Tavern On The Green, a restaurant whose tariff is not for the faint-of-heart has scheduled a "festlich bier bash." Ya wohl, ich bin ein Oktoberfest -- Freitag, Oktober 10.

By Robert Metz
New Yorkers seeking a super Oktoberfest take note: the spirit of Warner LeRoy of the Warner Brothers movie family haunts the showy Tavern On The Green.

LeRoy was as flamboyant as the restaurants he created and as portly as you would expect of a man who loved food as much as he loved celebrities. His girth was accentuated by the double-breasted suits he wore with jackets unbuttoned. No pictures of him are readily available.

Warner LeRoy took over the Tavern in 1976. He created a fantasmagoria that awes tourists as they scarf dinners and pastries while gawking at celebrities at a Central Park site on the rim of Manhattan's West Side. LeRoy died in his beloved Manhattan.

Growing up, LeRoy lived the Hollywood life in a house he gussied up like a movie theater. In the screening room, he set up a cotton candy maker and a popcorn machine. His movie projector hid behind a Picasso painting.

He was thus launched on a spectacular lifestyle. Said a mid-career LeRoy, when the Tavern opened, "A restaurant is a fantasy, a kind of living theater in which diners are the most important members of the cast."

In February 2001, LeRoy succumbed to lymphoma at age 65 but his legacy lives on. His daughter Jennifer is ruuning the restaurant today.

Following the lavishness of its late founder, the Tavern bawls, New York's most celebratory restaurant takes on the world's largest festival with the city's biggest, most festlich bier bash...

"Join us for an evening of Oktoberfest inspired food, drink, music and fun. Indulge in a bountiful buffet of Germanic favorites: sausages, herring, meatballs, shrimp, potato pancakes, sauerkraut and more. Washed down with Bitburger Pilsner and Wuerzburger Oktoberfest draft beer to the traditional, toe-tapping sounds of Bernie's Oktoberfest Orchestra for just $55."

The Tavern's Executive chef, Brian Young, has been associated with high-profile restaurants in the New York area since 1991, presiding over a series of eateries that led him to a wide repertoire of contemporary French, fusion, Mediterranean, seafood and Chinese cuisines.

Young's breadth of expertise crosses regional boundaries. With the Oktoberfest bash, German cuisine is folded into the mix like a Dutch baby pancake. Young joined the Tavern in 2007.

Harking back to his salad days, Warner LeRoy's Maxwell's Plum on Manhattan's fashionable East Side anchored the singles' scene of the 1960s and 70s.

The Tavern is one thing. The Plum was quite another. It was garlanded with pricey Tiffany lamps. LeRoy told the author back then that he wouldn't want it known but the huge Tiffany just inside the door was "worth $15,000.? In today's dollars, that?s roughly $80,000.

Maxwell's Plum was said to have a higher dollar volume per square foot than any other restaurant in the country. Patrons, stacked four to five deep at the bar, quaffed mixed drinks composed of top-shelf liquors and fresh-squeezed lemons and limes. LeRoy aimed to bring the finest cuisine and drink to the Manhattan cognoscenti.

And so it is with the Tavern, eight years after LeRoy's death. His daughter Jennifer, 22, at her father's death in 2001, inherited a Tavern On The Green awash in debt.

To the manner born, the savvy Jen dug in taking on the toughest assignments at this elegant eatery that serves 700,000 meals a year. She now runs the entire show. The Tavern, a $40 million operation, fields a staff of 525.

Thousands of lights festooning the exterior greet the patrons. Inside are 13,000 square feet of dining space, also lavishly lit. Compare that expanse to a basketball court at 12,000 square feet. Is there an Oktoberfest worthy of Manhattan here? Long green it, if you care to find out.