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NEW YORK - Move over "A Chorus Line."The big revival in Manhattan this .season is an 80year-old restaurant famously located "just a little to the left of Carnegie Hall."
Four years after the family of the late restaurant impresario Warner LeRoy closed the thenbankrupt Russian Tea Room, a new owner has raised the curtain on a revitalized incarnation of the West 57th Street fine-dining icon.
Gerald lieblich, a New York real estate developer and president of the RTR Funding Group, purchased the restaurant for a reported $19 million in 2004 and has been restoring the space, with particular attention to many of the lavish details introduced by LeRoy in 1999.
Lieblich, who also owns Beppe in Manhattan and historic Loews Paradise Theater in the Bronx, said he purchased the Russian Tea Room "to bring back a New York City landmark and institution," and provide a dining experience "with Old World glory and charm."
Opened in 1926 by former members of the Russian Imperial Ballet as a gathering place for Russian expatriates, the Tea Room over the years developed into a favorite hangout for New York's entertainment and literary communities.
Encompassing the first four floors of a slender, seven-story, art deco-style townhouse, the restaurant reopened for dinner to the public Nov. 3 and is expected to expand service to include breakfast, lunch, tea and weekend brunch by the end of December.
Ken Biberaj, spokesman for the Russian Tea Room, declined to reveal sales projections, but at its peak under LeRoy's baton the 500plus-seat restaurant was said to be generating as much as $400,000 a week. Much of that came from banquet and private...