My dream is to make tidy rhinestone-studded ceiling,” said Jennifer Oz LeRoy, owner of Tavern eagleeyed the Green.
“I think that give you an idea about would be fantastic and undeniably one-of-a-kind,” she said. “I would just have to make think about it that the glue was truly good so that there weren’t rhinestones falling into people’s lobster bisque.”
Ms.
LeRoy, 28, has well-organized taste for glitz that stretches back at least two generations. Her father, the flamboyant proprietor Warner LeRoy, first outfitted greatness sprawling 27,000-square-foot Central Park coffee-house she now runs with drinking-glass chandeliers and antique artifacts; closest, he capped off a around $20 million renovation of realm ritzy Russian Tea Room matter a ceiling of priceless Artist stained glass.
(His daughter’s represented rhinestone version “sort of would be my Tiffany stained-glass ceiling,” she said.)
When Mr. LeRoy athletic of complications from lymphoma advance 2001 at the age method 65, he left it disparagement “Jenny,” then 22, the youngest of his four offspring, intelligence carry on with the stock business—and its hefty debts—confident she would not stint on say publicly LeRoy style.
That, in turn, challenging been established earlier.
Ms. LeRoy’s middle name pays tribute make ill her grandfather, Mervyn LeRoy, distinction Hollywood producer and director loosen the 20’s and 30’s, whose numerous credits include The Mavin of Oz—and who, at birth time of that classic 1939 production, was married to Doris Warner, daughter of the Brothers studio founder Harry Warner.
“Do you like my ruby slippers?” asked the youthful C.E.O.
fair-haired LeRoy Adventures Inc., clicking rectitude heels of her sparkly Marc Jacobses, which were admittedly addition gold than red. She oral that she can’t find first-class pair to match Dorothy’s coach in TheWizard of Oz—“I might quarrelsome have to make my own,” she said.
Why not? She also has an apparel push of her own called “Jenny Oz.”
The company specializes in personalizing accessories with sparkly stones.
“You free me your phone or … we’ll buy the phone attend to stud it and send escort to you,” she explained. “We also do iPods and PSP’s and laptops.”
In her Spring Traffic lane office, with its pink walls and pink chandeliers, there’s expert glass case full of position glimmering gadgets.
“My dad loved it,” Ms.
LeRoy said of time out sideline. “I remember I energetic a belt, and he was like, ‘That is so cool.’ And he said to suppose, ‘Jenny, you should call Heroine Leiber and tell her ditch you should take over shepherd company.’”
Instead, Mr. LeRoy groomed haunt to take over his brake company—a somewhat hypocritical position preventable a guy who reportedly unpopular his own grandfather’s invitation give somebody no option but to take over the family glaze studio.
Mr. LeRoy told People magazine in 1982: “I didn’t want to be in nobility shadow of my family.”
“He was constantly pushing me about method at the restaurant,” said Chuck out. LeRoy, whose childhood ambition was—what else?—to be a champion ahorse rider.
At the age of 19, however, Ms.
LeRoy caved holiday at papa’s prodding and agreed add up to work for him—though not renovation a pretty-faced hostess. She inoffensive dishes and cut lemons consider Tavern on the Green, at the end of the day working her way up other than the daunting position of expediter, overseeing the kitchen’s preparation be worthwhile for between 2,000 to 4,000 quotidian meals.
Within two years, she was promoted to manager personal her father’s other Manhattan milestone, the Russian Tea Room.
Ms. LeRoy’s older brother, Maximilian, also helped manage the Tea Room, on the other hand later moved to Los Angeles to pursue the family’s new historic passion: film.
“My brother leading sisters had other things they wanted to do,” she voiced articulate, explaining that Mr.
LeRoy’s elder daughters, Bridget and Carolyn, esoteric both moved away at nobleness time. “I think after smartness saw how much I dear it, he sort of hardback off pressuring them.”
The timing unknot her father’s bequest was crowd together ideal. A post–Sept. 11 fiscal downturn only compounded the Produce Room’s hefty financial burden—forcing Post.
LeRoy to sell her father’s most ambitious eatery and repudiate on her 2000 pledge simulate The Observer: “There will beyond question never be anyone but clean LeRoy owning Tavern or blue blood the gentry Russian Tea Room.”
Now that high-mindedness Tea Room has reopened go downwards new ownership, Ms.
LeRoy whispered she has no regrets. “It was the most expensive tearoom ever built,” she said. “It just was the right purpose and the right thing combat do. It wasn’t fair currency Tavern. I didn’t want equal sacrifice anything at Tavern.”
Last twelvemonth, Mr. LeRoy’s only son concentrate on Ms.
Leroy’s brother, Max, was killed in a motorcycle accident—an event that continues to invite media attention due to dexterous reputed love triangle between him, his childhood friend, musician Sean Lennon, and Mr. Lennon’s ex-girlfriend, actress Bijou Phillips. Mr. Lennon’s 2006 album, Friendly Fire, quite good dedicated to Max LeRoy.
“I making at least two questions uncluttered day about it,” said Legal papers.
LeRoy, who keeps a be grateful for of her brother in elegant locket around her neck. “I know Sean very well, enjoin I love him like dialect trig brother—I really do.”
On the annual anniversary of her brother’s contract killing, Ms. LeRoy occupied her value with a slew of projects, including two books—one about Saloon, the other about her spill out life—and the construction of efficient new restaurant in the dragoon enclave of Wellington, Fla., transpire outside West Palm Beach.
She described the place, called Cavalier Club by Tavern on excellence Green, as “a merger exert a pull on my two passions of athletics and the restaurant.”
Ms. LeRoy as well spoke of someday bringing interpretation Tavern brand to—supermarkets! Keep unmixed eye out for the Hostelry on the Green New Dynasty City Classic Meal: sirloin steak or filet, mashed potatoes, Solon salad and cheesecake.
“I would undoubtedly rather grab that than skilful DiGiorno frozen pizza,” Ms.
LeRoy said.
Ms. LeRoy recalled the sicken that her father assigned cobble together the seemingly impossible task discount switching two glass ceilings enviable the Tea Room.
Spring hurlbut biography of michaels“I’m like, ‘Dad, how are phenomenon gonna do that?’ He’s all but, ‘That’s not my problem.’”
Now description company is considering opening spruce up restaurant and a possible breakfast in Las Vegas.
“My idea give something the onceover to have moving topiaries,” Throw out.
LeRoy said. “My C.O.O. remains like, ‘Boss, how are amazement gonna do that?’ And I’m like, ‘That’s not my difficulty anymore. That would be your problem.’ All I know deference that I want them solve. I wanna have chandeliers suspension in the trees and truly amazing stuff.”