It’s the A-list lunchroom for N.Y.

WHEN anchor Bob Schieffer wanted to make it clear that he was tickled about his replacement on the “CBS Evening News,” he invited Katie Couric to lunch at an understated Midtown restaurant where he knew they would be noticed.

“I wanted everyone to know that I really like Katie,” he said recently. “And if you want to get the word out, the easiest place to spread it is Michael’s.”

Sure enough, there were some prominent diners at the West 55th Street restaurant that day to witness their chummy meal. ABC’s Barbara Walters sat a few tables over with Al Gore’s eldest daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff. Next to them, music impresario Tommy Mottola presided over the head table by the window, while Viacom Chief Executive Tom Freston, News Corp. President Peter Chernin, Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne, designer Ralph Lauren and Donald Trump’s children, Ivanka and Eric, were seated strategically around the airy front dining room.

A high-wattage crowd is something you can count on at Michael’s. Since it opened 17 years ago, the restaurant has been the go-to lunch spot for a certain stratosphere of New York, the top echelon in the worlds of show business, fashion and publishing.

As camera-laden tourists jostle down Fifth Avenue, the well-coiffed and well-known quietly sweep into the garden-level eatery just a half-block away, tucked discreetly down the street from the Peninsula. Some may come for the California-style menu, with its emphasis on grilled fish and local produce. But most of all, they come to see -- and be seen.

“To the extent that Manhattan is like high school, with all the fragile egos and cliques -- geeks, jocks and popular people, all vying for status -- Michael’s is the high school cafeteria,” said N.Y. Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove, who frequently dines there when he needs material. “It’s not just a restaurant; it’s an information clearinghouse.”

Although Los Angeles has plenty of hot restaurants, it’s hard to find one that regularly draws the same concentration of power players from such a cross-section of industries for lunch. Just the drive time alone limits such gatherings.

“L.A. is a much more diffused place,” said owner Michael McCarty, whose original Michael’s in Santa Monica attracts a more laid-back lunch business.

But in New York, lunch has long been a high-profile meal, propelling the fame of spots like the Russian Tea Room, the celebrity hangout in the 1980s. Nowadays, establishments like the Four Seasons and Lever House restaurant draw their own prominent clientele, but the scene at Michael’s commands the most attention. One of the most avidly read features on fishbowlny.com, a local media blog, is “Lunch at Michael’s,” a weekly column chronicling who was dining with whom, complete with a table map. (It’s not just getting in for lunch that counts, it’s getting a prime seat.)

So how is it that in a churning city like New York, which boasts more than 21,000 restaurants, one place has been able to maintain a lock on such influential patrons?

It comes down to one key ingredient, said CBS communications chief Gil Schwartz, who eats there weekly: “It has this never-ending supply of people in need of self-esteem.”

The restaurant provides the answer to an essential New York question, he added: “If lunch happened, and nobody was there to see you have it, did you have lunch?”

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Toast of two coasts

WHEN you first step inside Michael’s, it’s not immediately apparent that it’s the gathering spot of the city’s elite. If anything, the low-ceilinged dining area is tasteful but decidedly low-key, aside from the huge sprays of cherry blossoms that swoop over the small tables. But look closely and you’ll notice the pedigree of the art on the cream-colored walls -- original works by David Hockney, Jasper Johns and Robert Graham -- and the well-known faces seated around the bright room.

After opening the first Michael’s in Santa Monica in 1979 and generating an immediate buzz, McCarty was convinced that the same kind of unfussy atmosphere and inventive cuisine also would play well in New York. The restaurant had to have a garden, he decided, and be centrally located to the media and entertainment industries in Midtown Manhattan.

Eventually, McCarty found what he was looking for on West 55th Street -- then home to a restaurant called the Italian Pavilion -- within walking distance of top talent agencies such as William Morris and ICM, as well as the television networks and major publishing houses.

