dave heres the post review of ducasse--New Ducasse Has No Class NY Post Steve Cuozzo July 26, 2000 ALAIN DUCASSE 160 Central Park South (Essex House) (212) 247-0300 AFTER two meals at Alain Ducasse, sifting the fine points of a good tantrum, you start making a list. Exactly what is it about this $200-a-head, chutzpah-snorting restaurant that makes you boil? Is it that: * It's the most arrogantly launched eatery in the history of the world? * Its $34 pasta appetizer would embarrass the Olive Garden? * Its hilarious service rituals insult true French professionalism? None of the above, I decided. What stinks most about this place is that, like old Vegas high-roller "gourmet" rooms that substituted spectacle for substance, it denies money its meaning. Our money, that is, not theirs: They even tried padding our bill. "ADNY," as it's stamped with Trumpean pomposity on plates and silverware, is less about "the world's greatest French chef" than about franchise sprawl. Globe-girdling Alain Ducasse means to tap Manhattan's cash gusher while it lasts, and ADNY is the mediocre, often comical result. True, Ducasse has dropped his "I am in all my restaurants at once" act and begun showing his face with a vengeance on Central Park South. You might even get to meet him in the kitchen, as we did when we spotted him and conveyed our awe to the staff. But if you want a taste of the real thing, stroll down to the Waldorf's Peacock Alley, whose great chef, Laurent Gras, actually cooked at Ducasse's three-star places in Paris and Monte Carlo. Easily America's most expensive restaurant, ADNY has shocked foodies out of their summer somnelence. They're agog over its $160 prix fixe menu and $2 million re-do of the old Les Celebrites. One of its snotty shticks is to close on Saturday - a practice increasingly rare in Paris - and serve lunch only twice a week. It gloats over an alleged 2,700-name waiting list. All this baloney has had the predictable effect on easily led minds reduced to aspic by the whisper of Ducasse's name. One normally sane Web site proclaims ADNY "America's finest restaurant." Mr. Grimes warns us not to expect a Times review soon as no tables are available until November. He might try picking up the phone: The Post got two reservations last week (one for lunch and one for dinner) just by calling and asking. [See story next page.] ADNY is so full of goofy pageantry, you expect "wine goddesses" to slide down poles and give neck rubs. Take the Presentation of Knives. A waiter displays a case made of rich-smelling leather. It holds a dozen cutting implements of cruel appearance, in many sizes and shapes. The waiter: "It is the knives for the squab. You choose the one for the bones. " We choose our weapons. We nervously await a pigeon of prehistoric dimensions. The squab proves anticlimactically tiny and boneless. Or take the notorious "courtesy" stools for ladies' purses. These serve mainly to bring out one's inner klutz, and I tripped over the damn things twice. The gimmickry spills over, literally, into "baba au rhum," where you choose the rum and see it poured, and the wine list whose seal you must break. Disappointingly, they were out of the first bottle we selected. ADNY lays on the laughs early and often. How can you not cackle over menu language reminiscent of old Chinese restaurants' - pasta "with tasty bouillon," berries "with unctuous cake?" Giving you a choice of fancy pens for check-signing is a side-splitter, when the dough isn't coming out of your own pocket. I drew the line, though, when they tried to charge us $108 for foie gras served as the chef's-compliments course known as the amuse-bouche. The puzzling explanation went: "Usually, it is salmon, but one of you ordered salmon, so we had to do the foie gras, but we took it off." We also watched a table-ful of chefs de cuisine from the Four Seasons send back a bill much too high. The explanation that time? "Wrong table." Whoops. Despite replacing Les Celebrites' bad art with worse, and lightening the colors, ADNY still looks like its predecessor: a high, rectangular rug joint broken up by two ponderous columns, with rosewood walls, circular banquettes and miles of gold trim. It's one of the city's most luxurious spaces and swell to spend three or four hours in. The