Trump Trial Gives Long-Lost UES Haunt A Shout-Out

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — It's impossible to get a seat at Elaine's — especially since it closed!

That's the newest joke coined Wednesday by the judge presiding over Donald Trump's latest defamation trial with E. Jean Carroll, according to several reporters inside the courtroom.

The legendary and iconic hangout, which closed in 2011, was the subject of questioning by Trump's attorney, Alina Habba, as she cross examined Carroll.

Habba demanded that Carroll admit that she was a regular of Elaine's, a regular haunt for celebrities like Woody Allen, Kirk Douglas, Michael Caine and Chris Noth, and especially for those in the literary scene, with regulars including George Plimpton, Gay Talese, Kurt Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Peter Maas and Mario Puzo.

"It's hard to get into, isn't it?" Habba asked Carroll, according to a reporter from Inner City Press.

Carroll replied that it wasn't hard — prompting Judge Kaplan to interject that "it doesn't exist anymore. That's why it's hard to get into," according to Inner City Press.

Habba, whose client was threatened with expulsion from the courtroom earlier in the day, then questioned Carroll on where she was able to sit up front at Elaine's and if she saw Mario Puzo there, Inner City Press posted.

I saw Woody Allen, Carroll replied, and sat at the fourth table back, where Elaine chose, Inner City Press wrote.

Elaine's — named after its proprietor, Elaine Kaufman — first opened in 1963 on a then undesirable commercial location on Second Avenue near East 88th Street, but it soon became a hive of social activity in a uniquely New York way.

A year after Kaufman's death in 2010, Elaine's closed for good.