The other lions are long gone—Lutece, La Côte Basque, Lespinasse, La Caravelle—gorgeous rooms where New York’s power players and gate-keepers savored the best of old-school French dining. From the 1950s to the early 2000s, they held a storied place in the city’s restaurant landscape. Only La Grenouille endures. Gisele and Charles Masson, a husband and wife who decamped from France after the war, opened it in 1962 in Midtown and, seemingly ever since then, it has been a jewel box of a room, known for its glorious flower arrangements, red, velvet banquettes, and small table lights that make any woman look her best. (It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that Jackie O, Babe Paley, and other women regularly lunched there.) Don’t miss the dover sole, warm lobster medallions, or the frog legs. And on a cold, rainy afternoon, there’s still nothing better than ducking in for a hot bowl of split-pea soup. —Michael Hainey

Michael Hainey is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL