Elaine’s London

Elaine Kaufman ran her restaurant for over four decades, closing shortly after her death in 2010, with the doors shutting for good in May 2011 after a 46-year run. She kept Texans in check, banned hamburgers, and once saw off a photographer with two flying garbage can lids. London’s Elaine’s, on Kingsway in Holborn, offers none of this. What it offers instead is Aldo Zilli, a chef whose career spans decades of cookbooks and television appearances, running a bar, restaurant, and deli under one roof and hoping nobody asks too many questions about the name.

Nobody involved seems eager to explain the coincidence. One local reviewer noted the venue has usually looked to New York for its cultural reference points, then admitted he wasn’t sure if that meant the original Elaine’s or just the idea of one. It’s the kind of ambiguity Kaufman herself would have found either flattering or grounds for a lid-throwing. Zilli, for his part, has named enough restaurants after himself over the years (Zilli Fish, Zilli Green, Signor Zilli) that borrowing someone else’s name at least counts as variety.