Two legendary downtown hotspots celebrated the Nineties together on Sunday night.
Angie Mar of the shuttered Beatrice Inn and Jean-Marc Houmard of Indochine hosted a bash at his Noho fixture, with Mar reviving some of her menu in the Indochine kitchen for one-night-only.
Guests reminisced while enjoying the Beatrice’s Le Burger and favorite dishes from Indochine, which opens its doors in 1984.
The French-Vietnamese restaurant — recently featured in JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette show “Love Story,” which has sparked a fad for all things 90s — saw some of its heyday in the decade.
The hotspots co-owner Houmard told us one of his favorite memories was a birthday bash in 1992 for Grace Coddington, former creative director at-large of Vogue, thrown by Anna Wintour.
“It was all the supermodels,” Houmard told Page Six. “It was an amazing party. Naomi [Campbell], Linda [Evangalista], Christie [Turlington], all of them.”
Coddington has kept the tradition alive.
“She did the same 20 years later when she turned 70. Two weeks ago we did another event for Grace when she turned 85. Three decades, we’ve celebrated,” Houmard said. “It’s so special.”
The restaurant still pulls in celebrities and downtown cool kids, though Houmard says things have changed a bit over the decades.
“New York in the ’90s was smaller,” he told us. “We kind of had to know where things were happening because there was no information online so you had to know the right people, you had to have the right networks. . . And there were just a few places where everybody gravitated and now it’s so spread out, it’s in Brooklyn. It’s a different New York.”
Le B. owner Mar, who met Houmard at downtown dinner party where they cooked up the idea of collaborating on the one-night-only evening, tells us, “I used to come to Indochine. I just wanted to be here. Everyone was so chic and so cool. This was a place where it was all happening.”
Mar became executive chef of the famed Beatrice Inn in 2013 before purchasing it from former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter in 2016. “I was never cool enough to get in — I had to buy it,” she joked.
One of her most memorable moments involved fashion royalty.
“Diane von Furstenberg was throwing this party at my restaurant, which I had just taken over, and I walked out of the kitchen, I walked around the corner, and Valentino was sitting there in an emerald green tuxedo, eating my Le Burger, and the duck flambe. His Bentley was right outside. . . I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I made it.’”
Mar closed the Beatrice in December 2020 during the COVID pandemic. The spot had a long history. It first opened as a speakeasy in the 1920s and later became known as the go-to nightclub for the Olsen twins, Chloe Sevigny, Lindsay Lohan, and Kate Moss in the aughts when it was run by Paul Sevigny, Matt Abramcyk and André Saraiva.
The menu for the night included favorites from both spots like the côte de boeuf and crispy rock shrimp as DJ duo the Muses provided the soundtrack.
Modeling industry guru and activist Bethann Hardison was spotted mingling among the chic crowd, as well as “Bright Lights, Big City” author Jay McInerney who was seen chatting up 1980s icon Dianne Brill, whom Andy Warhol had dubbed “Queen of the Night.”
McInerney recalled heading to Indochine following a bad review of his second book “Ransom” in 1985.
“You know, I was almost afraid to come here because I just thought, ‘Oh, everybody’s gonna hate me’,” he told us. But when he walked in, the host told him, “‘Great picture in the NY Times,’ and he seated me in the front booth.”
Brill remembered sitting with McInerney one night, pointing out the exact table, along with author Norman Mailer, Liberace, Warhol and fellow Literary Brat Pack writers Brett Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz.
“And then Cher walks by!” Brill said. “Every legend you could imagine.”
“This place in ’84, ’85. ’86, there was no place else,” McInerney said.
Also at the event were designers Romeo Hunt and Aiste Hong, Carlos Mota and celeb dentist Dr. Stephanie Dumanian.
