France Makes a Comeback

 

In today’s Times, Florence Fabricant reports that traditional French restaurants are making a comeback (“There’ll Always Be a France, Especially in New York”).

Evidence:

• Daniel Boulud has just opened Bar Boulud, with a classic French bistro and charcuterie menu.
• Later this month, Alain Ducasse will open Benoit in the former La Côte Basque space. Ducasse already opened another French restaurant this year, Adour, in the former Lespinasse space.
• Next Monday, Brasserie Cognac opens in West Midtown. Rita Jammet, who owned La Caravelle, is on hand as a consultant.
• Keith McNally, who owns perhaps the most successful casual French restaurant in New York, Balthazar, is converting Minetta Tavern (in Greenwich Village) into a French bistro.
• Later this year, David Bouley will convert his three-star Austrian Danube into a French brasserie, Secession. Bouley is also moving his eponymous flagship French-inspired restaurant to a new space about a block away from its current location.

What’s notable is not merely that these restaurants have a nod to the French tradition, but that many of them are overtly traditional, serving the old standards (lobster thermidor, cassoulet, duck à l’orange) that were considered dinosaurs a short while ago.

Bouley told Fabricant, “I see traditional food coming back. It’s also newly popular in France, and it’s great to see. I have an emotional connection to that food, to my grandmother’s cooking: some of my family comes from Arras and Tours. And I love the tradition — braising rabbits and boning fish tableside, but in a relaxed atmosphere.”

These new restaurants lack the “jacket-and-tie mandatory” atmosphere of their “Le” and “La” predecessors, but in many other ways they’re throwbacks.

I, for one, am delighted. It’s not that these restaurants are uniformly excellent. I love some of them (Le Périgord, Le Veau d’Or) and have been underwhelmed at others (La Grenouille, Adour). It’s just fascinating to see that restauranteurs are giving New Yorkers something different by giving them something traditional.

Frank Bruni, who usually finds French food so dull, is going to have to brush up on Escoffier.

Bar Boulud

The restaurant scene around Lincoln Center—rather, the lack of it—is inexplicable. Its theaters and auditoriums, with about 10,000 seats between them, are in use almost every night of the year. The programs they put on appeal to the city’s most affluent and sophisticated people. Many of them need to eat dinner.

Yet, the vast majority of the restaurants on the surrounding blocks are dull, if not awful. If you broaden your search to Columbus Circle and the Upper West Side, there are certainly plenty of pre-show dining options. But I can’t conceive of a reason why the restaurants in the immediate vicinity should be so depressing. Until recently, Picholine and Shun Lee West were the only ones I could seriously recommend.

Enter Bar Boulud, the most recent creation of über-chef Daniel Boulud. As he did at his previous three New York restaurants, he seems to have grasped exactly what the neighborhood needed. Both the food and ambiance are casual, and equally suited to a quick pre-show meal or a snack afterwards.

But Bar Boulud has become a destination in itself, which in this neighborhood is almost unheard of. Reservations have been tough to get—it took me nearly three months. And unlike most restaurants catering to a pre-theater crowd, we saw no appreciable clearing-out after 8:00 p.m.

GougèresSylvain Gasdon’s chacuterie menu has garnered rave reviews, including two stars from Frank Bruni in the Times. But hardly anyone has raved about the standard appetizers and entrées. Bruni said “there’s little wow from the kitchen, which turns out treatments of salmon, sea bass and roasted chicken that, while not quite losers, are definitely snoozers.”

I loved the Pâté Grand-mère the last time I visited, so I persuaded my girlfriend to join me for an all-charcuterie dinner. It wasn’t a tough sell, as we both love to order pâtés and terrines wherever they’re served. And no restaurant offers anything like the variety on offer at Bar Boulud.

Dégustation de Charcuterie

The items on the charcuterie menu run anywhere from $5–18, or you can get a good sample with either of two dégustation plates ($22, $46). We ordered the larger of these, which appeared to have a bit of almost everything.

They only thing they don’t supply is the roadmap. There were sixteen pieces on the plate, and even the server wasn’t sure what they all were. His explanation went by awfully quickly, and we could barely hear him in the loud room. So we gave up trying to figure out exactly what we were eating, though I can tell you that the pâtés are on the right side of the photo, the more gelatinous terrines on the left.

Anyhow, it is all excellent. There were two different mustards and a basket of bread, but I was happy to enjoy the pâtés and terrines on their own.

 
Rillons Croustillants au Poivre (left); Cervelas Lyonnais en Brioche (right)

There are also a few hot dishes on the charcuterie menu. Rillons Croustillants au Poivre ($12), or pork belly with pepper, was predictably good, though I thought it should be a bit warmer.

Cervelas Lyonnais en Brioche ($14) is a Lyon sausage baked into a brioche (see photo, right). I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it’s a fun dish. The menu promised black truffle, but if it was in there, it was a trace amount that my taste buds couldn’t detect.

Besides charcuterie, the other theme at Bar Boulud is wine. Indeed, the long, narrow room is in the shape of a wine bottle. The first time I visited, I was surprised to find just four reds and four whites by the glass, a curious choice for a restaurant focused on wine. That has now been rectified: there are more like ten of each ($10–22).

Wines by the bottle are focused on Burgundy and the Rhone Valley, plus “cousin wines” made elsewhere from similar grapes. Each section of the list is divided into “Discoveries” (less expensive), “Classics” (more) and “Legends” (most). Among the “Discoveries” are numerous bottles below $50, and even one as low as $29. We were happy with a Rhone that the server recommended at just $40. It has been a very long time since I saw a decent bottle in a restaurant at that price.

We are fans of Bar Boulud, but there are some definite drawbacks. There is just a small waiting area at the front, where patrons scrum to announce themselves to the hostess, check and retrieve coats, wait to be seated, and order drinks. Several tables adjoin that area, including the one where we were seated. It has all the ambiance of a train station.

Tables are quite close together, and the staff seem to be over-taxed. I ordered a martini; it took fifteen minutes to arrive. I heard one patron say, “We’ve been waiting twenty minutes for our coats. Can we just go downstairs and look for them ourselves?” I wasn’t given a claim-check for mine, and I feared the worst, but miraculously the attendant quickly found it.

Boulud had his own china made for Bar Boulud, but they’re stingy about using it. We had to eat the charcuterie on our bread plates, and the server didn’t replace the knives we’d used to spread the butter. We couldn’t tell if this was a considered choice, or just one of the many service lapses the restaurant is quickly becoming famous for.

Despite the occasional miscue, Bar Boulud is probably the second-best Lincoln Center restaurant (after Picholine). For its charcuterie menu alone, it’s a worthy destination even if you don’t have a show to go see afterwards. My girlfriend remarked, “It’s a good thing this isn’t in our neighborhood, or I’d be eating here every day.”

Bar Boulud (1900 Broadway near 63rd Street, Upper West Side)

Food: **
Service: *
Ambiance: *
Overall: *½

Cercle Rouge

[Kalina via Eater]

Cercle Rouge has been through a tough first 2½ years. Once touted as “Tribeca’s Balthazar-to-be,” it seemed destined for an early demise after the State Liquor Authority threatened to revoke its license, because it was adjacent to a mosque. An Eater Deathwatch followed.

At around that time, the original chef, David Féau, departed, followed soon by his deputy, Michael Wurster. Since October 2006, Pierre Landet has been executive chef. Somehow, Cercle Rouge kept its license and survived. In mid-January, after 90 weeks on the Deathwatch, Eater’s official position is that Cercle Rouge is in “remission.”

It certainly didn’t become a “Tribeca Balthazar.” The initial excitement has long since died down. I walked in after work one day last week, shortly before 7:00 p.m., to find the restaurant practically empty. Business did pick up a bit during the hour I was there, but it was never busy.

Menu for Toulouse Cuisine Week

The menu now seems to be that of a standard French brasserie, though the chicken wings that critics raved about during the Féau era are still on offer. I suppose it’s a problem when chicken wings are the best dish at a French restaurant. They’re the only thing on the current menu that isn’t French.

Prices are in a wide range, with appetizers $7–18, entrées $17–38. Côte de Boeuf Béarnaise for two will set you back $68. Wines are reasonable; I was pleased to find a great half-bottle of Haut-Médoc for $38.

Last week, the restaurant was showcasing the cuisine of Toulouse, chef Pierre Landet’s native region (menu at left; click for a larger version). It was the promise of cassoulet that drew me there, though I was also eager to try those chicken wings once again.

