Illustration by Wes Duvall   (Photo: Phillip Ennis/Courtesy of Samuel Botero for Samuel Botero Assoc. (Orsini's); Ron Galella/Wireimage (Bergen and Vanderbilt); Alfred Eisenstaedt/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images (Mastroianni); Graham Stark/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (Brynner); Terry O'Neill/Getty Images (Sinatra); Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images (Tree); Ben Martin/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images (Scaasi); Tom Wargack/Wireimage (Merrick))

Our town’s dining scene is cruelly dominated now by the haute snobbisme of New York’s grand French restaurants, the snooty le’s and la’s, where an arrogant bourgeoisie of onetime cashiers and waiters turned captains decide who is not wanted. All my prepping in the truffle fields of France, my many pilgrimages to Michelin three-star temples … such credentials mean nothing to these peasants we have given the power of humiliation.

But no problem. When I want to feel appreciated, I go to Orsini’s (41 West 56th Street). I don’t let the outrageous prices ($4.50 for osso buco risotto!) make me tense. “Bella signorina,” the captain greets me with unabashed joy. As a stern arbiter of taste, I would never equate a discreet knuckle kiss to great food. Rather, Orsini’s is theater. You could pay as much for an evening on Broadway with only half the dazzle. Lunch upstairs draws Gloria Vanderbilt and Arnold Scaasi; David Merrick with Candy Bergen in a mechanic’s jumpsuit and Malibu tan; Social Moth Jerome Zipkin with Penelope Tree; Golda Meir, Sinatra, Princess Grace, Chagall, Roy Wilkins.

One day Yul Brynner looks around and pokes his wife. “Over there,” he hisses—“Mastroianni.” And at that moment Mastroianni turns to his companion: “Look, it’s Yul Brynner.”

In his all-seeing “Eye” column in Women’s Wear Daily, John Fairchild writes, “I don’t go there to eat the people.” The rest of us do.

I have a crush on Armando Orsini. He’s the Adonis of the two brothers, dark and solid. He vibrates with Italianocity, kissing hands, kissing fingertips, kissing cheeks. He is so Italian it would never occur to him that he isn’t really in love with woman, women, all of us. That does not mean triage is not required. What are we if not the willing victims of New York table games? Here Dun & Bradstreet and the Social Register do not count. Orsini rules require assigning the siliconed beauties and the faithful to front tables in the flattering filtered day that grimes grayly through the thick of 56th Street.

So don’t dwell on visions of great food. Go for the psychic lift, the electricity of pheromones mingling, to get something to eat because it’s one o’clock. It’s like going home for lunch. Oscar de la Renta is dieting. What can he eat? Papa Armando urges him to eat raw meat—filet, sliced very thin, like prosciutto, with lemon, olive oil, and fresh cracked pepper ($5.50 at lunch, $6 at dinner). One day, successfully trim, Oscar disappears, back to the buttery at La Grenouille, I imagine. Orsini shrugs. He’ll be back. The point I’m making about my beloved Orsini’s is, it doesn’t matter what the menu says. Is there something you want?

Stick to pasta if you’re inclined to be a little fussy. Fettuccine is what the ladies fresh from their training sessions at Elizabeth Arden eat, usually properly al dente. Marylou Whitney’s noodles are sprinkled with Parmesan grated before her very eyes. The back-room folk get flurries spooned from a steel bowl, nearly as fresh, I have no doubt, but we do feel slighted. It’s the indulgence that counts. With your pasta, order a salad of tartly dressed rugola, sandy or not as the kitchen variously offers, with wine in carafe, Soave Montresor ($2.50 the half-liter). This will make a modest little lunch that can’t possibly distract you from a lover, confidante, or the passing Satyricon … or separate you from more than $18 for two.

If upstairs at lunch is The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, dinner downstairs is “That Old Black Magic”: red velvet, wrought iron, shaded candles, Armando, overseeing the swift portioning of the cannelloni, in black tie and ruffled white. Mozzarella in carrozza ($2.75), Italy’s glorified grilled-cheese sandwich, is a promising starter. As might be predicted, the garlicky baked clams ($2.75) are safer than ossified scampi in too much herb-scented oil ($2.75). The scent of Sterno, a listless tomato sauce, a soggy cutlet in the veal parmigiana, sandy greens again. For all these complaints, I think the evening is exciting and worth the $98.35 with tip. The candlelight. The pretty people. The caring service. I know it’s not very Commission Against Discrimination, but I will always love French restaurants where everyone is French and Italian restaurants that are Italian from coat check to busboy and Greek where you think you are in Greece.

Orsini’s has grown from an expensive little coffeehouse architectural engineer Armando Orsini opened fifteen years ago to amuse himself after hours spent erecting schools in Astoria and apartment buildings in the Bronx. Because Orsini’s tennis and ski buddies happened to be Aly Khan and Rubirosa and drugstore cowboys of that ilk, success was instant. Friends took to lounging in the back room, and when they got hungry, Orsini served spaghetti. Then the building was condemned. Knowing his pets would hate change, Orsini copied the old space with all its quirks and curves next door.

One day Orsini’s closed; the next, it reopened here, and no one seemed to notice that the front door was a few feet east. Now he is focused on what could become a franchise empire, La Pasta. Pasta keeps beautifully, he points out. And “We are experimenting with fast-freezing our sauces.”

I get a chill just thinking of it.