Perelman, one of the “barbarians” of the 1980s junk bond-fuelled takeover boom, has no stake in Michael White’s celebrated Italian seafood restaurant Marea but seems at home here. Maybe because he is a regular or maybe because its laminated wooden walls make the place shine like a billionaire’s well-polished yacht: it’s midday on a Friday and the 70-year-old looks ready to head for what he describes as his “little boat in the Mediterranean”, the 257ft yacht C². His pale blue shirtsleeves are rolled up, two buttons are opened to reveal a white undershirt and faint stubble spreads from his scalp to his chin. When I arrive he is at a corner table, watching the summer crowd walking along Central Park South with the wide, easy smile familiar from gossip column photographs.
Perelman’s diverse holding company, MacAndrews & Forbes, unites businesses selling mulch, military vehicles and scratch cards. He is also the controlling shareholder of the cosmetics giant Revlon. He has few insights into how a place such as Marea wins two Michelin stars, though. “I’m not a real foodie,” he confesses. “I like the theatre of restaurants more than I care about the food.” He finances restaurants to support friends or to boost their local communities, he says, and in 2009 backed an East Hampton margarita joint called the Blue Parrot with art dealer Larry Gagosian, singer Jon Bon Jovi and actress Renée Zellweger even though he hates Mexican food. The chefs there serve him grilled fish instead.
He wastes little time with Marea’s menu, despite putting on spectacles with comically thick round green frames to consult it. (“I just figured, if you’re going to get reading glasses, get them as funky as possible.”) I am just thinking that the $45 “business lunch” seems modest by Manhattan standards when Perelman orders the Dover sole, which commands a $55 supplement. I ask whether he wants a starter and he orders a salad, though without conviction. I skip the $275 an ounce caviar and pick lettuce soup with crispy frog’s legs, followed by gnocchetti with shrimp and chillies. “So you’re not Jewish?” he asks, when I have made my non-kosher choices. I ask whether I will offend him by eating shellfish and he assures me I will not. He keeps kosher at home, he explains, choosing fish or simple pastas when he is out.