Kenneth D. Laub, a real estate magnate who lives on the Upper East Side, stopped by Donohue’s on Lexington Avenue the other night and told Maureen Donohue-Peters, the owner, he’d like a table for four.
“But I’m telling you right now,” he added, “I’m not leaving you a dime in my will!”
The 20 people standing at the bar erupted in laughter and cheers.
Donohue’s and its owner landed on the front page of The Post this week because of a large tip from the grave. Robert Ellsworth, a multimillionaire art collector who died last week, bequeathed $100,000 to Maureen, 53, and her niece, Maureen Barrie, 28, a waitress.
Ellsworth, whose $200 million fortune came from his vast collection of Asian art, ate lunch and dinner at Donohue’s almost every day of his life for several decades. Maureen and her niece considered him “family,” and in his will he referred to them as “Maureen at Donohue’s” and “Maureen at Donohue’s niece.” (The two women split the tip 50/50.)
Ellsworth was one of hundreds of Upper East Siders who’ve been eating steak and drinking martinis at Donohue’s for years.
“I’ve been going there since 1986,” says Laub, who lives around the corner in an elegant red-brick mansion that’s on the market for a cool $35 million. “It’s a warm Irish pub that happens to have damn good home cooking. There are other Irish pubs in the neighborhood, but between 6 and 10 in the evening, Donohue’s is packed to the brim.”
Other regulars include David Rockefeller (he’s got a mansion nearby), Matt Lauer, Jimmy Fallon, US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Gay Talese, Kate Spade, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and his wife, CBS legal correspondent Rikki Klieman, Liz Smith and radio personality Mark Simone.
Patrons nursing a bourbon and soda with Ellsworth in that retro bar in the sky include Kitty Carlisle Hart, historian Arthur Schlesinger and Mark Goodson, creator of game shows such as “What’s My Line?,” “To Tell the Truth,” “The Price Is Right” and “Password.”
Old-timers still talk about how Goodson, who lived primarily in Los Angeles, used to send his suits by private plane to a dry cleaner around the corner from Donohue’s.
But don’t think for a minute Donohue’s trades on its celebrity clientele. This is not Elaine’s, or Elio’s or the Upper East Side’s newest hot spot, Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar.
Donohue’s isn’t looking for mentions on Page Six.
“I didn’t want the publicity!” Maureen has been telling custumers all week about her appearances in media outlets from New York to India.
“Maureen treats everybody the same — like family,” says Laub. “You can sit at the bar and talk to Matt Lauer and call him Matt. Everybody’s on a first-name basis at Donohue’s.”
Tita Cahn, widow of songwriter Sammy Cahn (“High Hopes,” “All the Way”), lives in Beverly Hills, but whenever she’s in New York, she heads to Donohue’s.
“I’ve been going there 23 years,” she says. “If I were at the bar at the Carlyle or the Four Seasons, I wouldn’t speak to anyone. But you talk to everybody at Donohue’s. It’s safe. There are no loonies.”
Martin Donohue, Maureen’s grandfather, started the restaurant, which bills itself on a long green awning as a steak house, in 1950. He passed it on to his son, Michael, who at one time was president of the New York State Liquor Authority. He died in 2000, and his daughter Maureen has been running it ever since.
Though the restaurant is in mint condition, the décor has hardly changed in 64 years. The bar is right out of “The Apartment,” Billy Wilder’s 1960 satire about the corporate world that inspired “Mad Men.” You can imagine Jack Lemmon sitting there by himself playing with the olive in his martini and pining for Shirley MacLaine.
Past the bar is the restaurant — “dining room in rear,” as it says on the window — with two rows of black booths along the wood-paneled walls and a line of tables in the middle. The tablecloths are red, the placemats paper and the plates white. The specials are written on a chalkboard in the back and usually include chicken pot pie, Yankee pot roast and sauteed calf’s liver. Steaks are simply grilled and served with a side of fries or creamed spinach.
Above all, Donohue’s is a good place to talk. You can linger over coffee, tea or one more glass of merlot and discuss Sputnik, Checkers, Suez, Sinatra, DiMaggio or anything else from the Eisenhower era.
But this week everybody’s talking about that $50,000 tip Ellsworth left to “Maureen at Donohue’s.”
Regulars are puzzled, though. As one says, “The guy ate there every night for 50 years, and he couldn’t figure out that Maureen’s last name is Donohue?”