Friends of Manhattan restaurant legend Elaine Kaufman are fuming over a British GQ profile which calls her “grotesque.”

The March issue story, “Hell’s Kitchen” by Michael Wolff, likened Elaine, who died in December at 81, to “a low-class madam or public-house wench vastly past her prime.” It went on: “This loud, stupid, uncomprehending woman . . . Her baying voice was a particular slow chalk on a blackboard . . . This is a joke. Nobody enjoys this. It’s at her expense. She’s a grotesque. She’s the freak show . . . A Toscanini of crassness.” The food at her Upper East Side eatery was “inedible” and the dining room “an annex of Page Six,” Wolff rages.

Public relations legend Bobby Zarem told us, “This is pathetic . . . the writing of a bitter, uninformed person. The story is not accurate, it is just dumb. I don’t remember seeing Michael at Elaine’s. He waited until she was dead to say these things, and he did it for money. That makes his story all the more empty as far as I’m concerned. He couldn’t even publish it in the US.

“It is written by an outsider who does not know what’s going on. It is written by someone who has never been part of the New York scene. It was in a British publication because [Wolff] knows that anybody in New York would realize it is bull[bleep].”

“Scarface” producer Marty Bregman, a regular at her place, said the story “misses the essence of who Elaine really was. A lot of people loved her. She was caustic, she was sometimes angry, but she also did a lot of good for people. If this is not in bad taste, then I don’t know what is . . . It’s a cheap shot for no reason.”

Wolff, whose current job is editorial director of trade publication Adweek, told us he never hid his opinion of Elaine: “You have to read my work. Not cheat sheets . . . Elaine and I spent many hours discussing the shortcomings of her personality and kitchen.”

When asked to elaborate, he responded: “Are you asking that with a straight face? FYI, I’ve tweeted this exchange.”

He charmingly added: “I’m quite sure Elaine does not mind bad press in her current situation.”