Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Restaurant Liebrandt?
August 14
I got a press packet from my friend Lee Jones of Chef’s Garden in Huron, Ohio, on Lake Erie, about the chefs summit it had this summer at its Culinary Vegetable Institute in Milan, which is just a bit inland from Huron and pronounced MY-lun.
If you’ve had little tiny microgreens or obscure baby vegetables in a very high-end fine dining restaurant somewhere between Chicago and New York, the chances are pretty good that they're from Chef’s Garden — but only if you’re in a very high-end fine dining restaurant as Lee and his brother Bobby were getting up to $140 a pound for some of their herbs a couple of years ago. I have no idea what they get now.
Anyway, among the participants listed was:
“–Chef Paul Liebrandt, of his signature Restaurant Liebrandt, opening Fall 2007, New York City, panel member.”
Obviously, an investigation is underway.
[backgrounder below, as I noticed the above posting is myopic and New York-centric and this blog is for the world (!)]
The New York food world has been wondering what Paul Liebrandt has been up to since he and Gilt parted ways last year. Rumors have been rife that he was going to team up with Drew Nieporent (Tribeca Grill, Nobu, Mai House, Centrico et al), but I haven’t heard anything about that lately.
Mr. Liebrandt caused some culinary shockwaves here in the Big Apple some years ago at the restaurant Atlas, where dishes like fresh water eel with watermelon and cocoa-wine sauce thrilled then-New York Times critic William Grimes and thoroughly irritated Gourmet magazine, which gave it an uncharacteristically harsh review (at the time people cruelly speculated that Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl, who was Mr. Grimes’ predecessor at the Times, was striking out at her replacement; that doesn’t ring true to me, but it is fun to repeat).
Mr. Liebrandt and the owners of Atlas had a falling out over something, and though the chef had some other gigs, they were nothing as grand as Atlas, until Gilt opened in late 2005 in the space that once was Le Cirque 2000. It was an important opening, as such things go. But either Mr. Liebrandt or his food didn’t get along well with management, and he was replaced by Christopher Lee, a native New Yorker who won accolades at Striped Bass in Philadelphia.
Mr. Liebrandt (he almost invariably calls me Mr. Thorn and it makes sense to maintain that protocol) hasn’t responded to my e-mail yet.
I did have a nice chat with Lee Jones, but I got no more information about the restaurant.
I got a press packet from my friend Lee Jones of Chef’s Garden in Huron, Ohio, on Lake Erie, about the chefs summit it had this summer at its Culinary Vegetable Institute in Milan, which is just a bit inland from Huron and pronounced MY-lun.
If you’ve had little tiny microgreens or obscure baby vegetables in a very high-end fine dining restaurant somewhere between Chicago and New York, the chances are pretty good that they're from Chef’s Garden — but only if you’re in a very high-end fine dining restaurant as Lee and his brother Bobby were getting up to $140 a pound for some of their herbs a couple of years ago. I have no idea what they get now.
Anyway, among the participants listed was:
“–Chef Paul Liebrandt, of his signature Restaurant Liebrandt, opening Fall 2007, New York City, panel member.”
Obviously, an investigation is underway.
[backgrounder below, as I noticed the above posting is myopic and New York-centric and this blog is for the world (!)]
The New York food world has been wondering what Paul Liebrandt has been up to since he and Gilt parted ways last year. Rumors have been rife that he was going to team up with Drew Nieporent (Tribeca Grill, Nobu, Mai House, Centrico et al), but I haven’t heard anything about that lately.
Mr. Liebrandt caused some culinary shockwaves here in the Big Apple some years ago at the restaurant Atlas, where dishes like fresh water eel with watermelon and cocoa-wine sauce thrilled then-New York Times critic William Grimes and thoroughly irritated Gourmet magazine, which gave it an uncharacteristically harsh review (at the time people cruelly speculated that Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl, who was Mr. Grimes’ predecessor at the Times, was striking out at her replacement; that doesn’t ring true to me, but it is fun to repeat).
Mr. Liebrandt and the owners of Atlas had a falling out over something, and though the chef had some other gigs, they were nothing as grand as Atlas, until Gilt opened in late 2005 in the space that once was Le Cirque 2000. It was an important opening, as such things go. But either Mr. Liebrandt or his food didn’t get along well with management, and he was replaced by Christopher Lee, a native New Yorker who won accolades at Striped Bass in Philadelphia.
Mr. Liebrandt (he almost invariably calls me Mr. Thorn and it makes sense to maintain that protocol) hasn’t responded to my e-mail yet.
I did have a nice chat with Lee Jones, but I got no more information about the restaurant.
Accademia di Vino
August 14
I had a nice chat with Kevin Garcia today. He has been the executive chef at ’Cesca on the Upper West Side since it opened. Before that he was at Del Posto, and he also was in Las Vegas for quite awhile at Prime, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s steakhouse there. He worked at Lupa, too.
