Andy Warhol Ate Here: The colorful career of Sheldon Haseltine

By ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST June 27th, 2026

The colorful career of Sheldon Haseltine, the creator of a string of piping hot Manhattan clubs, is presented by Mark Schreiber in a lively book, Andy Warhol Ate Here. I have always considered that clubland has played an important part in the cultural evolution of New York. Indeed this had been my own beat in my book Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night, but Schreiber takes readers to several places I didn’t go by channeling direct experiences that Haseltine had while running such topnotch clubs as Hoexter’s Market and Joanna, that being the "here" where Andy Warhol ate.

Indeed the book opens with just such a Joanna, episode, namely Haseltine being told by his manager that there was a problem. Which was “Mr Gotti wants his usual table.” John Gotti, then Manhattan’s most notorious Mafioso, head of the Gambino family, was disturbed to see strangers where his group were customarily seated.

Haseltine, a patrician American, with several Brit royals, beginning with William the Conqueror embedded in his family tree, asked whether Gotti had made a reservation?

No, he had not. Haseltine then asked “Mr Gotti, are you carrying?.” Which means packing a gun.
Why the question, asked Gotti reasonably.
“So that I can shoot them,” Haseltine said.
Gotti gave a stentorian laugh and bought him a drink.

With Patrick Terrell and Robin Leach

Crisis over. And it is, of course, suggestive that the restaurateur/client intimacy was such that Haseltine felt the question could be asked.
Other areas into which the book takes you are changes in the whole restaurant culture.

The restaurateur had used to be the face of an eatery, as with Elaine at Elaine’s, but now there was the arrival of the celebrity chef. Celebrity was indeed increasingly becoming part of the chic eatery culture and that has a grabby side which neither celebs not those who cover them generally care to discuss, but the book is powerful on this as when it describes Elaine’s’s arrival in the restaurant one evening in the early 80s and seeing Elizabeth Taylor.

Photobombing Regan

A group of 12 to 14 was surrounding the movie star and Haseltine was told that it was her birthday. He knew that celebs would often expect freebies and told his staff to be sure they got a bill. Which they did but it still hadn’t been paid a week later. So Haseltine called her assistant personally to secure payment. Taylor’s assistant said “Ms. Taylor blessed your establishment with her presence, which is valuable publicity.”
Sheldon Haseltine informed her that he would be sharing this conversation with the press. A courier delivered a check within two hours. In another such piece of inside track reporting Haseltine tears up a $40,000 check from the “ratlike” lawyer Roy Cohn, as insufficient.

Andy Warhol Ate Here paints a bright picture of nocturnal Manhattan and the players there but also messages that the individual should always be ready to asset him or herself if such a player becomes overbearing. As when Sheldon Haseltine left his chair during a dinner at the UN, and returned to find s man seated there, chatting up his date.

Christie Brinkley

Haseltine asked for his chair. “I’m the Israeli ambassador and I’ll sit where I want,” Benjamin Netanyahu told him. Haseltine removed his date, went to another chair and seated her on his lap. Yes, as Andy Warhol Ate Here clearly indicates, nightlife can play a terrific part in the Manhattan experience.