Steven Van Zandt likes their egg creams. Last month, Jodie Foster ordered an egg salad sandwich.
Ricky Byrd, the original lead guitarist from Joan Jett’s Blackhearts, gets a bagel with cream cheese and lox.
Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop, an 80-year-old, humble luncheonette just off Madison Square Park, is an unexpected celebrity destination. But what’s the appeal of a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon?
“Forget a fancy place —the food is really good,” said former Sopranos star Steve Schirripa, who met his wife there for lunch yesterday.
Manhattanite Schirripa loves pastrami, but the one-time Mafia goon is now on a diet — “I’ve lost 20 pounds!” — so he orders grilled chicken over a salad and vegetable soup. “And every day I’m just dying for it,” he said. “It’s fantastic.”
John Slattery, who plays the irrepressible Roger Sterling on “Mad Men,” is a regular and “one of the friendliest guys,” said Eisenberg’s owner Josh Konecky.
Only two — Lou Reed and Gilbert Gottfried — have ever turned him down for a photograph, he said.
“It’s laid-back,” said Konecky of Eisenberg’s star appeal. “It’s probably one of the last places they expect to be seen. It’s just one of the last holdouts of an old New York lunch counter.”