Now he’s teaming up with ’Cesca owner Anthony Mazzola to open a new restaurant and enotica called Accademia di Vino. Kevin will be executive chef at both restaurants. He says he has a good team in place at ’Cesca, led by Ghanaian sous chef Mattey Orfori. Running day-to-day operations at Accademia will be Sond Ponrahono, a Malaysian. The place is supposed to open tomorrow.
Each restaurant has two additional sous chefs in place, too.
I had a feeling Kevin was maybe feeling just slightly defensive about being a chef with more than one restaurant, but it’s not something I have a problem with. Executive chefs are managers. If they’ve done their jobs right, they can manage more than one place.
The food at the new restaurant will be less appetizer-entrée-dessert and more come-and-do-what-you-like, according to the general manager, John Fanning, who was previously GM at i Truli, and before that at Beppe. Before that he had a restaurant and wine bar in Rome.
The culinary focus will be Italian regional, with special attention being paid to local, seasonal ingredients, as is appropriate or Italian food. Kevin even named a particular farmer, Rick Bishop of Mountain Sweet Berry Farm in Roscoe, N.Y., as an important influence on how the food would taste.
Accademia di Vino also will feature grilled pizza, a specialty of Al Forno in Providence. Where Kevin worked while he was a student at Johnson & Wales.
You just never know what experience is going to come in handy.
I had a nice chat with Kevin Garcia today. He has been the executive chef at ’Cesca on the Upper West Side since it opened. Before that he was at Del Posto, and he also was in Las Vegas for quite awhile at Prime, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s steakhouse there. He worked at Lupa, too.
Now he’s teaming up with ’Cesca owner Anthony Mazzola to open a new restaurant and enotica called Accademia di Vino. Kevin will be executive chef at both restaurants. He says he has a good team in place at ’Cesca, led by Ghanaian sous chef Mattey Orfori. Running day-to-day operations at Accademia will be Sond Ponrahono, a Malaysian. The place is supposed to open tomorrow.
Each restaurant has two additional sous chefs in place, too.
I had a feeling Kevin was maybe feeling just slightly defensive about being a chef with more than one restaurant, but it’s not something I have a problem with. Executive chefs are managers. If they’ve done their jobs right, they can manage more than one place.
The food at the new restaurant will be less appetizer-entrée-dessert and more come-and-do-what-you-like, according to the general manager, John Fanning, who was previously GM at i Truli, and before that at Beppe. Before that he had a restaurant and wine bar in Rome.
The culinary focus will be Italian regional, with special attention being paid to local, seasonal ingredients, as is appropriate or Italian food. Kevin even named a particular farmer, Rick Bishop of Mountain Sweet Berry Farm in Roscoe, N.Y., as an important influence on how the food would taste.
Accademia di Vino also will feature grilled pizza, a specialty of Al Forno in Providence. Where Kevin worked while he was a student at Johnson & Wales.
You just never know what experience is going to come in handy.
Navel-gazing at Monkey Bar
August 14
Monkey Bar, an ancient Midtown Manhattan watering hole that has been reworked more than once in recent years (memorably as The Steakhouse at Monkey Bar), just underwent another facelift. Decor has been updated, the 46 images of monkeys on the walls have been restored, and Patricia Yeo has been brought in to do the food.
(Here’s a picture of Patricia I took at the C-CAP benefit earlier this year).
I stopped by last night to have a drink with one of its publicists, whom I hadn’t met before. She was late, causing me to approach women sitting alone and ask if they were waiting for me. They weren’t.
But that gave me time to peruse the cocktail menu and reflect on how we trend spotters (or at least I) order food and drinks differently from others. Rarely do I think about what I’m in the mood for or what sounds good. First I remove from the running anything that looks like the chef or beverage director made it because customers it sells, not because it’s good (most chicken dishes and steaks, Cosmopolitans, chocolate Martinis, marquee-name wines, anything mentioned in a movie). Then I look for what the restaurant seems to be hanging its hat on. What does it seem to be proud of?
Monkey Bar’s wine-by-the-glass list seemed to me to cover all the requisite bases, stepping out just a bit with a couple of South Africans, but the focus clearly was on cocktails. The list of traditional drinks included a Perfect Manhattan — which uses both sweet and dry vermouth — and a classic Champagne cocktail. Those aren’t particularly uncommon, but they’re not common, either. Now, if I were a critic, I could order one of those to test their mettle, but I’m not a critic, I'm a trend-spotter. So I ordered the grossest-sounding drink on the menu, both because it was the grossest-sounding drink and thus wouldn’t likely be there if it weren’t good, and because all of its ingredients were trendy. The Blueberry Joe (I think that’s the name), was made with tequila, coffee and blueberry.
Blueberries and things with blueberry in their names are all over supermarkets because of the fruit's reputation for being high in antioxidants. Coffee is everywhere, and tequila consumption in the United States is growing faster than any other spirit except for vodka, according to Pernod Ricard (guess what #3 is: post it as a comment below).
One of Monkey Bar’s managers told me tequila sales there had spiked just over the past couple of weeks. I wonder why.
