Interview

Billy Joel, Christie Brinkley, and Iman at Indochine, courtesy of Rizzoli

"You don't know how you got there, but you know that you've arrived," Jay McInerney says of the legendary Vietnamese restaurant in Indochine: Stories, Shaken and Stirred (out next week on Rizzoli).  "There is a certain amount of table-hopping that goes on, especially on boozy late nights . . . it's like they form pockets and Indochine is where all the worlds converge," Padma Lakshmi notes. The commemorative photo album combines reproductions of artwork inspired by the restaurant– such as Julian Schnabel's 1985 pen drawing on his stained Indochine table cloth and Narciso Rodriguez's 2008 fabric collage of the bistro's fabled banana leaves–with first-hand stories from the likes of Mario Testino, Diane von Furstenberg, Moby, and the wait staff who saw it all go down.

Restaurateur cum retired ex-pat–he is now Vanity Fair's official "Man in Saigon"–Brian McNally opened Indochine in 1984, inspired by the banana leaf wallpaper of the Beverly Hills Hotel and the food of the Orient. Building on the success of Odeon, the Tribeca eatery favored by Saturday Night Live's original cast and John F. Kennedy, Jr., as well as the cover image of Bright Lights, Big City, McNally created Indochine as a way to keep the party of a waning Studio 54 alive. His formula worked: the infamous party spot has maintained (even come back, recently!) as a destination for supermodels, art world legends, and Hollywood starlets for the past 25 years.  Known for its understated glamour and "lively bathroom culture"–the spring rolls aren't bad, either–Indochine has sidestepped the pitfalls of the hotspot that quickly cools, today attracting the likes of Kate Moss, Claire Danes, and Julia Restoin Roitfeld. And its story is equal parts fantasy, mischief, and an ode to the American Dream: in an unlikely turn in 1992, a hardworking busboy by the name of Huy Chi Le purchased the restaurant, allowing it to re-open after only a month. Today, he boasts part ownership of Indochine, Republic, Kittichai, and Bond St.  McNally, no longer an owner, periodically drops by on surprise visits from Vietnam. (PHOTO: JULIAN SCHNABEL'S TABLECLOTH DRAWING)

The tome works hard in service of myth-making in its 208 pages. Endless photographic collages roll by alongside written series of nostalgic memories from typicaly discreet celebrities (Anna Wintour, Calvin Klein, and Cindy Crawford all share dining adventures). The tone of the book is more about aspiration than it is a food lover's inside look. The eats, noted as "clean" and "flavorful," are little more than an afterthought, and many of the quotations come off as staid and sales-y rather than anecdotal. Anna Wintour reminisces, "Indochine is virtually unique in New York–and pretty much everywhere else, for that matter: A fashionable restaurant that has never been subject to the vagaries of fashion. Over the years, I've eaten there a lot, but my absolute favorite evening has to be my Vogue colleague Grace Coddington's 50th birthday party." (We wonder if it was written before or after the filming of The September Issue.)  (PHOTO: GLENN CLOSE AND CALVIN KLEIN)

Like some good parties, spontaneity isn't always the aim, so much as carefully scripted retrospectice. At the book's close, co-owner Huy Chi Le takes a look back: "For me, Indochine is like a movie.  The restaurant is like a stage...The stage has remained the same throughout the years, and the actors have grown older, but now a bunch of new actors have taken the show over, the dining room is now full of young people playing the roles their parents had played 25 years before."