 

The Chicken Wings ($8) are as fun as I remember with them. Somehow, the chicken is scrunched up at one end of the bone, making each one into a lollipop. They are lightly breaded and mildly spicy. The accompanying bleu cheese sauce seemed to have been made up hours before and stored in the fridge, and it wasn’t really suitable for dipping.

Cassoulet ($24) is the perfect antidote to a cold evening. White beans, carrots, braised duck, and sausage are cooked in a steaming hot crockpot. In this rendition, the vegetables were better than the meats, which were over-cooked and not as flavorful as they should be.

The space is comfortable and easy on the eyes. Service was attentive and enthusiastic.

Cercle Rouge (241 W. Broadway at N. Moore Street, TriBeCa)

Food: *
Service: **
Ambiance: **
Overall: *

Bruno Jamais

 
Left: The walk-thru wine cellar; Right: The dining room

Note: Bruni Jamais has closed.

*

Five years ago, Bruno Jamais opened his “exclusive” restaurant club on the Upper East Side. The Times reported that admission was open only to Mr. Jamais’ exclusive client list, honed over his years as maître d’hôtel at Daniel and Alain Ducasse. Membership in the club was $7,000 a pop.

The restaurant is on a quiet Upper East Side block in an elegant townhouse, just steps away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Starchitect Tony Chi’s interior, featuring a spectacular walk-through wine cellar, won Hospitality Design’s Best Restaurant Design award in 2004. The dining room now doubles as a one-man show for the French artist Cyrille Margarit. Even Donald Trump might find it too opulent.

Critics mostly ignored the restaurant, which was evidently as Mr. Jamais wanted it. The only pro review was in the New Yorker, which found the food mediocre. The critic was more intrigued by diners whose dates seemed to be paid by the hour.

The supper club idea didn’t last; these days, anyone can get in. Indeed, there’s a distinct sense of almost begging, with the menu reminding you—in capital letters, no less—that the space is available for “BIRTHDAY PARTIES, SPECIAL OCCASIONS, WEDDING RECEPTIONS & CORPORATE EVENTS.” Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays are singles’ nights, and there’s a half-price prix fixe on Sundays.

There’s a decent number of reviews on the web, though some of the writers may be shills. The food seems to have been uneven over the years—sometimes terrific, but not dependable. The revolving door in the kitchen cannot have helped: the restaurant opened in late 2002, and it’s already on its fourth chef.

With that background, this isn’t a restaurant I would have chosen without an invitation. Full disclosure: our food and drinks were on the house, though I paid for the wine myself. Having said that, we were extremely impressed. The cuisine at Bruno Jamais is serious and excellent.

John Keller, who previously worked at Le Bernardin and Nobu, has been executive chef since 2006. His deft menu, which changes daily, is mostly conservative, but Keller can be clever too. Ingredients like caviar and foie gras are deployed liberally, but not in the lazy ways of chefs who use luxury as a substitute for thought. This is cooking of a high order.

The wine list is impressive, with one of the city’s better selections of Bordeaux and Burgundies. It skews expensive, but there are bottles as low as $40 (not many, though). A 1993 Chateau Lynch-Moussac Pauillac seemed to me fairly priced at $140.

There are some good house cocktails, too, but I failed to note all the ingredients in the one I liked best—something called “Sexy Back,” which the bartender recommended. The house signature cocktail, the Bruno’s Martini Platinum, was decent but crazily over-priced at $38.

The early New Yorker review complained of stratospheric prices: in 2002, a $42 entrée was sufficient to provoke outrage. Today, it’s at the high end of mainstream. Appetizers are $12–25, main courses $22–42 (most in the low thirties), side dishes $7–10. While clearly not inexpensive, there are plenty of Manhattan restaurants at this price level, including many that aren’t nearly as good.

The menu is reasonably focused, too, with just ten appetizers and ten entrées. There are a few nods to Asia and a number of French classics, but the menu is written in English. Portion sizes are ample.

  
Toast points with tomato chutney (left); Bread service (center); Goat cheese and mushroom strudel (right)

The bread service began with warm toast points and a tomato chutney spread. There was also a basket of excellent fresh breads, which cold triangles of butter didn’t live up to. The amuse-bouche continued the tomato chutney theme, with a terrific goat cheese and wild mushroom strudel.

