On a chilly December evening, Estee Adoram sits looking over her scheduling book in the Olive Tree cafe above the Comedy Cellar on Macdougal Street in New York. She’s wearing a loose-fitting, leopard-print blouse and black-rimmed reading glasses, her dark hair perfectly coiffed. She’s warm but discerning. Maternal. You feel a need to impress her; so many famous comedians have and still do. When she smiles at you, it’s because it was earned.

Adoram is the gatekeeper of both the Cellar and its sister club, the Village Underground, around the corner. Her book is filled with handwritten names of available comics—and the occasional cancellation. She still books entirely by hand.

“I’ve been doing this for 32 years. It’s a muscle by now,” she says between sips of coffee. She started working at the Cellar as a hostess in the early 80s. She never intended to become the booker for one of the most respected comedy rooms in the world.

“I have a very deep love for comics,” she says, her Israeli accent mixed with that of New York. “The art of comedy is probably the hardest art form out of all of them. They don’t sing somebody else’s songs. They don’t act from a script. They have to be fast on their feet and, I think above everything, to have intelligence. There’s a devotion that they have. And I respect that.”’

The respect is mutual. Despite having just about every comedian worth knowing on speed dial—on Ray Romano’s 50th birthday, Adoram was flown out to surprise him at the party—she treats her job like a family business, rather than show business. Her personal touch is what keeps the comedians she nurtures coming back 5, 10, 20 years after they’ve made it big.

Founded in the early 80s by Bill Grundfest and the late Manny Dworman and eventually taken over by Dworman’s son, Noam, the Comedy Cellar emerged when New York’s comedy boom had begun but not yet reached downtown. It took years of up-and-coming comics like Ray Romano, Chris Rock, Louis CK, and Jon Stewart growing their material there, getting big, and coming home—as Stewart did to do stand-up for the first time since leaving The Daily Show last summer—to give the Cellar the cachet it has today. (Being immortalized in the opening credits of Louie is just a tiny part of its modern legacy)

© Alamy.

Now, there aren’t enough slots to fill. As with all commercial successes, there comes change, and threats to the club’s authenticity. “I worry about the fact that 10 years from now, the people who are famous or established will not have started out here because there is no room for starting out here,” Noam Dworman told us. He’s sitting at a nearby table, looking up occasionally at the people who enter through the red velvet curtain that shields the Olive Tree patrons from the cold outside.

The Cellar is connected to the Olive Tree by a narrow back staircase that has become iconic in its own right. Bright-green paint and decades of comedian headshots line the walls. You can sneak a peek when on your way to the only bathroom in the place, which forces you to walk in front of the comic onstage—good luck not interrupting the show.

As we talk to Estee upstairs, Cellar regulars Keith Robinson, Michelle Wolf, and Todd Barry are seen taking seats at the infamous comedian’s table in the far right corner of the Olive Tree—the one that inspired Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn and serves as the family table for comedians of all levels. In the span of a couple of hours, some get up to do their sets and leave. Others arrive and take their seats for dinner, some stopping to say hello to Estee and give her a kiss on the cheek.