When he’s not grilling rocker Jon Bon Jovi, or tooling around Dubai with ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft is often found chatting up the various characters at Café Luxembourg on West 70th Street.

“It’s always been my local,” said Mr. Kroft.

On Sept. 10, owner Lynn Wagenknecht’s longtime celebrity haunt celebrated its 25th anniversary with a bubbly, sliders-and-fries-stuffed party attended by such notable guests as screenwriter Nora Ephron and actresses Kathleen Turner and Aida Turturro.

Mr. Kroft was among the first to arrive—and last to leave.

“It’s halfway between work and home…I know that I can walk home, stop here, have a drink and meet interesting people,” said Mr.  read more »

Writer and director Nora Ephron, the guru of American romantic comedies and once the most famous super-wealthy rent-regulated tenant in New York City (in 2006, she wonderfully admitted to "bribing her way into an eight-room apartment for $1,500 a month"), will probably be paying twice that amount in monthly co-op maintenance fees from now on.

According to a deed filed today in city records, Ms. Ephron and her husband, Nicholas Pileggi (he wrote Casino and Goodfellas, she wrote Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally), have paid $2.475 million for an apartment in the Georgian-style co-op building at 136 East 79th Street. It’s on the same block as the Apthorp, where the couple lived for decades (she filmed part of Heartburn there), but on the snobbier side of Central Park.  read more »

It felt like a huge sorority reunion at the party before Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year Awards at Avery Fisher Hall on Monday, Nov. 5.  read more »

Meryl Streep has signed on to play jolly cooking icon Julia Child in Nora Ephron's new film Julia & Julia, based on the adaptation of the 2005 book by Julie Powell, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.

Reuters/The Hollywood Reporter writes:

The Columbia Pictures film follows Powell, a government worker who decides to cook her way through Child's classic "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year out of her small Brooklyn kitchen. Powell blogs her daily experiences, gaining a loyal following along the way.  read more »

With the Apthorp's ground-floor retail factored into the deal, the purchase price is about $2.4 million per apartment, making it the most expensive price ever for an American residential building.