 
Lobster Brûlee (left); Foie Gras Terrine (right)

Lobster Brûlée ($25) was an absolute knockout—think crème brûlée, but with lobster. This is one of the cleverest items on the menu A foie gras terrine ($25) was one of the menu’s more conservative choices, which the kitchen executed well.

 
Filet mignon au poivre (left); Duck Breast (right)

Steak in a non-steakhouse is often disappointing, but my girlfriend’s Filet Mignon au poivre ($35)—a boring choice, I know—was excellent. Duck breast was just about perfect, served with champagne-vanilla poached pear, chanterelle mushrooms and foie gras. It’s as good as any duck entrée in town, and at $26 you would have to consider it a bargain.

   
Left to right: Creamed spinach; Truffle mashed potatoes; Potato croquettes with gruyère cream; French fries

The four side dishes that we tried were far more than we needed, but they were all first-rate. The next morning my girlfriend said, “I’m still dreaming about those french fries.”

  
Homemade cookies (left); Floating island (center); Chocolate soufflé (right)

Our desserts were French standards, executed as well as they are anywhere.

We were seated at a comfortable banquette. The tables are a variety of sizes: ours would have comfortably accommodated four, but others looked seemed awfully small even for two. Service was polished and enthusiastic. Servers’ menu recommendations were sensible and accurate. 

The publicist said that Bruno Jamais attracts a late-night crowd (the kitchen takes orders until 3:00 a.m.). She recommended an 8:30 p.m. reservation—later than I normally prefer—so that we could get a better feel for the ambiance. Yet, over the course of three hours, the space was never more than half full. For much of the time, the staff outnumbered the customers. It was a varied clientele, both young and old, not fitting the stereotypes normally attached to such a place.

Does Bruno Jamais want to be taken seriously as a restaurant? If the rest of the food is as good as we had, it certainly should be. It could start by upgrading its website. Even fifteen years ago, it would have looked tacky; today, it is an embarrassment. Memo to Mr. Jamais: the only places that call themselves “ultra elegant” are the ones that are not.

Bruno Jamais—the restaurant, not the man (whom we did not meet)—seemed schizophrenic to us. The supper-club vibe leads you to expect cruise ship cuisine for aging plutocrats, courtesans, and B-list celebrities.  Some of the literature still has the quirky, off-putting name, “Bruno Jamais Restaurant Club.” But the kitchen turns out three-star food: there wasn’t a single dud, or anything remotely close to it, among the many things we tried. (Dining on a publicist’s dime, I’ve learned, is no guarantee of excellence.)

We had a wonderful meal, which we did not expect at all. If you pocket your aversion to the faux exclusivity that Bruno Jamais wears on its sleeve, you’ll find that the food is worth your attention.

Bruno Jamais (24 E. 81st Street between Madison & Fifth Avenues, Upper East Side)

Adour

[Rockwell Group]

Note: Adour closed in November 2012. A succession of executive chefs was not able to reclaim a lost Michelin star, or apparently, lost business.

*

My girlfriend and I thought it was near tragic when Alain Ducasse at the Essex House closed. It was the site of perhaps the best meal we have had in New York. When Ducasse announced that he was moving to the St. Regis, site of the former four-star Lespinasse, in a new restaurant called Adour, we hoped the magic would be moving with him.

Alas, the magic is nowhere to be found. Adour is a bore. A really crashing bore.

I don’t think three-star food has to be innovative: I find real pleasure in classics done well. But the menu here is downright soporific: one yawn after another. There’s no excitement on the plate at all. And if no longer priced in the stratosphere, as it was at the Essex House, the food at Adour is still very expensive. For entrées priced in the $40s, one expects at least some indication of the creative spark that earned Ducasse all of those Michelin stars.

The menu is printed on stiff boards glued into an upholstered cardboard folder. It is obviously not easily changeable. It makes Adour feel like a crass hotel restaurant. The subtle message it sends is: “The food isn’t changing anytime soon.” It is almost all in English. It apparently hasn’t occurred to Monsieur Ducasse that patrons at his restaurant might want, you know, French food.

