Month: April 2020

Italian restaurateur Sirio Maccioni, who opened the celebrated French restaurant Le Cirque and watched it grow into arguably Manhattan’s favorite dining room of the rich and famous, has died in Italy. He was 88.Maccioni’s son, Mauro, told The Associated Press that his father died in the family’s villa in Tuscany early Monday. He had suffered from the effects of a stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, the son said. Le Cirque was famed for its decadent Grand Marnier souffles and terrines of rabbit rillette. The starry guest list included Frank Sinatra, Henry Kissinger, Princess Grace, Bill Blass, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Diana Ross and Nancy and Ronald Reagan. Le Cirque opened in 1974 at the Mayfair Hotel. “We weren’t really prepared, but the rest is history. We were the first ‘place to be seen’ that also had good food,” Maccioni told The AP in 2000. The restaurant moved and reopened as Le Cirque 2000 in 1997 in the New York Palace Hotel. In 2006, Le Cirque moved again and opened on East 58th Street. In 2017, the restaurant filed for bankruptcy. Le Cirque has branches in Las Vegas, Dubai and India. The restaurant received a four-star review from the New York Times in 1987, which was renewed in 1997. The Times gave it two stars in 2006 and three stars in 2008. The newspaper downgraded the restaurant to a single star in 2012.  Mayor Rudolph Giuliani once recognized it as being one of the city’s most glamorous and hospitable restaurants. The James Beard Foundation gave Maccioni its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. “I consider myself a working restaurateur, but I’m proud to be called elite,” Maccioni told The AP. “I encourage all my people to be elite; be an elite dishwasher. Being elite means being the best.” He and his restaurant helped launch the careers of many illustrious chefs, including Daniel Boulud, David Bouley, Terrance Brennan, Alain Sailhac, Rick Moonen and Jacques Torres. Maccioni, born and raised in Italy, was forced to go to work after his father was killed during World War II. He worked in hotels and restaurants in France, Switzerland and Germany before moving to the United States in 1956. “I didn’t do this out of inspiration or desperation. I realized very early that I couldn’t afford to be young,” he said. “I did completely give my life to this business. Is it worth it? Maybe not. But I had no choice, and I’ve never felt exploited.” He attended Hunter College during the day. At night, he worked at The Colony, one of New York’s trendiest restaurants, where Frank Sinatra, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Aristotle Onassis frequently dined. After a few years, he moved to a club at the Pierre Hotel before opening Le Cirque. He is survived by his wife, Egidiana, and their three sons, Mario, Marco and Mauro.  
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Artist, adventurer and celebrated wildlife photographer Peter Beard was found dead in woods near his cliff-side home at the tip of Long Island nearly a month after his family reported him missing. He was 82. “He died where he lived: in nature,” his family said in a statement posted on Beard’s website  Sunday night. In recent years, the once-swashbuckling explorer had developed dementia and had at least one stroke, according to the New York Times. His family confirmed that a body found Sunday in Camp Hero State Park in Montauk was Beard’s. Beard’s cause of death was not immediately released by officials. A phone message was left with East Hampton Police. FILE – Peter Beard and his wife, Nejma, attend a benefit in Water Mill, New York, July 28, 2018.”Peter defined what it means to be open: open to new ideas, new encounters, new people, new ways of living and being,” his family said in its statement. “Always insatiably curious, he pursued his passions without restraints and perceived reality through a unique lens.” Beard was renowned for his photos of African wildlife, taken in the decades when he lived and worked at his tent camp in Kenya. His best-known work was “The End of the Game,” published in 1965. It documented the beauty and romance of Africa and the tragedy of its endangered wildlife, especially the elephant. He also photographed women in magazine fashion shoots and had well-documented romances with many of them, including Candice Bergen and Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, according to the New York Times. He was married for a time to model Cheryl Tiegs and was friends with Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Salvador Dali and the Rolling Stones. Beard was born into a wealthy family in Manhattan in 1938 and graduated in 1961 from Yale, where he studied with the artist Josef Albers and art historian Vincent Scully. After graduation, he traveled to Denmark and met and photographed Karen Blixen, who had written the memoir “Out of Africa” under the pen name Isak Dinesen. He later bought 45 acres abutting the African coffee farm where Blixen had lived. Beard is survived by his wife Nejma Beard, and daughter Zara. 
 
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Michelle Obama launched a series of online video readings for kids with the classic picture book “The Gruffalo,” which the former first lady called the story of a mouse who uses his “wit and imagination” to get the best of a fox and other would-be predators.  “Mondays with Michelle Obama” is part of the PBS KIDS Read-Along series, and will continue through May 11. It can be seen at noon EDT on the Facebook and YouTube pages of PBS KIDS and the Facebook page of Obama’s publisher, Penguin Random House. The livestream of Obama reading “The Gruffalo” quickly received tens of thousands of likes on Facebook.Other celebrities who have given readings during the coronavirus pandemic include Jimmy Fallon, Jennifer Garner and Demi Lovato, who also read ‘The Gruffalo’ 
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A Japanese infectious disease expert says he does not think it is likely the Tokyo Olympic games will be held at its rescheduled date next year because of what he foresees as the lingering threat of the coronavirus.Speaking in an interview via teleconference Monday at the Foreign Correspondents club of Japan, Kobe University Infectious Diseases Professor Kentaro Iwata said because the Olympics involve bringing in athletes and spectators from all over the world, there is too much of a risk in restarting a COVID-19 outbreak.Iwata said holding the Olympics is a matter of both Japan getting the virus under control, and then the rest of the world doing the same. He said unless they totally alter the format, such as having no audience or limited participation, he was very pessimistic, even if a vaccine is developed by then.Japan’s organizing committee, along with the International Olympic Committee, moved the summer games to next year because of the Pandemic. The Associated Press reports the CEO of Japan’s organizing committee, Toshiro Muto had also expressed reservations about the games being held next year.The Olympics routinely draw about 11,000 athletes plus “Paralympians” as well as staff, coaches and trainers. Thousands of foreign visitors also attend. 
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