were being dumped by his healthy cat.
When Clooney was honored at the Kennedy Center, his wife, Amal, asked Kind with concern, “You’re not telling the cat box story, are you?” He assured her he wouldn’t, but then Matt Damon did.
Damon noted past honorees included Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Paul Newman and Gregory Peck.
“And then I think of George,” Damon said, “a man who defecated in Richard Kind’s kitty litter box as a joke.” But wait, there’s more.
“A man who once stole Bill Clinton’s stationary and wrote fake notes to actors,” Damon continued, “saying how much the president loved their movies.”
The laughter didn’t deduct from the love directed at Clooney.
Brick and mortar is back. Men’s fashion, too. I went to a party last week that proved it.
At Houston and Wooster they were saying “Ciao Bella” to Jack Menashe’s new Sartoria salon.
An opera singer warbled Puccini. A jazz saxophonist wandered through.
Fashion Group International President Maryanne Grisz brought her board along with designers Frederick Anderson, Loris Diran and Carlos Campos.
\Also rubbing cashmere shoulders were Fern Mallis, Chris Lavish, Katya Tolstova and Olga Ferrara.
PBS movie guy Neil Rosen parked right in front and gave the place, “Five apples. And my scale only goes to four so that’s good.”
Emcee Bill McCuddy joked, “My suit is Banana Republic off the rack so I desperately need this place.”
Menashe told me the end of the pandemic is good for fashion. “Men want to look good again. And they don’t want to shop off a website or catalog. They want to see and feel the fabrics,” he said. The bash proved people want to party. Supposed to end at 9, it went a lot later.
Tyre Nichols, the FedEx worker beaten to death by police in Memphis, will not be forgotten.
Contributions are pouring into a $1.4 million memorial fund that will pay the family’s legal and mental health bills.
Nichols, an avid skateboarder, will get a skate park built in his honor in his hometown with the help of skateboarding champion Tony Hawk.
In New York, Guy Stanley Philoche has created a portrait of Tyre on his skateboard to be given to the Nichols family, with the help of the Rev. Al Sharpton.
The painting is part of Philoche’s “Give Us Our Flowers” series that also includes Muhammad Ali, ballerina Misty Copeland and singer Nina Simone.
Philoche said, “I painted him the way he should be remembered, full of life and living with joy doing what he loved most: skateboarding.”
Suzanne Somers, who co-starred in “American Graffiti” with “Laverne & Shirley” star Cindy Williams, paid tribute to the fallen star, telling me:
“It’s hard to believe my vibrant friend won’t be here anymore. This is so unexpected. I had no idea she was ill.”
Somers, whose “Three’s Company” aired Tuesday nights on ABC after “Laverne & Shirley,” said, “We had good times together.”
Interior designer Campion Platt, who has worked with Meg Ryan, Al Pacino and Roger Waters, has partnered with cutting-edge Mirrors Collective to create a capsule collection of reflective abstract pieces.
Platt, who has been included on Architectural Digest’s “AD 100” and New York magazine’s “The City’s 100 Best Architects and Decorators” lists, will preview the collection Feb. 27 at Iris Dankner’s Holiday House in Palm Beach, Fla., which benefits the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.