A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from February 01, 2006
Polish Tea Room (Cafe Edison at Hotel Edison)
The Edison Hotel is located at 228 West 47th Street, in the heart of the theatre district. The Cafe Edison is joking referred to as the "Polish Tea Room," after the more famous Russian Tea Room that used to exist on West 57th Street, next to Carnegie Hall.


Edison Hotel
If it's fine dining that you're into, we've got Sofia's Restaurant, The Supper Club and a New York favorite, The Rum House, serving cocktails in a West Indian atmosphere. Enjoy a full tasty menu of Big Apple favorites at Café Edison, aptly renamed by theater patrons as the "Polish Tea Room." Or stroll one block over and find "Restaurant Row" ...a melange of eating establishments for every taste bud.

Travel and Leisure
There are several restaurants and a bar attached to the hotel. The loan-shark murder scene in The Godfather was shot in what is now Sophia's restaurant. The pink-and-blue (wedding cake looking filigree and plaster) of the Edison Cafe's a theater-crowd landmark consistently recognized as New York City's best coffee shop.It is a famous meeting place of Broadway producers and cast members, (Neil Simon has a regular), so much so, that it was nicknamed the Polish Tea Room. Playing on the fact that a lot of business deals were made at the Russian Tea Room and those that weren't willing to pay the high prices there would meet, eat and deal at the Cafe Edison and thus came the name, the Polish Tea Room.

Edison Hotel
228 West 47th Street
New York, NY 10036
Tel: 212-840-5000

New York Literary Tour
After several successful books about British theatre, she has turned her hand to the Great White Way, in A Theatrical Feast in New York. We will drink and dine at theater-crowd landmarks such as the famous Blue Bar at the Algonquin Hotel, the funky pink-and-blue plaster Edison Cafe known half jokingly as the Polish Tea Room, and Broadway legend, Joe Allen's.

8 April 1987, New York (NY) Times, pg. B1:
It has been nicknamed the Polish tea room because of the Polish couple and some of their Polish dishes, as well as the suspicion that perhaps as many show business deals are consummated here, over meat loaf and pot roast, as at the chic Russian Tea Room.

5 June 1988, New York (NY) Times, pg. H18:
At lunch, whether at the Polish Tea Room (the Edison Cafe to the uninitiated) or the Algonquin Hotel, Mr. Golden finds himself surrounded by listeners.

New York (NY) Times
Harry Edelstein, 91, Host of Popular Polish Tea Room, Dies
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: July 14, 2009
Harry Edelstein, who with his wife, Frances, owned the venerable Broadway hangout affectionately known as the Polish Tea Room — a place where playwrights and producers, actors, stagehands and tourists could commune while stuffing down the last bites of an oh-so-hefty blintz — died on Monday in Englewood, N.J. He was 91 and lived in the Bronx until 2006.
(...)
The Edelsteins, childhood sweethearts from Poland, ran the Cafe Edison, as the coffee shop is formally known, from 1980 until three years ago. It is now run by their son-in-law, Conrad Strohl.

Situated in a converted former ballroom in the Hotel Edison, at 228 West 47th Street, the Polish Tea Room earned its nickname after a theater executive asserted that it was superior to the more upscale Russian Tea Room.

New York (NY) Post
Cafe Edison, iconic city eatery, to close
By Ben Feuerherd and Sophia Rosenbaum November 6, 2014 | 4:41pm
Another Midtown mainstay is biting the dust as Cafe Edison plans to close its doors soon.

The Times Square relic, one of few still scattered throughout Midtown, is shuttering after 34 years due to a failure to renew their lease with the connecting Hotel Edison on West 47th Street.
(...)
The eatery, which is nicknamed the Polish Tea Room, is beloved for its standard diner food and traditional Jewish comfort foods including hearty soups, crispy potato pancakes and hand-carved sandwiches.
Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityHotels • Wednesday, February 01, 2006 • Permalink


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