It took 10 years to persuade the owner to sell. When McCarty finally secured the site, he set out to create a space dramatically different from the red-velvet-curtain formality then so in vogue. He spaced the tables far apart to allow for intimate conversation -- “By New York standards, our tables of two would seat six,” he noted -- and banned stuffiness. “It’s a totally different philosophy of hospitality,” said McCarty, who spends every other week in New York. “It’s not the stiff maitre d’, but the embracing, warm, ‘You’re in my house.’ ”

To that end, the staff approaches each seating as if it were hosting a dinner party, highly conscious of the guests’ food preferences and relationships to one another. Every morning, general manager Steve Millington and maitre d’ Loreal Sherman pore over the day’s reservations, pondering whom to seat where. McCarty weighs in by phone from California when he’s not in town.

Table preferences are never guaranteed, but regulars have clout, as do boldfaced names. Unfamiliar people get Googled to determine where they fall in the social pecking order.

Table 1, in the front of the room under the windows, is considered the prime spot. The back room, adjacent to the garden, is preferred by many business executives and art dealers, but abhorred by the media set. “I personally know people who, if they were seated in the back room, they would find it so humiliating they would not show up,” the Daily News’ Grove said. “It’s a dis.”

Millington insists that it’s not, but acknowledges the challenge of making each customer feel valued. “It’s a lot like a chess game,” said Millington, who regularly reads publications such as Crain’s and Variety to keep up on news about his customers. “You’re moving your kings and your queens, your important regulars, trying to figure out the best way possible not to injure many fragile egos.”

Shortly before noon on a recent morning, Millington gathered the wait staff in the back room to run through the day’s specials and clientele. The servers scribbled frantically as he raced through the seating and each guest’s preferences.”Table 23 is Barry Frey, he’s a green tea guy. Kevin O’Malley, get a drink for him. [Table] 51 is Robert Shapiro. He’s iced tea. [Table] 11, Jonathan Wald, coffee or grapefruit juice.”

Before the staff dispersed, McCarty offered one more instruction: “It’s one of the first really good days of spring, and everyone is in a really good mood. Let’s keep it that way.”

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Beyond the menu

REGULARS agree that the food, though good, is not the main draw of Michael’s. (Despite the extensive menu, most people order the $30 Cobb salad, which makes up so much of the lunch business that one member of the kitchen staff does nothing but assemble that dish.)

The larger appeal is the intimate community that can be found inside the restaurant, a place where fame is such a common attribute that those used to being gawked at can relax a bit. As guests walk in, they are greeted warmly by Millington and Sherman, who call out their table number to a half-dozen waiters standing at attention, waiting to escort customers to their seats.

“Everyone knows your name,” said Court TV Chairman Henry Schleiff, who can be found there once or twice a week. “In a sense, it really combines work and play. It’s recess for grown-ups in the entertainment and communications industry.”

Laurel Touby, co-founder of mediabistro.com, which operates fishbowlny.com, started writing her “Lunch at Michael’s” column last summer after writer Kurt Andersen told her he would read the blog every day if it reported on who was at the restaurant. She is still amazed at the response.

“I get e-mails in advance from publicists: ‘So-and-so is going to be there today,’ ” said Touby, who usually checks out the scene from a spot at the bar. “It’s crazy. Big shots -- people you never would expect would care about their images -- have time in their day to e-mail me and say, ‘I didn’t have a Cobb salad, actually,’ or ‘Here’s who I was having lunch with.’ ”

Joe Armstrong, a veteran magazine publisher and media consultant, said Michael’s is so popular because it manages to be clubby without being pretentious. “This is the only club I’ve ever wanted to be in,” he said. “It’s such a comfortable place that if I’m having lunch with someone famous, I know they’ll be left alone.”

Of course, that doesn’t guarantee there won’t be run-ins between the power players themselves. Armstrong was dubbed the “Mayor of Michael’s” by the staff after he hosted a much-written-about lunch there in 2002 with comedian Robin Williams and former President Clinton. Onetime Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, who in his White House memoirs had written candidly about his former boss, happened to be dining there the same day. Heads swiveled as he walked across the room to shake hands with Clinton.

Indeed, with so many regulars, there are times when the restaurant can feel a little too intimate.

“Michael’s is not the place you want to go if you’re trying to do something secretly,” said ABC News’ Cynthia McFadden, who said she once had the “bad sense” to bring a source to lunch at the restaurant.

“Some friends from ’60 Minutes’ came up, and I said, ‘Don’t even try -- I’m not going to introduce you,’ ” she recalled. “I never did that again.”