Photographed by Robert Otter circa 1962

Patrons


Some were well-known celebrities:

Rocky Graziano (in Earl Wilson’s gossip column):


Rocky Graziano ate three steaks at the Albert French restaurant and said, “I’d make a comeback, if my timing was as good as my appetite.” That’s earl, brother.


Lynda Bird Johnson (in Dorothy Kilgallen’s column, January 9, 1965):


Lynda Bird Johnson paid her second visit to the Albert French restaurant the other night, escorted by her handsome young beau, who isn’t readily identified by New Yorkers. They ate heartily, and it’s an “all you can eat for $2.95” place, which indicates he’s on a budget....


Her first visit (mentioned in Earl Wilson’s column) appears to have been in December 1964:


Lynda Bird Johnson downed two steaks at the all-you-can-eat Albert French restaurant in the Village.


But others were there by virtue of Brody’s charitable instincts:


[The Livingston School for Girls] - “with an enrollment of 101 hard-core juvenile delinquents, girls that regular schools cannot handle.”

Ten girls go twice a month to Albert’s French restaurant, whose owner, Joseph Brody, invites groups for free steak or lobster dinner. The girls learn table manners and they began to see that they are acceptable enough to be waited on in a restaurant, like other girls.