The Four Seasons Grill Room is so ingrained in the upper echelons of dealmaking in New York, people forget that 20 years ago it was mainly a lunch spot for bookworms and the rag trade.

Then two things happened: A lot the publishing and fashion houses moved downtown. And “the twinses” — as Four Seasons managing partner Julian Niccolini refers to Sandy Weill and Jamie Dimon, and Pete Peterson and Steve Schwarzman — almost simultaneously moved into offices across the street and started using the soaring, glass-enclosed, Philip Johnson– designed restaurant as their own private cafeteria/deal shop.

With Weill and Dimon busily buying up the future divisions of Citigroup from table 33, and Peterson and Schwarzman discreetly filling the Blackstone trophy case from 36, it wasn’t long before others wanted in on the room’s obvious karma. Teddy Forstmann. Henry Kravis. Ron Perelman. “Mad Dog” Beck and the rest of the East Coast branch of Michael Milken’s Drexel Burnham crowd. (“God help us,” Niccolini says, recalling the money Drexel used to drop at his restaurant.)

Add it all up, and some staggeringly high percentage of the major deals done in the U.S. over the past two decades have likely been consummated within a few yards of one another in this very room.

“You never know it’s happening until you read about it in the paper later, and then you’re like, ‘Oh, right, they were in last Tuesday,’ ” Niccolini says. “Sometimes they’ll call afterward to complain: ‘Why did you sit me at a table next to so-and-so? Didn’t you know we were trying to buy the same company?’ How am I supposed to know? I’m not a banker. We just try to provide people good food and a nice place to do business.”

There are days when it seems every table is home to a financial, entertainment or political luminary. (Is that really Mick Jagger? . . . Look, if it isn’t Henry Kissinger with Barbara Walters. . . . Is that Georgette Mosbacher or Arianna Huffington?)

But while Dimon has moved on, Weill and the other twinses still come in nearly every afternoon. “Sandy Weill usually gets the grilled catch of the day,” Niccolini says. “And Pete Peterson gets the chicken paillard, maybe a little spaghetti with tomato sauce and always the baked potato.” After all, you never want to mess with a good thing.

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