Is this Ducasse’s way of saying “Screw you, New York”? Or, in his eagerness to pander—to give Americans what he thinks we want—has he forgotten to give us what he’s actually good at? We asked one of the servers what had happened to the great menu served at the Essex House. “It was time to move on,” he said.

To “move on” to this?

We certainly expected dialed-down luxury, given a price point about 50% lower than the Essex House. But there isn’t even an amuse-bouche here. If you order a cheese course ($22), there’s no cart, just a plate of four cheeses deposited on your table.

The wine service shines, though. The menu, after all, is supposedly designed to go well with wine, though I am not sure what that means. The list has plenty of compelling choices at decent prices, including multiple bottles of red under $50. We selected a 1996 Bricco Boschi Barolo at $105, which the staff decanted for us. I also liked the bread service, which came with a wonderful soft olive butter.

 
Sweetbread “Meunière”, Egg Purse (left); Foie Gras Tapioca Ravioli (right)

Sweetbreads with wild mushrooms ($24) were simply grilled, but I appreciated the egg purse in the center of the plate, which made a rich, runny mess. My girlfriend’s Foie Gras Tapioca Ravioli ($23) were dull. The taste of foie can always be counted on for luxury by default, but the dish made no attempt to offer any contrast.

 
Venison Medallions (left); Roasted Colorado Rack of Lamb (right)

Both Venison ($42) and Rack of Lamb ($48) were left basically to fend for themselves, with token vegetables offering little to amuse the palate. My girlfriend said that the side of risotto that came with her lamb was more interesting than the lamb itself.

 
Pear Clafoutis (left); Gala Apple Soufflé (right)

Neither dessert captured our imagination either, though at $14 apiece we didn’t feel cheated. The plates of petits-fours were generous, though we were full and didn’t touch them.

At Adour, the service team is no longer all French, as they were at the Essex House. Most of them seem capable, though we observed some minor snafus that no doubt will be worked out as the restaurant gets its legs. When we arrived, we appreciated that we were given ample time to peruse the wine list and enjoy our champagne. The restaurant wasn’t full, and the table appeared to be ours for as long as we wanted it.

The David Rockwell-designed space is comfortable and gorgeous. It could easily be one of the city’s most serene spots to enjoy a meal. But the food doesn’t live up to it. We can only hope Ducasse will take this milquetoast menu back into his laboratory, and return with some real excitement.

Adour (2 E. 55th Street at Fifth Avenue in the St. Regis Hotel, East Midtown)

Food: *½
Service: ***
Ambiance: ***
Overall: **

First Look: Adour by Alain Ducasse

Note: Click here for a full review of Adour.

Adour Alain Ducasse at the St. Regis opened this evening. I stopped in for a drink at the bar, where another patron informed me I was the sixth customer.

The electronic menus have received most of the press. You find your wine by navigating a touch screen that displays on the surface of the bar, projected from above. To get to Burgundy reds, for instance, you’d tap “Wines,” then “Red,” then “France,” then “Burgundy,” and then you can scroll down the list. For any given wine, you can retrieve tasting notes, producer history, and so forth.

It sounds good in theory, but the mechanism is finicky. If your touch is off by even a little, the mechanism misbehaves. After a while, I just gave up, and I noticed that others were frustrated too. I don’t think bar patrons—even at a high-class bar like this one—want to learn a new technology just to order a glass of wine. Within six months, I suspect they’ll be back to traditional paper and ink.

Selections by the glass were ample, and I enjoyed a wonderful Southern Rhone blend for $13, along with a cup of Yuzu Sorbet for just $4. If you’re thinking that those don’t sound like Ducasse prices, you’d be right.

There are about a dozen bar snacks, ranging from $9–16. It’s a remarkable selection at a bar that seats only four, and the guys next to me loved everything they tried. One of them was so taken with the Yuzu Sorbet that he asked the manager if the restaurant could supply a quantity for his Super Bowl party. (The manager replied that he was not sure the pastry chef could have quite enough of it made by Sunday.)

In the main restaurant, there are nine appetizers priced from $17–29, ten entrées at $32–49, and six desserts at $14. The cheese course is $22, and the five-course tasting menu is $110. Though clearly not bargain-priced, this is still a good deal less than the predecessor restaurant at the Essex House, where the prix fixe was $150 and the tasting menu $225.

