Restaurants: Forever Toots's

Bernard Shor is a beefy saloonkeeper who looks like an elderly, slightly worn cherub. He insults his best friends ("Ya crumb-bum!") and coldly rejects sycophants ("How should I remember ya when I only seen ya oncet?"). Everybody calls him Toots, a name that has stuck since childhood when he was—incredible as it may seem—a pretty boy. His pals are sportsmen, athletes, politicians, showfolk, journalists and has-beens; in short, Toots Shor is a Runyonesque character too true to be fictional.

For 19 years, he ran one of the most popular restaurants in Manhattan. During that time he befriended the low and the mighty, urged them to drink sturdily and eat what one habitué called his "training table" food. He pounded their backs, and they counted themselves lucky if they were awarded with "palship," Toots's ultimate accolade. He was favored by politicos; Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower had him to the White House, and Jack Kennedy invited him to his inauguration. Every ballplayer worth his mitt got the de luxe, or crumb-bum treatment, and even Bernard Baruch, elder statesman of the stock market ticker, benched down at Shor's now and then. But Toots made no attempt to attract the glossier types of café society. "Who needs ya?" he bellowed cheerily.

Ladykin Chicks. For the loyal "pals," it was a sad day two years ago when Toots closed down his "joint" on 51st Street to make way for an office building. Toots got $1,500,000 for his lease, took off for Europe, then returned to New York to eat and drink in other places while he waited fitfully for workmen to build a new restaurant a block north.

Last week the interregnum ended as Shor proudly opened the doors of his new place, which, by happenstance, occupies the site of the old Leon & Eddie's, where Shor had been a $50-a-week bouncer. His new joint, a handsome nine stories high, cost $5,000,000. Inside, the new Shor's reflected the old: a huge circular bar, a wood-paneled main room, dining room upstairs, hatchicks who look like ladykins. Chief added feature: a 400-car garage on the top seven floors, which will enable customers, in the words of a Shor lieutenant, "to scratch their fenders and get loaded without ever leaving the premises."

Shor had planned no special ceremonies. sent out no invitations. Nevertheless, just before 3 o'clock in the afternoon, crowds assembled outside the revolving door. Shor himself padded about bellowing orders in his raggedy voice and acting as nervous as a bride's mother. His wife, three daughters and a son sat placidly at the headliners' banquette in the dining room.