Monkey Bar, an ancient Midtown Manhattan watering hole that has been reworked more than once in recent years (memorably as The Steakhouse at Monkey Bar), just underwent another facelift. Decor has been updated, the 46 images of monkeys on the walls have been restored, and Patricia Yeo has been brought in to do the food.
(Here’s a picture of Patricia I took at the C-CAP benefit earlier this year).
I stopped by last night to have a drink with one of its publicists, whom I hadn’t met before. She was late, causing me to approach women sitting alone and ask if they were waiting for me. They weren’t.
But that gave me time to peruse the cocktail menu and reflect on how we trend spotters (or at least I) order food and drinks differently from others. Rarely do I think about what I’m in the mood for or what sounds good. First I remove from the running anything that looks like the chef or beverage director made it because customers it sells, not because it’s good (most chicken dishes and steaks, Cosmopolitans, chocolate Martinis, marquee-name wines, anything mentioned in a movie). Then I look for what the restaurant seems to be hanging its hat on. What does it seem to be proud of?
Monkey Bar’s wine-by-the-glass list seemed to me to cover all the requisite bases, stepping out just a bit with a couple of South Africans, but the focus clearly was on cocktails. The list of traditional drinks included a Perfect Manhattan — which uses both sweet and dry vermouth — and a classic Champagne cocktail. Those aren’t particularly uncommon, but they’re not common, either. Now, if I were a critic, I could order one of those to test their mettle, but I’m not a critic, I'm a trend-spotter. So I ordered the grossest-sounding drink on the menu, both because it was the grossest-sounding drink and thus wouldn’t likely be there if it weren’t good, and because all of its ingredients were trendy. The Blueberry Joe (I think that’s the name), was made with tequila, coffee and blueberry.
Blueberries and things with blueberry in their names are all over supermarkets because of the fruit's reputation for being high in antioxidants. Coffee is everywhere, and tequila consumption in the United States is growing faster than any other spirit except for vodka, according to Pernod Ricard (guess what #3 is: post it as a comment below).
One of Monkey Bar’s managers told me tequila sales there had spiked just over the past couple of weeks. I wonder why.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Someone’s fibbing
August 13
Recently the good people at Grub Street reported that a Shake Shack would be opening at Citi Field, which will replace Shea Stadium as the New York Mets’ home field in 2009.
Then they reported that Danny Meyer, head of the Union Square Hospitality Group, offered them free burgers if they could figure out a way for him to do that.
If you’re not in New York or are simply disinclined to pay attention to places where you must stand in line for long periods of time for a burger and/or milkshake, you might not know that Shake Shake, owned by USHG, is the darling of Madison Square Park and much loved by people who are willing to stand in long lines for a burger and/or milkshake (to see just how long the line is at this moment, you can check out the burger stand’s Shack Cam, because the USHG people are clever).
Anyway, Grub Street observed that Meyer’s message wasn’t an outright denial and decided that their sources had it right all along.
But my colleague, Elissa Elan, who recently took on the post of Northeast bureau chief here at Nation’s Restaurant News, just talked to the USHG people and to the folks at Aramark, the contract feeder in charge of foodservice at the new stadium.
The Union Square people also offered her free burgers if she could find a way to open a Shack Shack in Shea (okay in Citi Field; my apologies for indulging in inaccurate aliteration).
The Aramark folks said they had never heard of Shake Shack.
Ah, but this is the frustrating thing about being a reporter — the inability to confirm something even though you’re almost positive that it’s true.
But sometimes it’s not true. Just today I was reminded of that fact when it turns out that a news item I wrote about a chef taking a new job turned out to be false, even though the source was the chef himself.
I hate when that happens.
Recently the good people at Grub Street reported that a Shake Shack would be opening at Citi Field, which will replace Shea Stadium as the New York Mets’ home field in 2009.
Then they reported that Danny Meyer, head of the Union Square Hospitality Group, offered them free burgers if they could figure out a way for him to do that.
If you’re not in New York or are simply disinclined to pay attention to places where you must stand in line for long periods of time for a burger and/or milkshake, you might not know that Shake Shake, owned by USHG, is the darling of Madison Square Park and much loved by people who are willing to stand in long lines for a burger and/or milkshake (to see just how long the line is at this moment, you can check out the burger stand’s Shack Cam, because the USHG people are clever).
Anyway, Grub Street observed that Meyer’s message wasn’t an outright denial and decided that their sources had it right all along.
But my colleague, Elissa Elan, who recently took on the post of Northeast bureau chief here at Nation’s Restaurant News, just talked to the USHG people and to the folks at Aramark, the contract feeder in charge of foodservice at the new stadium.
The Union Square people also offered her free burgers if she could find a way to open a Shack Shack in Shea (okay in Citi Field; my apologies for indulging in inaccurate aliteration).
The Aramark folks said they had never heard of Shake Shack.
Ah, but this is the frustrating thing about being a reporter — the inability to confirm something even though you’re almost positive that it’s true.
But sometimes it’s not true. Just today I was reminded of that fact when it turns out that a news item I wrote about a chef taking a new job turned out to be false, even though the source was the chef himself.
I hate when that happens.
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