In 1983, I donned a starched white apron as one of Café Luxembourg’s first cadre of waiters when it opened on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Since it was the second venture for Keith McNally and Lynn Wagenknecht, the pair who launched The Odeon, the restaurant that reignited life below Canal Street and became the blueprint for every cool bistro from Miami to San Francisco, it was an instant got-to-be-there spot. Predictably, Marian Burros began her stint as restaurant critic for The New York Times with a review of Luxembourg by adopting the paper’s then customary nose-pressed-up-against-the-glass disad-vantage point. Starting with…
