Atlas Unbound: Chic, Trendy and Mario : THE SCENE : Just a Gathering Spot for Hundreds of Friends

“Mario, don’t you look fabulous! I love your charro outfit.”

“Mario, the place looks terrific--it’s just like New York!”

“Mario, do you think you can find out when our table will be ready?”

Mario Tamayo is a man with a thousand friends. Or so it seems when his Atlas Bar and Grill is at peak capacity. There’s Rebecca de Mornay who likes the back booth alongside the bar. Tom Waits likes the booth seats, too. O.J. Simpson’s son buses tables; Louis Armstrong’s grandson takes the stage with his band from time to time. Gatherings of Tamayo’s closest friends slide into the banquette nearest the velvet-curtained entryway.

At the moment, though, Atlas is far from full. It’s a quarter to six on a Saturday night and Tamayo is on the phone. A friend wants to come in but doesn’t have a reservation. Can he get a table? Yes. Oh, and he’s bringing five other friends for Mario to meet. Mario always tries to find room for his friends.

Already the night’s first customers--a group of four who walked in without reservations--are seated at a table. Around the early arrivers, waiters place napkins on the last of the unset tables, and then slip into their gold-tone brocade vests--part of the uniform designed by Jef Hureque, who has clothed David Bowie, Bob Dylan and, of course, Mario Tamayo. (“He’s my personal designer,” Tamayo says.)

As six o’clock approaches, Mario puts on a Billie Holiday CD and scans the dining room. It will be his last moment of calm for the night. He wanders to the kitchen where chef Victoria Granof is explaining tonight’s specials to the staff.

There are the Salvadoran corn cakes called pupusas . “Be sure to tell your customers that the sauce is a little spicy,” Granof says as she sets down a sample plate of the dish. Tamayo sticks his fingers into the sauce and tastes. “Oooh, it is,” he says. “Good.”

There is duck confit. Granof explains the meaning of the term, confit, while a couple waiters practice pronouncing it with a French accent: “cone- FEE , cone- FEE .”

Granof winds down her talk and forks appear. It’s tasting time. The staff stands back and waits for Tamayo to grab the first bites. Then they dig in and Tamayo stands back. “Look at this, hello ,” Tamayo says as he spots a waiter with a stray vest strap hanging out. He reaches over and tucks the offending fabric tail into place.

As the dining room starts to fill, Tamayo plays the nervous party host. He adjusts a drooping napkin; he picks up a piece of string. He notices a dusty cognac bottle under a spotlight and has it polished. Then he walks into the restrooms (ladies’ painted in pink tones, men’s in blue) and adjusts the dimmers so the lights are real low. “There’s no one young enough for these bright lights,” he mutters. Mario understands vanity.

At 8 o’clock the dining room approachs capacity. Vicente Puga, Atlas’ maitre d’ and Smoot Hull (formerly of the nightclub/restaurant Stock Exchange), who is Atlas’ director of opertions, work smoothly and swiftly. At the moment there is room for everyone. Both men are fashionably dressed--last night Puga wore a black-and-white cow-print tuxedo jacket; tonight he’s in a dark turtleneck and collarless two-tone brown blazer. For his hostess, Maryann Healy, Tamayo gets designer dresses from friends like Pepito Albert. But Tamayo doesn’t want his staff to intimidate. “They need to be sharp, but they can’t be brusque,” Tamayo says. “It’s a balance between strength and humility.”

Tamayo himself likes to cultivate an image closer to wide-eyed impressionable youth than snobbish restaurateur. When he opened his first restaurant, Cha Cha Cha, in 1986, he had no training in the restaurant business. He couldn’t even get a job as a waiter--he wasn’t qualified. Still, the one-time hairdresser/stylist knew how to attract a crowd. “They don’t come to see me,” Tamayo says, “they come to see each other--they come to see the scene.”

And the scene is full of celebrities. Not necessarily the celebrities found in the pages of People--Details magazine is where Mario Tamayo’s celebrity friends are more likely to turn up. They are fashion designers, stylists, up-and-coming actors and musicians, writers, architects. It’s cafe society for the ‘90s.

“Everyone’s a celebrity,” Tamayo insists. Watch the way he flatters and soothes when there aren’t enough tables to go around and you almost believe him. “Are you OK, sweetheart?” he asks one woman who’s come in with three friends . . . without a reservation. “Why don’t you come to the bar and order some appetizers--I’ll keep you company.” He chats up the group, and a couple minutes later is off in the main dining room to check on another party. He won’t get a break until after midnight. “You can’t get too comfortable with people,” he says. “This is a job, but I like to make it look like I just hang out.”

One waiter made the mistake of believing Tamayo’s easygoing socialite image and then tried to copy it. “The guy would stand at a table and be talking and talking--he wouldn’t shut up,” Tamayo says. “When I let him go he told me, ‘But I’m a social butterfly.’ I told him there’s only one social butterfly around here and that be me.”