So, I'm sitting up on a stool in a diner in one of New York's hottest enclaves, the Meatpacking District, waiting for my omelette and fries, and this bear of a guy plonks himself down next to me.
A subtle glance in the mirror behind the counter reveals it is James Gandolfini, the larger-than-life New Yorker who plays Tony Soprano in the hit television series.
'Are you a rider?' he drawls. That's writer in English - he's spotted the notebook. 'I'm Jim,' he continues, extending a giant paw to shake. Nobody in the bustling cafe has batted an eyelid.
This is the part of New York where grit meets glamour, boutique sits cheek by jowl with butchery warehouse - and stars rub shoulders with plebs. Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen's fashion stores are just around the corner, right opposite a stinky meatpacking warehouse with dried bull's blood on the pavement from last night's delivery. And a used condom.
Gandolfini surveys the cobbled sidestreet, the graffiti and the trendy clientele in the French diner/brasserie Florent. 'This district will be all fancied up within 10 years,' he says wistfully.
He recently moved from the area southwards, to TriBeCa - or triangle below Canal Street - a roughish corner of Manhattan that has been jazzed up by Robert De Niro and other New York film types.
Meanwhile the diner's owner, Morellet Florent, shuffles up for a discreet schmooze with Gandolfini then melts away again. Florent is not as obvious a gentrification as Brit Keith McNally's large corner brasserie, Pastis, which stands ostentatiously on the next block oozing chic. SJP - Sarah Jessica Parker, darling - is a regular.
And Florent is not as talked about as Soho House, the New York branch of the London private members club that is officially opening in the Meatpacking District tomorrow for media and film types but with the added attractions of a hotel, spa and pool.
Gandolfini says: 'My family still lives round here. But the meat guys will get pushed out eventually and it will be all this fashion stuff, and clubs like that new Soho one.' He reveals he is actually a member of Soho House NY, but has not been there yet and asks what the rooms are like.
As I'd had a preview stay the night before I was able to tell him that they are the exception to the rule of expensive, international hotels in that they are not just plush but actually, genuinely interesting and quirky, too. Details such as Marie-Antoinette-style beds with giant carved headboards in faded gold leaf - and five feet from the foot of the bed but nowhere near the bathroom, a huge, freestanding Boffie bath ($7,000 apiece) plumbed into the middle of the bare wood floor.
Rough brick walls and rafters, smooth plasma television screen and DVD player. Grit meets glamour, again. The bloke from The Ivy is running the restaurant. So as long as you can cope with the mwah-mwah air-kissing treatment, you should be fine.
Gandolfini, the antithesis of mwah-mwah on screen and in real life, blinks, sucks his lip, smiles a very small smile and slopes out of Florent into the sunshine.
Unlike Stella, Alexander or Soho House's Nick Jones, Florent has been here since 1985. Those were the days when there was nothing swanky in this tiny, utterly fascinating slice of the Big Apple that is just about a quarter of a mile square, squashed between the West Village and Chelsea and not even marked on most tourist maps. Back then it was all meat and flesh - warehouses of carcasses on every block and transvestite prostitutes on every corner servicing married men from New Jersey and the odd butcher. Now the few and far between lady-men of the night stick to back alleys and most of the meat warehouses have been pushed out to the Bronx. Not all by any means, though. Which allows the Meatpacking District name to be more than just a heritage label.
Round about midnight last week on West 14th St - about as far west as you can go without falling into the Hudson River - there are two distinct sounds in the air. One is the pumping bass of nightclub music, seeping out from the unmarked Filter 14 and the nearby super-hot Lotus, where a record company is having a bash and the hoi polloi are held back by a velvet rope and a clipboard matron. The other is the throb of the idling refrigeration units in the vast lorries parked waiting to deliver to the warehouses. The juxtaposition and the scene are reminiscent of the club Fabric and the meat market at Smithfield in the heart of London - except New York's version feels more exhilarating somehow.
Jaime Hernandez, a big fortysomething guy with a grubby baseball cap, dungarees and greying beard jumps down from the cab of his lorry. He has driven down from Missouri with a truckload of bacon, which will be sold to restaurants across the city from the warehouse the following morning. He jerks his thumb at Stella McCartney's neon-lit showcase boutique opposite and then to M&W Meats behind him.
