The recession is forcing some upscale Manhattan restaurants to shut their doors

Quick, order your last soufflé, many of Manhattan's stuffiest restaurants are closing.

The latest stodgy dining destination to be shuttered by the recession is Café des Artistes, the upper West Side mainstay that has served Presidents and movie stars, and even had a cameo in a Woody Allen movie.

"It's very sad. It's a landmark," said Roslyn Black of the upper West Side as she somberly peeked through the W. 67th St. restaurant's windows yesterday. "I came here every New Year's. I don't know where I'm going to go this year now."

The closing of the 92-year-old restaurant comes just days after the upper East Side brasserie La Goulue went out of business after 36 years.

The recession has forced so many New York restaurants into bankruptcy and closure that New York food blog Eater.com started a feature called "The Shutter" to document the massacre.

On Thursday the Greenwich Village restaurant Elettaria closed.

Some 512 restaurants closed this past year, according to market research company NPD Group's recently released restaurant census ReCount.

Among the casualties are the upper East Side's Payard and Frederick's Madison, as well as midtown's Lever House and Brasserie LCB.

La Goulue - the posh uptown eatery - closed after 36 years on Wednesday.

Construction is to blame, but still, the owners conceded recently that renting a new space has been difficult in a ritzy neighborhood that might not be ready to admit defeat.

"The great fine-dining fuddy-duddy restaurants were already on the wane before the recession hit," says Josh Ozersky, editor of Citysearch's food blog, "The Feedbag."

"Overwrought and overstaffed, they were lingering in their own twilight. Now the meteor has hit, and these places have all gone under."

Restaurant consultant Clark Wolf said many of the high society casualties were places known less for their cuisine than as places to see and be seen.

"You don't pay the big money for the food but for membership," he said, "to be somewhere where others aren't."

In addition to those boarding up their doors for good are a number of now-struggling fancy eateries that have filed for bankruptcy protection.

"Who's to say how many restaurants have been trying to slog through the downturn and will soon have to give up the ghost?" said Daniel Maurer, editor of New York magazine's "Grub Street" blog.

Ozersky calls the upper East Side "ground zero" for closures.

"It abounds with exactly the kind of restaurants that can't survive an economic downturn: staid, dull, overpriced salad mills catering exclusively to plutocrats who don't care what they pay or what they eat."

The city's food experts agree that diners are seeking a fresher and cheaper scene.

""People don't want to spend a lot of money in those types of restaurants, and maybe they'll spend in more modern restaurants," says Kate Krader, restaurant editor of Food & Wine magazine.

Or, as Ozersky puts it: "The old white tablecloth dinosaurs have been supplanted by friskier mammals."