Omar Khayyam, Smile’s Indian restaurant, opened in late 1901 at 325 Fifth Avenue. This was prime real estate, a block away from the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel where, 29 years later, the Empire State Building would rise. Smile adorned the restaurant with Indian draperies and hanging lanterns.
As the New York Herald reported, a fleet of Indian waiters in “voluminous turbans” staffed the premises, as did a group of Indian musicians. Now quite the embodiment of the American immigrant success story, Smile eagerly awaited his customers and fans.
Alas, they never materialised. Within a year, Omar Khayyam shuttered. The New York Sun claimed that people had “tired” of Indian fare, dismissing it as a passing fad.
Smile’s stardom, which had blazed so brightly in the Big Apple, also began to dim. Unfortunately, his showmanship and flare for theatrics shaded into deceit and criminal activity.
Smile began claiming that he was, after all, not an everyday Joe but rather a prince, the son of the emir of Baluchistan, a fictional title. And, before opening Omar Khayyam, he made a quick visit to Bombay, where he pronounced himself to be a guest at the upcoming coronation of King Edward VII in London and recruited a retinue of staff: valets, a dancing girl, and “mahouts to drive his herds of elephants”.
All of this was reported in New York newspapers like the Times because, as a subsequent federal case against him alleged, Smile illegally trafficked this staff into the US to work at his restaurant. Instead of becoming a pioneer outpost of Indian gastronomy, Omar Khayyam nearly got Smile deported.
