Restaurateur Who Has Seen It All Faces Last Call
Ken Aretsky stayed open through 9/11 and the financial crisis. Then came the coronavirus.
Billions of dollars are at stake.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Ken Aretsky runs a classic New York joint, a restaurant called Aretsky’s Patroon on East 46th Street in Manhattan. It serves modern American food, with a clientele that veers toward power lunchers in the afternoon and devoted regulars in the evening.
Aretsky, who is approaching 79 — and a man, in the words of the New York Times, for whom “the word ‘dapper’ is hardly dapper enough” — has been a restaurateur most of his adult life. He opened Patroon 24 years ago, after a stint as the head of the 21 Club. He’s been through difficult times before — 9/11; the 2008 financial crisis; plus that unforgettable time the feds arrested him for buying Cuban cigars for his cigar bar2— but he had never been forced to close his restaurant. Until Monday.