An Italian-restaurant owner – who’s in the soup for displaying a picture of him with Chelsea Clinton outside his Village eatery – said yesterday that he won’t remove the photo.
“The picture stays – unless I hear from Chelsea directly,” said Osso Buco owner Nino Selimaj.
Selimaj received a letter from former President Bill Clinton’s lawyer, Douglas J. Band, this week, asking the restaurateur to remove the photo from an outside menu case because Chelsea, “a private citizen,” never gave permission to have it displayed there.
“While she may have dined at your restaurant, this does not serve as an endorsement,” the letter added.
The letter was stamped on top with a gold presidential seal and the letterhead Office of William Jefferson Clinton.
Selimaj, who owns six restaurants in the city, said he was surprised to receive the letter. The photo, a simple shot of him and the first daughter, was displayed in the same place for the past four or five years, and it was taken, without protest, after Chelsea had a meal with a group of friends there, he said.
“I still don’t know the reason [for the letter],” said Selimaj, 50. “Just because she’s the president’s daughter? She’s been to the restaurant, enjoyed the food, came back.”
Selimaj said if he takes the photo down, it would set a bad precedent for all the pictures he has taken with bold-face names.
“We have Derek Jeter, we have Regis Philbin, we have Rudolph Giuliani, Danny Glover, Mariah Carey [and] ‘Sopranos’ [castmates],” said Selimaj.
The legal letter has now joined the photo in the display case.
“If it was any other president, honestly, I would go to court,” said Selimaj. “I happen to be Albanian, and he [Clinton] helped my people.”
Band did not respond to repeated requests for comment yesterday.
Selimaj’s lawyer, Thomas M. Curtis, said restaurant owners throughout the city take pictures with their clientele and post them around their eateries all the time