'I don't mind the mix. See this block of warehouses? They are what we call grandfather holdings coz the guys own the whole building - that means they are never going to leave because they can't push the rents up.' He sounds just as confident as Gandolfini did about the opposite conclusion.
What the bosses at Soho House hope is that they won't squeeze out the very character they sought in this part of town. The irony is that it is still called Soho House even though it is not in New York City's SoHo, the area so called because it is south of Houston Street. But the double irony is that it would not want to be. SoHo is still a fun place to hang out and shop, but New Yorkers now scoff at how SoHo has become 'Banana Republicised'.
Sitting in the bar of Soho House last week, owner Nick Jones said it didn't matter that the club wasn't in SoHo: 'We did look in SoHo. But this turned out to be the perfect space. And we want to have loads of Soho Houses, in Paris and maybe Los Angeles.'
With Nick, Stella and the gang and, just another block or two away, the British-owned Tea & Sympathy cafe and Myers of Keswick, is this too much of a home-from-home to attract British visitors? Some have already dubbed the Meatpacking District Little Britain.
But Jones says only 15 per cent of his members are Brits. One of them is Hugh Grant, who said he would not join unless there was a gym. So there is a gym. It's also only the second hotel in Manhattan to have a rooftop swimming pool, where there will be summer barbecues and a poolside bar overlooking the river.
Florent also protests at the Little Britain tag and, after rattling off the names of six French businesses, says it should be called Petit Europe. The Meatpacking District feels unmistakably like New York, though, and those warehouses keep it real. But for how much longer?
Film-maker Roberto Monticello has a studio here and, on hearing Gandolfini holding forth in the diner, strikes up conversation too. 'I was at the Berlin Film Festival and all everyone talked about was the Meatpacking District and moving over here,' he says.
The writing is on the wall. And it isn't graffiti.
Beef, beefcake and boutiques
The Meatpacking District is a tiny area of Manhattan bordered by Gansevoort St to the south, 14th St to the north, Ninth Avenue to the east and the Hudson River to the west.
Sights and smells: The working warehouses come alive in the middle of the night when meat is delivered. Quiet in the day but still pretty whiffy and, um, atmospheric. Catch a few carcasses as you emerge from...
Lotus: The nightclub at W14th St, is so hot it is smokin'. If you are very lucky they will let you part with $20 to get in and be deafened by the music and blinded by glamourama. Hey, maybe you'll get to dance with Naomi Campbell. If it's the weekend and you did, or more likely did not get in, go for a feed afterwards at the 24-hour neighbourhood eaterie...
Florent: French-owned diner-cum-brasserie, 68 Gansevoort St, where a fluffy omelette with mozzarella, fresh basil, tomatoes, fries and toast will set you back just $7.95. And you might get to sing with the Sopranos. Or run up a bigger bill and more kudos at...
Pastis: British-owned brasserie at 9 Ninth Avenue. Ask the guys at Soho House to get you a reservation or the glitterati might squeeze you out. What DOES Sarah Jessica Parker order before shooting...
Sex And The City: Has, of course, filmed episodes here. Looking for the real thing? Gays go to Hell, 59 Gansevoort St, while straights dance on the bar to country music at Hogs and Heifers, Washington St, even at three in the afternoon. There are hundreds of bras hanging up behind the bar from those who have just let it all hang out. So if you suddenly, inexplicably lose all your clothes but not your gold Amex card, trot up to...
The boutiques: Stella McCartney or Alexander McQueen on W14th, both shops doing very pale and cosmic at the mo, luvvie. Coupla doors west is Jeffrey, with pink or orange stiletto boots. Then collapse for a drink in...
The lounge bars: Gas Light, 400 W 14th St @ Ninth - slightly goth, very sultry, wine bar Rhone, 63 Gansevoort St, or the atmospheric APT lounge, W 13th St.
Factfile
Soho House (00 1 212 627 9800) is a hotel and members-only club at the junction of Ninth Avenue and 13th St), New York. Non-members can stay in the hotel, which gives them access to all other club facilities during their stay: drawing room, two bars, restaurant, cinema, roof-deck with pool, barbecue and bar service, creche, butler service, concierge.
Membership: $900 (£560) a year plus £125 registration. Overseas members: £375 plus £125.
Current room rates: June to August, non-members from £125 a night for smallest 'Playpen' room to £470 a night for largest 'Playground' room; members £110-£375.
