Joe Allen
Theatreland restaurateur who lit up both New York and London
JOE ALLEN, who has died aged 87, founded his first eponymous theatreland restaurant in New York in 1965 and went on to develop a restaurant empire which included the famous Joe Allen’s bar and restaurant in Covent Garden, a favoured haunt of actors and theatre folk.
The London Joe Allen, opened by Allen’s business partner Richard Polo in 1977, became one of the most fashionable restaurants in the country, famous less for its American-style food (though its off-menu hamburgers were rated second to none) than for its laid-back New York-style ambience.
Like its New York parent it featured bare brick walls covered from floor to ceiling in signed photographs of the stars and old theatre posters; diners were allowed to have just one course or two starters, and to stay up well after the theatres had shut up for the night.
Though several great restaurateurs (Jeremy King, Russell Norman, Rowley Leigh) got their big break at Joe Allen’s, cheffy show-offs were not welcome. No one was allowed to work the room or throw hissy fits over criticism of food.
Allen preferred to employ waiting staff who had not gone through rigorous hotel training. “If they can carry more than two plates at a time we are impressed,” he told an interviewer. He had a soft spot for “resting” actors, though he could find them irritating at times (“all that optimism in the face of rejection”).
But his recipe for success was simple: “Restaurants are supposed to be fun. They should give customers the food they like in the quantities they want and at a price that appeals.”
Joseph Campbell Allen was born in Brooklyn on February 20 1933 to parents originally from Texas. His father, who worked for Standard Oil, died when he was 12.
After a short-lived first marriage, Allen served in the Army Reserve and worked as a clothing sales rep then as a barman at PJ Clarke’s, the classic Manhattan saloon bar that was the setting for Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning film The Lost Weekend (1945).
In the early 1960s, with a friend, he opened a restaurant nearby, but soon became bored with the mainly advertising executive clientele. In 1965 he opened Joe Allen on West 46th Street, near Broadway, reckoning that actors would be “sillier and more fun than advertising guys”.
Joe Allen’s soon became the preferred meeting place for stars and celebrity watchers, regulars including Al Pacino, Stephen Sondheim, and Elaine Stritch. Word spread to London when Bob Fosse transferred a show from Broadway and American cast members were seen in the West End streets wearing Joe Allen T-shirts.
With partners Allen went on to open five more Joe Allen restaurants – in Paris, Los Angeles, Miami Beach and Ogunquit as well as London. In 1983, in the premises next door on West 46th Street, he opened Orso, which sparked an interest in rediscovered rustic Italian cooking. A Covent Garden Orso opened in 1986, a year before the River Cafe, and another opened in Los Angeles.
Though a successful restaurateur, Allen, who lived in a flat above Joe Allen’s when in New York, was a retiring, self-effacing soul. Though he might often be seen sitting at his restaurant bar, few people recognised the anonymous looking man in a T-shirt. Once, asked to explain the secret of his success, he replied: “Maybe it’s because I don’t inflict myself on the customers.”
Asked, aged 81, whether he had he had any advice for would-be restaurateurs, he replied laconically: “Yeah, think twice.”
After his first marriage ended in divorce, Allen married again, but was separated from his second wife. He is survived by a son and daughter from his first marriage.
Joe Allen, born February 20 1933, died February 7 2021