I’m looking forward to dining there in two weeks’ time.

Adour Alain Ducasse (2 E. 55th Street at Fifth Avenue in the St. Regis Hotel, East Midtown)

Le Cirque

Kalina via Eater

Note: This is a review of Le Cirque under Chef Christophe Bellanca, who left the restaurant in October 2008. Click here for a review under chef Olivier Reginensi, who is the chef as of 2012.

Click here for a review of the Café at Le Cirque.

*

Le Cirque is one of the few remaining bastions of classic old-French luxury in New York. Now in its third location, it was at various times a three or four-star restaurant, but critics hammered it when the current version opened in 2006. Frank Bruni and Adam Platt both returned two-star verdicts, which for this type of restaurant is equivalent to condemnation.

Much beloved of celebrities and the monied set, Le Cirque didn’t need Frank Bruni’s blessing. Owner Siro Maccioni could simply have shrugged, as the owners of the Four Seasons apparently did after a similar Bruni smackdown. Instead, he went to work. He fired chef Pierre Schaedelin, bringing in Christophe Bellanca to replace him. The review cycle is over, so Le Cirque is stuck with its two stars for now. But at least Adam Platt recognized the improvement in his 2007 year-end retrospective:

But perhaps the most impressive kitchen overhaul of all has taken place at Le Cirque, where Sirio Maccioni’s latest chef, Christophe Bellanca, has expanded the pricey, formerly stolid menu to include a whole variety of sophisticated, radically pricey new treats. The grandly impersonal room underneath the Bloomberg tower remains filled with the usual collection of grimly smiling contessas and aging plutocrats tottering to and fro in their pin-striped suits. But when I dropped in not very long ago, there were an impressive nine specials of the day on the menu, along with all sorts of newfangled entrées: dim-sum-size ravioli swollen with foie gras, carefully deboned portions of squab crusted with crushed walnuts, and ribbons of chestnut-flavored pappardelle decked with braised pheasant, which the plutocrats merrily supplemented one night (for a $185 fee) with shavings of white truffle shipped direct, via Maccioni’s fabled connection, from the hills of Alba.

(I don’t quite understand why, if he thinks the improvement is that significant, Platt does not also upgrade his two-star rating, but I’ll save that rant for another post.)

The bifurcated service at Le Cirque—one level for celebrities, another for the rest of us—is the stuff of legend. Upon her arrival in New York, Times critic Ruth Reichl was famously treated like dirt. Everything changed once Maccioni figured out who she was: “The King of Spain is waiting in the bar, but your table is ready.” Reichl demoted the restaurant to three stars. In the 2006 update, Frank Bruni encountered much the same attitude that Reichl did. So did the Amateur Gourmet, who wrote about his experience in a post called “Only a Jerk Would Eat at Le Cirque.”

Perhaps Maccioni has finally learned his lesson. When I visited with a friend for a year-end dinner, we saw no evidence of second-class service. Our table was ready immediately, and we weren’t seated in Siberia. Service was friendly and polished, but the large, busy space is not geared to long, quiet meals. I didn’t note the exact timing, but I felt that the multi-course tasting menu went by a tad quickly.

The clientele was a broad mix of young and old. We didn’t notice any celebrities, but a couple of middle-aged men were with lavishly dressed women who appeared to be a good deal younger than they. You can fill in the possibilities for yourself.

For a variety of reasons, it took me a month to get around to writing this blog post, and I’m afraid my recollections have dimmed somewhat. We ordered the tasting menu, which in general was impressive, with only a couple of dull spots (which most tasting menus have). The food is shown below in photo-essay format.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Le Cirque (151 E. 58th Street between Lexington & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

Food: ***
Service: **½
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***

Picholine

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Picholine.

Picholine has redeemed itself. Two years ago, we were ripped off on New Year’s Eve, spending $800 for two on a meal that might charitably have been worth a third of that. Last night, we spent $400 on an excellent meal that was worth every penny.

I’m not the only one who thought the “old” Picholine needed some attitude adjustment. Before a September 2006 makeover, Frank Bruni chose Picholine for his sister’s birthday, and it was so lackluster that he had to apologize. For the Times restaurant critic, not being able to find the right restaurant for a family celebration must have been acutely embarrassing.

