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.

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)

Adour: Shame on Ed Levine

In a post yesterday about Alain Ducasse’s new restaurant Adour, food journalist Ed Levine asked, “Does the World Need More Fancy-Pants French Restaurants?”

It’s the hallmark of argumentative writing to ask a question, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to the answer. No one uses the phrase “fancy-pants” about something they like. (Frank Bruni’s obsession with the word “fussy” is very much the same.) In the comments section, Levine said he was really looking for a word like “stuffy,” which isn’t much of an improvement.

It’s no surprise that Levine isn’t really comfortable with luxurious French restaurants. He made his name writing about humbler fare. When Levine dined at Per Se, Thomas Keller (in jest) served him a hot dog. But in phrasing the question as he did, Levine is asking, not merely whether Ducasse is offering what Ed Levine needs, but what the “world” needs. Those are two completely different things.

It’s lazy thinking to presume that one’s own tastes are the same as everyone else’s. Levine says, “In New York people love the energized informality of Babbo or the Union Square Cafe or Craft. We love places that serve serious food in a way that makes us feel comfortable, relaxed, and well taken care of.” Well, there are almost 18 million residents of the New York metro area, and they don’t all love the same thing. I’ll bet the vast majority of them haven’t even heard of those restaurants.

If you add the approximately 44 million tourists who visit New York City annually, that makes at least 62 million people who will eat dinner in New York at least one night this year. Do you think there might be enough of them who, unlike Levine, actually appreciate what Alain Ducasse has to offer?

Levine thinks “we need more restaurants with heart and soul,” apparently having concluded that a Ducasse restaurant cannot qualify. Now, I’m sure Mario Batali (Babbo), Danny Meyer (Union Square Cafe) and Tom Colicchio (Craft) feel passionately about what they’re doing, as does Ducasse. But all three of them are running huge restaurant conglomerates for profit, as does Ducasse.

Ironically, New York has more of Levine’s heart-and-soul restaurants than ever before, while not a single three or four-star restaurant opened last year. Yet, the demand for luxury restaurants remains intense. Just try booking a last-minute prime-time table at any of the city’s high-end dining palaces. They are usually full. Obviously these places aren’t for everybody, but with 20,000 other restaurants in New York, they don’t need to be.

And it’s not as if we have glut of four-star restaurants. There are just five of them (per the Times), and the two most recent (Per Se and Masa) opened four years ago. All candidates since then have been found wanting, at least according to Frank Bruni. I don’t know how much of a chance Adour will have, when a Francophobic critic like Bruni is doing the judging. But should restauranteurs stop trying?

Places like Adour don’t come along very often. Do you want a restaurant with rustic pleasures and menus sourced daily from the greenmarket and local farmers? There’s practically a new one every month. But how many luxury French restaurants are there in New York? They can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I don’t know whether Adour will be a great restaurant. No one can know that until the place opens. Based on my experience at its predecessor, Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, I am optimistic. From a critic of Levine’s stature one expects a new venture, especially one that comes along this rarely, to be judged on its merits.

Alain Ducasse

Note: Alain Ducasse at the Essex House closed in late 2006. Ducasse transferred the kitchen team to a new but less formal restaurant, Adour, at the St. Regis Hotel, which opened in early 2008.

I had been looking for a special occasion to visit Alain Ducasse at the Essex House Hotel, a/k/a “ADNY”. That occasion presented itself yesterday, and my friend and I had a grand time. The experience was, if not perfect, certainly extraordinary—the definition of four stars, if ever there was.

I’ve seen many photographs of the room, but they fail to do it justice. It is creative, comfortable and luxurious, without being over-the-top. The exposed kitchen surprised me. Obviously there are plenty of open kitchens at fine restaurants in New York, but here it seemed slightly out-of-place.

ADNY virtually defines extraordinary service. One could give a thousand examples, but what especially impressed me is that our coats were taken when we arrived without a check ticket, and were ready for us when we left. Somehow, the staff is able to keep track of every coat and has telepathic insight when you are ready to leave.

