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Elaine Kaufman was an amazing personality; what I remember most is her great, hearty laugh.

From 1976 to 1986, her restaurant on Second Avenue was my private club, drinking parlor, psychiatrist’s couch and pick-up joint. It was the deal of the century, and Elaine was queen of her realm.

For 47 years she ran the premier meeting place for the country’s top thinkers, powerbrokers and famous faces. I’ve seen Henry Kissinger there, and sat with Jimmy Carter; joked with George Steinbrenner and parried with Cybill Shepherd. It wasn’t an easy job, and Elaine did it by being kind, as well as tough.

Not everyone knew exactly how tough she could be.

One night in the early 1980s, I went there after midnight after a party and Elaine told me a harrowing story about how she had just been robbed.

A guy had come in and asked to see her privately. He appeared to be a respectable person, so she took him to a back room where he pulled a gun and pointed it at her under the table, and demanded all of her rings.

She says to this guy: “No. You are not going to have my rings. Go ahead, pull the trigger. But before you can get out of here, my staff will tear you apart.”

The guy didn’t know what to do. It was a standoff. Just staring. So he got up and just walked out — without the rings.

He’s lucky he did. Her staff would probably have done a lot worse than tear him apart.

The restaurant business is a tough business, made even tougher by the fact that she had so many big celebrities — George Plimpton, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Barbra Streisand, — and they sometimes attracted celebrity gawkers.

Some would just come up to a table and start talking to a guy like Woody Allen. Elaine was very protective of her friends’ privacy and she’d march right up and barge them out.

Her customers — her “regulars” — famous or not, were more than just patrons, they were her friends. And she could be very generous to her friends.

If you were a writer and you ever found yourself short of cash, you could have a tab.

I once ran up a tab of about $5,000-$6,000. I had it there for about a year and she didn’t say anything about it. Finally, I got a new book contract and paid it off.

Elaine knew I was good for it. I don’t know that anybody ever stiffed her.

Something important left New York when Elaine died, and might not come this way again.

The restaurant will still be there, run by the staff, and I hope people will treat it the same, because there was a spirit Elaine brought to New York that will never die; that big, brawling promise to the mighty, and the fallen, and the up-and-coming, and the down-on-her-luck actress as well.

If the song was ever right in the first place, it was right in her joint — “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” Goodnight, Elaine. Goodnight.

Winston Groom is the author of the novel “Forrest Gump” and a longtime friend of Elaine Kaufman