Among the list of New York restaurants that are still talked about long after they’ve closed — Maxwell’s Plum, One Fifth, Florent — one name rises above all others: Lutèce. Gael Greene, the former restaurant critic of this magazine, once called it the most important restaurant in New York’s modern history. For decades after it opened in 1961, the townhouse at 249 E. 50th Street was considered the best French restaurant in Manhattan, which at the time made it the best restaurant in America, period.
