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When Jack and Beverly Beekman were invited to the Russian Tea Room for a birthday dinner recently, they weren't exactly looking forward to it.
The West 57th Street eatery had received so much negative attention following its almost unimaginable $30 million makeover that they were expecting awful food and a cheesy decor.
But it didn't take long for them to fall for the dancing bears.
Mrs. Beekman pronounced the borscht as good as her mother used to make and couldn't get over how soft the leather was on the cherryred banquettes. She left with the name of the Russian vodka used in her martini, and her husband said he wouldn't hesitate to come again.
Patrons like these, plus a growing corporate party business, are allowing one of the worst-reviewed and most expensive restaurant projects in recent memory to become one of the city's top-grossing restaurants within a mere 13 months.
"It's just a question of getting out there and being known," says general manager Michael Desiderio.
Tea Room executives claim the 27,000-square-foot restaurant that famed showman Warner LeRoy rebuilt will bring in $22 million by the end of this year. That's short of their lofty goal of $26 million for 2000, but certainly closer than the devastating "satisfactory" review in The New York Times last December would have indicated, not to mention the Daily...