Post renovation, Bruni found it “arguably the nicest restaurant surprise of this disappointing season,” re-affirming the three-star rating two previous critics had awarded. The 2008 Michelin Guide upgraded Picholine to two stars, making it one of the city’s top ten restaurants.

The revamped décor has impressed no one except, perhaps, some Upper West Side dowagers. Even the china looks like something your grandmother would use. La Grenouille, a restaurant that is thirty years older, is far more lively.

There is nothing the management can do about the narrow space, but when you enter you hit a traffic jam around the host station/bar/coat-check area, a drawback I recall from two previous visits. The aisles in the two dining rooms are narrow, and servers sometimes seem to be pirouetting around obstacles.

Fortunately, there is nothing old-fashioned about chef Terrance Brennan’s rejuvenated cuisine, which is reason enough why Picholine remains popular, and one of this town’s toughest tables to book. Even with several weeks’ notice, 8:45 p.m. was the earliest I could get on a Saturday evening, although we showed up at 8:20 and were seated immediately. (Picholine does a lot of pre- and post-Lincoln Center business; it was still more than half full when we left at almost 11:00.)

With the best cheese selection in town (shared with sister restaurant Artisanal), the cheese course at Picholine is practically obligatory. It is therefore curious that the menu does nothing to alert you to this fact. If you choose either of the printed prix fixe options—three courses ($85) or four courses ($95)—it apparently does not include cheese. (Both of the tasting menus, at $110, do include cheese.)

When we told the server we wanted an appetizer, an entrée, and a cheese tasting, he offered us an option not shown on the menu—two courses for $65—and then we were charged separately the odd price of $33.50 for a six-cheese tasting. I am not sure how a first-time visitor would be expected to figure this out. And why is the menu still captioned “Autumn 2007”?

The opening trio of amuses-bouches was slightly pedestrian. A codfish cake (9:00 in the photo) tasted like a smaller version of a cafeteria fish stick, and lobster salad (1:00 in the photo) didn’t taste very lobster-y. A smooth mushroom panna cotta  (5:00) was the best of the group.

 

Chef Brennan loves his panna cottas. Sea urchin panna cotta (above left) with caviar had an ethereal silky texture. My girlfriend ordered the foie gras terrine (above right; $8 suppl.), which was on a par with the better examples of the genre around town.

Heirloom Chicken “Kiev” — the quotation marks suggesting a riff on the classic dish — was a tour de force. It is still January, but for now this is the dish of the year.

Brennan wraps chicken around chanterelles and foie gras, covers it in a cornflake batter and deep fries it, melting the foie gras. After the dish is brought to your table, a server lances the chicken with a silver spear, and the liquid foie gras oozes out. (The photo was taken after this surgery had been performed.)

Frank Bruni loved it too.

The frommagier brought the cheese cart to our table and gave us an overview. We told him our general preferences and asked him to choose six. There was not a weak selection among the group. As always, he handed us a printed cheese guide to take home, with the ones he’d selected for us identified by number. The meal ended with a broad selection of petits-fours.

The wine list is long and expensive, so I decided to let the sommelier choose for us, giving him a ceiling of $100. He came up with a luscious burgundy at $95 that went perfectly with the chicken. We also accepted his offer of a taste of sauterne to go with my girlfriend’s foie gras. We were charged only $10 for that, and he comped a white wine to go with my Sea Urchin appetizer.

Our captain, a veteran no doubt of many dinner services, provided helpful ordering advice and stayed on top of things. Both the frommagier and sommelier followed up to ensure we were happy with our meal. The junior staff that served the bread and amuses-bouches were a little hard to understand—a problem at many New York restaurants, as these positions are often taken by non-native speakers. Although we were seated side-by-side at a table with ample space, the cramped quarters meant that servers had to reach awkwardly to set and clear the silverware.

The space at Picholine will always seem twenty years too old, but the food, wine and cheese are the stars.

Picholine (35 W. 64th Street between Columbus Avenue & Central Park West, Upper West Side)

Food: ***
Service: ***
Ambiance: **½
Overall: ***

First Look: Bar Boulud

Kalina via Eater

In today’s Diner’s Journal, Frank Bruni reports that it’s not easy to make a reservation at Daniel Boulud’s latest restaurant, Bar Boulud. Not since Per Se, almost four years ago, has poor Frank had so much trouble reaching a human being. In Per Se’s case, he waited. In Bar Boulud’s case, he hung up in frustration after 15 minutes. [Update: The next day, he finally got through.]

