Cohen, Party Of One

How to navigate eating out—and fellow diners—post-disgrace.

- Horacio Silva

New Yorkers were willing to overlook a lot about Claus von Bülow, but for all the free passes he received, including an acquittal in 1985 after he was accused of trying to kill his wife with an overdose of insulin, society drew the line at indulging him at his old haunts while Sunny remained in a coma.

Despite his desperate attempts at rehabilitation in the media, the Danish-born dandy became an object of derision on the jet set's unforgiving restaurant scene, a banishment possibly worse to the bon vivant than prison food.

“We would see Claus at Mortimer’s,” recalls Paul Wilmot, the sagacious publicist who once tended the reputations of Calvin Klein and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. “People used to point at him— he was a tourist attraction!”

If yesterday’s ruling class clutched its pearls at the sight of outcasts hobnobbing in their favorite spots, today’s has become accustomed to a crew of villains who might as well have strutted straight from perp walk to Per Se. Just weeks after numerous allegations of sexual misconduct on his part surfaced, Charlie Rose was turning up at buzzy New York boîtes like Frenchette and the new Four Seasons. Les Moonves was a fixture at the Sunset Tower and Craig’s in Los Angeles even as he negotiated his exit package from CBS. And then there’s Michael Cohen, the Trump fixer–turned–prosecution witness, who does not look like a man about to go to prison, judging from his regular cameos at the Polo Bar, JoJo, and L’Avenue. “It’s horses for courses,” Wilmot says. “These people got in trouble for making bad decisions, so we can’t be surprised when they continue to make them.”