IT’S ‘GOODRYE,’ DELI
Carnegie empties fridge, closes, nixes buyer
Any way you slice it, the Carnegie Deli is closed for good, its owner said Friday.
Marian Harper Levine, who ran the famed Midtown pastrami palace, turned down an 11th-hour offer from a dishwasher-turned-restaurateur to buy it for $10 million, her spokeswoman said.
“Carnegie Deli is not for sale, and the family is certainly not considering any publicity-inspired offers to buy the Seventh Avenue location,” the spokeswoman, Cristyne Nicholas, said a day after businessman Sammy Musovic offered the big bucks to buy it.
Musovic, a Yugoslavian immigrant who said his first job in America was scrubbing dishes at the Jewish-style deli, waved a jumbo check at a press conference Friday and insisted he was ready to fork over the cash.
“It was like working in the White House. Cleaning Woody Allen’s plate was a pleasure,” Musovic, who now owns the Big Apple hot spots Sojourn, Vero and Selena Rosa, claimed of his days at the deli.
But Levine said through a second spokeswoman that she “has no access to any record of Musovic working at the deli.”
She also said he has never made her a formal offer to buy the beloved eatery on Seventh Avenue at 55th Street. The Carnegie Deli has served up belt-popping sandwiches — like its 4-inch-high pastrami-and-corned-beef creation dubbed “The Woody Allen” — for 79 years.
In September, Levine announced plans to close, saying she needed “to step back” from the business. Muscovic said he offered $5 million to buy it the next month.
But the restaurant was toast as of midnight Friday, Levine said.
All day, patrons waited in long lines for a final taste of the deli’s signature steamed meats, fried latkes and matzo-ball soup — or at least what was left of them.
Signs popped up on the eatery’s windows in the morning listing what it had run out of thanks to nostalgic noshers.