Bourbon Cheese Spread

When Ma Bell’s opened smack in the middle of New York City’s famed Shubert Alley in 1972, the concept was simple enough to explain in a sentence: Every table in the restaurant had a working telephone. Its spot at 218 West 45th Street was the epicenter of Broadway’s Theater District, where actors, producers, agents, stagehands, tourists, and after-show crowds crossed paths in a constant shuffle. Here, Restaurant Associates—the ambitious New York company behind such destination restaurants as Brasserie, La Fonda del Sol, The Forum of the XII Caesars, The Four Seasons, Mamma Leone’s, and Tavern-on-the-Green—turned the ordinary act of placing a phone call into part of the dining experience.

At Ma Bell’s a patron could sit down and use an old-fashioned candlestick telephone to place a call to another table or booth inside the restaurant or, for that matter, anywhere else. In a world without cellular phones—it would be decades before most people would have them—Ma Bell’s aimed to be more than just a restaurant with a gimmick. It aspired to be the social switchboard of Shubert Alley.

The concept behind Ma Bell’s has been credited to George Lois, the legendary advertising provocateur whose genius lay in stripping an idea down to its barest essence. (Lois was perhaps best known for the 90-plus covers he designed for Esquire magazine from 1962 to 1973.) Restaurant Associates, the company that retained him for its Shubert Alley project, had the dining-room machinery, the leasehold, the service systems, and a seemingly insatiable appetite for high-concept New York restaurants. Lois supplied the idea; Restaurant Associates knew how to turn it into an experience: a Broadway saloon built around the telephone, one of the most familiar objects in American life.

For years, Restaurant Associates had been helping to modernize the New York dining scene by creating restaurants that were complete environments—with names, graphics, architecture, uniforms, service rhythms, and moods. The newest restaurant in the company’s constellation would carry that philosophy into a looser, more playful, more Broadway-facing form. Ma Bell’s was for people with curtain times, people coming out of shows, people killing an hour near Broadway, people who did not want the night to end when the curtain fell.

The Ma Bell’s name came directly from the familiar nickname for the Bell System, and in 1972 that reference had not yet lost any of its cultural weight. The telephone was still fixed in place, wired into walls, governed by exchanges, operators, bills, etiquette, and long-distance charges. It was an instrument of business, romance, family duty, gossip, flirtation, and interruption. Now, at 218 West 45th Street, the telephone was no longer something that pulled a person away from a meal. Now, it was the meal’s central feature.

By 1973 Restaurant Associates was confident enough to boast that Ma Bell’s was “a winner the day it opened.” Newspaper ads for the restaurant promised a phone on every table, fast service, a menu that was neither too long nor too short, an eighty-foot bar, lunch, cocktails, dinner, theater-intermission service, and after-theater dining and drinking. A line at the bottom reduced the whole pitch to three words and a joke: “Food, Phones, and our Long Distance Bar.”

For much of the 1970s, that was enough. Most theme restaurants, however, live under the clock. A great dining room can age into dignity; a concept room can age into yesterday’s joke. By the early 1980s, the telephone itself was changing as a symbol. The Bell System was under legal and political pressure, and the monopoly that had put “Ma Bell” into the American vernacular would be broken into pieces as the result of a 1982 antitrust settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. In short, the table-phone gimmick that had seemed so fresh in 1972 had begun to lose its novelty.

By 1983 the ownership of Ma Bell’s had passed from Restaurant Associates to the Riese Organization, a New York City-based restaurant-and-real-estate company whose sprawling portfolio had once included such culinary landmarks as Longchamps and Schrafft’s. In 1983, with average weekly sales at Ma Bell’s reportedly down to just $18,000, the Riese Organization converted the restaurant into an outpost of its own restaurant brand, Charley O’s. Weekly sales soon rose to about $40,000, which was in keeping with what Dennis Riese, the company’s chief operating officer, called its “My Fair Lady” philosophy of restaurant operation. Riese liked to point out that when the musical My Fair Lady finished its original run on Broadway, the theater didn’t close with it; instead, the owners of the theater simply brought in a new show.

As Riese later put it to a trade publication, “Ma Bell’s was a concept that ran its course.” At least by Broadway standards, however, the restaurant had enjoyed a respectable run. For a little more than a decade, it was the only place in New York City where dinner came with a dial tone.

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Bourbon Cheese Spread

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This simple but potent cheese spread was a specialty of the house at Ma Bell’s, a telephone-themed Shubert Alley restaurant that made its debut in New York City’s Theater District in 1972. Use a sharp Cheddar, let it soften fully before mixing, and choose a bourbon you would be happy to drink; with so few ingredients, each one matters.

Ingredients

• 3 ounces sharp Cheddar cheese, finely grated and softened slightly at room temperature
• 1 ounce bourbon
• Pinch of cayenne pepper, plus more to taste

Instructions

1

Place the Cheddar in a small bowl or the bowl of a food processor. Add the bourbon and cayenne.

2

Beat vigorously with a fork, hand mixer, or food processor until the mixture is smooth, lightened, and spreadable. If using a food processor, scrape down the bowl once or twice so the bourbon is evenly incorporated.

3

Taste and add another trace of cayenne if you want more heat.

4

Transfer the spread to a small crock or ramekin. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, until firm but still spreadable.

Notes

For the best texture, grate the cheese yourself rather than using pre-shredded Cheddar, which often contains anti-caking starches. Aged Cheddar gives the spread a sharper bite, while a younger sharp Cheddar makes it creamier. The bourbon should be present but not harsh; if the spread tastes too boozy immediately after mixing, chilling will mellow it slightly.