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Who

Millington is the general manager of Michael's, the Midtown power lunch spot popular with the media elite. He runs the restaurant while its namesake, Michael McCarty, lives in Malibu.

Backstory

Raised in Bangkok, Millington once had dreams of becoming a musician. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston and started in the restaurant industry to support himself while he pursued a music career, working as a manager at Bella Luna on the Upper West Side in the 1990s. Following a stint at Steve Hanson's B.R. Guest restaurant empire—he managed the now-closed Park Avalon just off Union Square—he landed the job at Michael's after responding to a help wanted ad in the New York Times.

Of note

Michael's—along with Julian Niccollini and Alex von Bidder's Four Seasons and, to a slightly lesser extent, John McDonald's Lever House—boasts a exceedingly powerful lunch crowd. On any given day, you might find super-publicists (Howard Rubenstein, Peggy Siegal), media moguls (Barry Diller, Les Moonves), power lawyers (Allen Grubman, Ira Millstein), publishing honchos (Alice Mayhew, Binky Urban), gossips (Liz Smith, David Patrick Columbia), or aging TV personalities (Lesley Stahl, Charlie Rose) nibbling on a $34 Cobb salad. Millington supplies the ass-kissing such egos require and handles the delicate choreography involved in seating enemies out of sight from one another. But even the ever-diplomatic Millington occasionally offends one of his longtime regulars. When Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff was denied his customary table (No. 5) in 2005, he vowed never to return, and has so far lived up to his promise.

Personal

Millington is married to Meredith Nieves Millington, an artist. They live on West 103rd Street.

True story

Given his access to the biggest names in publishing, Millington didn't have to look very far when he and his wife came up with an idea for a book. (It was based on their African gray parrot who escaped to Riverside Park.) Millington showed a synopsis to Esther Newberg, Alice Mayhew, and David Hirschey; they suggested he turn it into a children's story.