The Russian Tea Room, a New York institution known as a second home for lunching showbiz celebrities and their agents, is set to reopen some 80 years after it first started serving caviar and blinis.

The glitzy rooms in Midtown Manhattan closed due to financial difficulties in 2002, but is to throw open its doors again on Friday, its new managers said.

"It's an absolutely beautiful place with great history. It's a landmark, it's a great location and I think it's something New York needs back," Gerald Lieblich, whose RTR Funding Group paid $19-million for the restaurant in 2004, told the New York Post.

The restaurant underwent an extravagant makeover in 1999, featuring a 4.5-metre juggling bear, aquarium and a golden tree decorated with Venetian glass eggs but fell foul of a faltering New York economy in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001.

The latest changes see the trademark red leather booths replaced and new stained glass windows brought in but otherwise most of the original decor that survived the over-the-top 1999 renovation remains.

Founded in 1926 by former members of the Russian Imperial Ballet as a refuge for Russian emigres, the restaurant changed hands in the mid 1940s and again in 1995 and has long been known as home to theatrical, literary and movie agents.

Dustin Hoffman lunched at the restaurant in drag when trying out his character for the 1982 film Tootsie, apparently fooling his own agent who didn't recognise the Hollywood star.

Woody Allen used the room for a scene in his 1979 black and white romantic comedy "Manhattan" while pop diva Madonna worked in the cloak room for a while shortly after moving to New York in the late 1970s.

AFP