Your options at ADNY are a three-course meal at $150, four courses at $175, the seven-course tasting menu at $225, or the six-course tuber melanosporum (black truffle) tasting at $290. We chose the four-course meal ($175 plus supplements), which offers an appetizer, a fish course, a meat course, and dessert.

ADNY tries mightily to tempt you with the truffle menu. Before we ordered, a member of staff brought around a box of several enormous black truffles in a bed of rice. I was encouraged to pick one up and take a whiff, which I did. We had already decided on the four-course, but we were still going to see truffles later on.

The water service might be seen as an attempt at upselling. Almost every starred restaurant tries to entice you to purchase bottled water, but at ADNY a water sommelier comes along with six waters for you to choose from. However, our request for tap water was heeded graciously.

I was beginning to wonder if attempts to pad the bill were going to take over. I asked the wine sommelier either to recommend a single bottle in the $150-200 range, or wines by the glass paired with each course. He was happy to do either, and when he didn’t state a price, I wondered what was coming. I was happy to find that the paired wines came in at only $140, below the bottom end of my stipulated range.

Our service began with two wonderful gougères and an amuse of seared tuna with pureed celery root. There was a choice selection of warm bread, of which an olive roll was especially memorable, along with two fresh butters (one salted, one not).

For the appetizer, I chose the butternut squash ravioli, celery “moustarda di cremona”, and sage emulsion, a complex dish that is difficult to explain. More straightforward, but no less superb, was my friend’s foie gras terrine, with mango chutney sandwiched by layers of foie.

I had no firm idea about the fish course, but I chose the Chatham cod, which includes “fennel—some braised, others raw—Taggiasca tapenade, and clear essence.” I reasoned that as this dish is part of the tasting menu, the chef must be rather pleased with it. It was, of course, impeccably prepared, but utterly unadventurous, and in the end unacceptably dull. My friend made the happier choice: poached Maine lobster with truffles ($35 supp.), which she pronounced superb. She must be getting to know me pretty well, as she said, “I took one look at that cod, and could tell you weren’t going to love it.”

(Update: Over on eGullet.com, Steven A. Shaw (the “Fat Guy”)—who is a professional food writer and has been to ADNY more than just about anybody else who writes about it—read my review and said, “I agree that the fish dish oakapple described is unremarkable as were two other fish dishes I tried on our most recent visit, when we also had the four-course menu with all the same choices oakapple described. On the whole, the fish course was weak. Maybe as part of a longer tasting menu I’d have seen it in a different context: a beautiful little piece of fish with a technically correct sauce. But as an entree-type course the fish dishes fell flat.”)

I’d heard rave reviews of the blue foot chicken ($35 supp.), which we both had. This dish is a truffle orgy, with truffles both under the skin and all over the plate. The raves are entirely justified; it was outstanding.

Another dish everyone raves about is “Monsieur Ducasse’s favorite dessert,” Baba Monte-Carlo style, with rum of your choice. A server comes around with a tray of five rums. You choose one, and it is poured into a small copper cup. You also receive a bit of the rum in a snifter. The Baba comes out in a sterling silver bowl that must have been custom-made for Ducasse, as I’ve never seen anything like it. Your server slices the cake in half, pours the rum over its innards, then ladles on heapings of cream. If there’s a better dessert in New York, I can’t imagine it.

We were not finished yet, as the kitchen sent out a small serving of sorbet as a palate cleanser. Then, a cart comes out with more sweets, of which you may choose as many as you please. (I had the vanilla panna cotta and a marshmallow coated with almonds.) The selection of coffees ($8) was impressive, including even M. Ducasse’s custom espresso, which I enjoyed.

The meal was not perfect: the Chatham cod didn’t live up to the surroundings, and none of the vegetable accompaniments wowed me. But at its best, ADNY operates at a level few restaurants can touch.

Alain Ducasse at the Essex House (155 West 58th Street between Sixth & Seventh Avenues, West Midtown)

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