Patrissy's #2
Patrissy's restaurant with "authentic Neapolitan cuisine" is gone, but Marie Severin's 2004 drawing (for Grant Geissman's
Foul Play) recreates the high-spirited atmosphere over a half-century ago when the EC Comics staff went around the corner to 98 Kenmare for lunch at Patrissy's. The old-style telephone exchange, CAnal 6, appears beneath the logo design depicting the restaurant exterior with an overhead awning at the entrance. Below is the ultimate EC collectible, a Patrissy's ashtray.
In this early 1950s photo, Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein lunch at Patrissy's after spending the morning at 225 Lafayette Street creating EC stories. Patrissy's is mentioned in Frank Jacobs'
The Mad World of William M. Gaines (1972) and Digby Diehl's
Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives (1996). "We'd plot in the morning, then go to Patrissy's, the local Italian restaurant," remembered Feldstein. "We'd gorge ourselves on spaghetti and manicotti and bread. I got fat. In a very short time I ballooned from 150 to 180." Feldstein soon chose to have melba toast and cottage cheese at the office instead of scanning the Patrissy's menu daily.
Patrissy's opened in 1906, and eight decades later Danny Patrissy sold his restaurant to Arnold Magliaccio in 1995. It became NoLita's (a portmanteau since 1994 from "North of Little Italy") when it was taken over by Nicholas Barnes in 2000.
Labels: bill gaines, ec, feldstein, grant geissman, nolita, patrissy's, severin