Kate Moss and Johnny Depp, back in the day [Getty Images]

Café Tabac, which opened in 1992, first caught on with mannequins like Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell, who discovered the East Village brownstone. Where top models go, men follow: soon rock stars and moguls were on the trail and the bi-level space with an upstairs pool table was serving a French influenced American menu to everyone from Madonna and Bono to Ed Koch. Mario Batali, who was the restaurant’s second chef, didn’t stay too long because diners barely noticed the food as they sat close by Dolly Parton eating with Calvin Klein, Barbra Streisand and Farrah Fawcett flirting with their dates, Mick Jagger deep in conversation with daughter Karas as Michael Jordan walked over and high-fived him. Models would strut through the room and musicians would bring their tapes fresh from the studio to test out on the crowd: sometimes the tunes, a mix of rock and hip hop, got a little loud. If a customer complained, owner Roy Liebenthal would smirk and ask “What did you say?’’

He rarely played by the rules, but the mix was magic almost every night, and he didn’t mind a little bit of mayhem. When Madonna craved sushi, he let her order it in. When his manager, Tim Moore, and two waiters tried on Streisand’s fur coat, posed and took pictures of each other doing their best impersonations, while she dined unsuspecting, he laughed along with them. Moore charmed people as they waited patiently for a seat in the packed dining room, and quickly got to know everyone in New York.

“It was more about music and fashion than food: I did everything wrong, but it worked,’’ recalls Liebenthal. It certainly did. Where else could you walk in and see Keith Richards shooting pool or Bono singing acapella with Paul Simon when the speakers blew?

There were nights when Tabac set the stage for private events. Bridget Hall celebrated her deal with Ralph Lauren (the designer’s crew was not thrilled that she showed up wearing head to toe Calvin Klein); Jon Bonjovi helped throw a birthday party there for photographer Herb Ritts, and Madonna teamed with PR guru Kelly Cutrone to toss a birthday bash for Truth or Dare director Alec Kesheshian.

“Café Tabac had the feeling of a community; you could go by yourself and know you would run into friends,’’ says Jason Weinberg, who was Cutrone’s partner at the time, and is now president of Untitled, the agency that manages Naomi Watts and Penelope Cruz, among others. “If you showed up at 10, it was still going strong. People who normally had their guards up, let them down. It felt like a safe haven and everyone table-hopped. You could be sitting with someone like David Lee Roth and the table would just grow as people joined the conversation and pulled up chairs.’’

While regulars ran into old friends, new relationships were also formed at Tabac. Peter Brant, who dined there regularly with Robert De Niro and Tony Shafrazi, met wife Stephanie Seymour, and the romance between Johnny Depp and Kate Moss was first sparked at the bar one evening. Of course, there were those moments you would run into people you didn’t necessarily want to see. “Everyone stopped into Tabac, including my ex husband,’’ says Cutrone. “It was the first time I got to exercise my restraining order against him by calling the police and having him escorted out.”

Café Tabac lasted seven years, finally shuttering in 1998, but Liebenthal says people still approach him to say it was their favorite restaurant of all time, and two women just contacted him because they are making a film about it.

“Tabac was about the crowd,’’ says Liebenthal. “It was a moment in time with so many memories: unfortunately I smoked a lot of pot then, so many of them are lost.’’

Lady Gaga is cruisin' for a bruisin'

Ms. Gaga tweeted out her bruised face this afternoon, but was it just us, or did the photo seem less of a signal of defeat and more of a "Come at me, girl!"

Madonna: the woman, the nipple

So maybe even calling this a nip "slip" is too generous a term. It was a nip "on purpose"? A "slippery nipple"? And was it gross, or totally normal? Gawker is about to have a riot in its comment sections over the matter, what with overturned cars being set on fire (metaphorically) in a flame ware regarding the eligibility of women over the age of 50 to show their bare breasts.

We aren't here to judge on whether this was an act of pathetic attention-grabbing or mere human nature (for Madonna at least), but we'd like to hear from you guys: How do you feel about Madonna slipping some nip?