Her cafés, which encompassed the functions of bistro and salon for the bohemian intelligentsia,[1] were popular restaurants which attracted the core of the Greenwich Village cultural scene,[2] "hot spots for creative types,"[3] which she considered centers for her "circle of thinking people,"[4]: [p.39]  the circle which she had sought since 1901 when she arrived in the United States from Romanian Moldavia at the age of sixteen.

[8] Many regulars such as inventor Buckminster Fuller[9] and sculptors Isamu Noguchi[10] and David Smith[11] compared them to the cafés of Paris.

Romany Marie herself, who has been described as attractive and unusual, lively and generous, and a Village legend,[2] was a dynamic character[1] who provided free meals to those who needed them[2][12][13][14] and was well known and beloved.

For example, in June 1921, when there were public protests after the Washington Square Association brought charges against "the tea rooms and dancing places of the village" for immorality, The Times credited a local pastor's letter of approval to 'Dear Romany Marie' as the turning point in the crisis.

[24] He had been in Paris on a Guggenheim Fellowship and had been working for several months with Constantin Brâncuși,[3][7] who recommended that he visit Romany Marie's when he returned to the United States.

By informal arrangement[7] he delivered lectures in a style he called "thinking out loud" several times per week, which "were well received by a fascinated clientele.

[2]: [pp.251–252] Paleontologist Walter Granger, another Explorers Club member, was said to have been equally at home in the "elite chambers" of the American Museum of Natural History as when camped in a field hunting for fossils or hanging out with the bohemians at Romany Marie's.

[14] David Smith hung out at Romany Marie's and other establishments with Gorky, Joseph Stella, John D. Graham, Willem de Kooning, Stuart Davis and others who briefly formed an abstract expressionist group[11] which preceded what became known as "The Club.

[1]: [p.46] The eleven locations over the years—"The caravan has moved" [4]: [p.68]  was the sign on the door each time with the new address—also included: Romany Marie Marchand was of Jewish descent, born in Nichitoaia, Romania in 1885.

[39] Author Ben Reitman included Romany Marie among the characters in his fictional autobiography Sister of the Road (1937),[40] which Martin Scorsese adapted for the 1972 film Boxcar Bertha.

In the mysteries Free Love and Murder Me Now (2001), which are set in the Village in the early 1920s during Prohibition, author Annette Meyers included both Romany Marie and her husband A. D. Marchand, called Damon, among the characters.