Michael Donohue inherited Donohue’s, a business started in 1950 with his own father, and before his death in 2000 passed it on to his daughter Maureen.

Donohue-Peters was also in a sense describing the final chapter in the story of a certain kind of New York. Ellsworth represented “the end of my father’s era,” Ms. “But, to be honest, I’d give back the money tomorrow to have him back because Bob was like a member of the family, the last of the crowd that knew my father.” Donohue-Peters said one recent early morning, as porters wheeled in hand trucks of beer, and the restaurant’s day chef checked out a delivery of fresh calf’s liver. “I was still shocked because I never expected that amount,” Ms. The windfall was not actually news to either woman, who had been alerted to it last year, but what matter? It made for a great day in the global soft-news cycle, where the emphasis mostly fell on the “shock” the waitresses Maureen Donohue-Peters, 53, and Maureen Barrie, 28, experienced upon learning that “Maureen at Donohue’s” and “Maureen-at-Donohue’s Niece Maureen” - as most reports said they had been identified - were named in the bequest. If he was known only to a select few for most of his long existence, that all changed this month when his name became tabloid fodder after a New York Post headline blared the news that he had left tips in his will amounting to $50,000 apiece for his two favorite Donohue’s servers.

“There’s the neighborhood drunk living in a fifth-floor tenement sitting at the bar watching TV and Henry Kissinger in a booth, and no one looks twice at the either of them.”įamous or anonymous, they blend right in, as in a sense did Mr.

“You see all ages and all socioeconomic brackets in there,” she added. “Donohue’s is like a country club with no membership requirements,” said Lisa Fine, a Mississippi-born designer and Donohue’s regular when not at her other homes in Dallas and Paris.

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