He should have tried just walking in, which a friend and I did yesterday. At 6:00 p.m., we were seated at the bar without a wait. Three doors down, Josephina was full. Go figure.

Like most Michelin-starred chefs, Daniel Boulud isn’t content to have just one restaurant, but he hasn’t opened them as promiscuously as Jean-Georges Vongerichten or Alain Ducasse. Bar Boulud is his first New York opening in at least four years. The location across Broadway from Lincoln Center has long needed some more serious restaurants. I yawned when I heard that Bar Boulud was going to be focused on wine—who needs another wine bar? It turns out the real star is Sylvain Gasdon’s charcuterie menu.

Though yesterday was the official opening to the public, Boulud has been serving friends and family for a few weeks now. Grub Street responded with “dumbstruck awe,” adding that “this kind of charcuterie has almost never been available in this profusion and variety in the United States.” Ed Levine gushed, “Simply put, Gasdon is making the best charcuterie Americans have ever seen and tasted on these shores.” But he wondered, “are Americans ready for this kind of food?”

If you sit at the bar, as we did, you’ll have the massive terrines, pâtés and sausages right in front of you, a gorgeous sight incomparable to anything else in New York. If charcuterie isn’t your cup of espresso, Bar Boulud also has a more conventional bistro menu that takes its cues from Boulud’s native Lyon.

We had actually come in only for drinks, but there was no way I could leave without tasting the charcuterie that refined meatheads like Cutlets and Levine are raving about. So I tried the Pâté Grand-mère ($8), made with chicken liver, pork and cognac. It was a nice hunk, half an inch thick, and about 3 inches by 5, with a dollop of spiced mustard on the side and two bowls of bread (with soft butter). I ignored the bread and just ate the pâté with my fork. It had a luscious buttery taste, the liver pungent but not overwhelming. There’s much more where that came from, and I can’t wait to return.

The wine selection was disappointing. There were just four reds and four whites by the glass, far less than one expects at a purportedly wine-themed restaurant. Bar Boulud needs to do better—far better—than that. Servers were gracious, and the mise en place everything you’d expect in a Boulud restaurant, but the staff was too busy to pay us sufficient attention. We had trouble flagging down a server to order a second glass of wine, and we were there for about 45 minutes before they came with water glasses.

It is too soon to the judge the service, as this was only Bar Boulud’s first night. It will also take more than one pâté to reach a judgment on the food, but Bar Boulud certainly looks promising.

Bar Boulud (1900 Broadway near 63rd Street, Upper West Side)

Montreal Journal: Marché de La Villette & Les Bouchées Gourmandes

Marché de La Villette

Rounding out our Montreal journal are two casual places along rue St. Paul Ouest where we had breakfast and lunch.

Marché de La Villette has only been in existence for about four years, but it has the look of a comfortable bistro that has been there forever. There’s a take-out counter featuring an array of salads, quiches and terrines, but there’s a full-service all-day menu too. We’ve been there several times, but only for breakfast/brunch. It’s not exactly a bargain, with breakfast for two coming to around CA$40, but you don’t leave hungry, and everything is prepared to a high standard.

 

Pictured are: Crèpe with ham and brie (upper left), Cheese platter (upper right), Omelette with salad (lower left), and your humble correspondent (lower right).

It’s a pity I didn’t have my camera the first day that we visited La Bouchées Gourmandes, which is just down the street from Marché de La Villette. It’s primarily a sweet shop, but there’s a breakfast and lunch menu too. The crèpes were outstanding — if anything, lighter, fluffier, and more textured than those at La Villette. We went back the next day for hot chocolate and a tart.

The place appears to be operated by a husband–wife team, with no one in the front-of-house except the wife. She moves at her own pace: that tart took her quite a while to produce, even though it was already in a display case and needed only to be plated.

But as long as you’re in no hurry, it is well worth a visit.

Marché de La Villette (324, rue St. Paul Ouest, Montreal)

Les Bouchées Gourmandes (310, rue St. Paul Ouest, Montreal)