greeting is warm and no one is haughty. But inside, it's a blizzard of impersonal buzzing, well-meaning but unfocused. ADNY desperately needs a ringmaster like Le Cirque's Sirio Maccioni or Le Perigord's Georges Briquet to lay on the dazzle. ADNY's floor crew could do with a master of any kind. No one seemed in charge of the table. One fellow insisted, with Regis' "final answer" gravity, that I choose dessert at the exact moment a second man was pouring me wine to taste. At dinner, we had to ask three times for bread; the tough mini-baguettes and salty brioches were a letdown after a 40-minute wait. They're quick to whisk away your napkin when you leave the table, but need reminding to replace it on your return. Asked to explain the gynecologically suggestive (and useless) implement supplied with certain dishes, the best the crew could offer was "asparagus tongs" - although there was no asparagus on the table. "Is the Arizona beef a house specialty?" we wondered. "No." Our man did not elaborate. What the hell is Arizona beef, which Ducasse calls "astonishing?" In fact, his comments on what he's up to in New York sound patronizing. "What I discover on each of my visits to the United States gives rise to much more than simple curiosity," he has said. "In San Francisco, I tasted the best preserved apricots of my life." Thanks, dude. ADNY's chef of record is Didier Elena, Ducasse's "accomplice" of 12 years. (Boy, do these guys need a translator.) The place has been open a month, but they don't seem to have the hang of the fiber optically smart kitchen, anchored by a 3,000-pound Molteni stove and bristling with gizmos like built-in woks that can boil water in 7 seconds. Lunch (the $160 tasting menu), enjoyable enough, fell shy of brilliant. Dinner (a la carte) was bad enough to disappoint had it cost $300 for three, much less $600 - and some dishes were outright debacles. The menu is middle-of-the-road classic, with a nod to "Mediterranean" influences and lip service to the Great American Bounty. Don't expect a cavalcade of the "luxury" ingredients foie gras, truffles and caviar. In high summer, most everything had a wintery aspect; even "tomatoes: a cocktail of tastes" looked dour on the plate. Some sauces were acidically harsh, others lacked their alleged themes and oversalting was rampant. Two "signature" dishes, lifted from Ducasse's places in Paris and Monte Carlo, were remarkably dull. Indifferent breading was no help to spongy, $74 veal sweetbreads in their own juice. Worse, spaghettini "al dente" ($34) with olive oil and sauteed vegetables - a sticky lump in a small bowl - was as congealed as bad Chinese takeout, drenched in a puddle of "crushed black truffles" oddly without taste. Far better was "delicate velouté of sweet peas, their pods and radish greens," poured at the table, with two breaded crab fingers. But $28 for pea soup? Santa Barbara spotted prawns "in a chaud-froid, citrus fondue" ($42) were plump, sweet and nicely aspic-glazed - but near-inedible citric ooze stole over the dish like a plague. So did shrill "peppered vinegars reduction" encircling "wild" salmon ($62) that was both mealy and bland. The best a la carte dish was seaweed-steamed halibut filet ($68), a firm slab atop lovely green herb sauce and accessorized with "sea urchin cappuccino" and Asian-scented greens. The tasting menu at lunch, when there were empty tables, showed signs of life. That tomato "cocktail" came with marvelous tomato sorbet that reminds you it is, after all, a fruit. Promiscuous laying-on of butter bailed out a blurry swirl of farfalle with ham and vegetables. Filet of sole, in the shape of a tube, might have been a tube of butter, so drenched was the fish - but it afforded pleasure with cranberry beans and delectable crawfish. Best was the squab - a pristine sliver that was simplicity itself. It was topped with "thighs in pastilla," an earthy game-and-spice mix in a cigarette-shaped phyllo crust of Moroccan inspiration, and black truffle-foie gras red wine reduction that, for once, delivered the goods. Camembert was chilled enough to have been refrigerated. Pastry director Frederic Robert's desserts ($22), like a warm glazed feuillantine served with almond ice cream atop apricot compote, were winners. A trolley laid on fun goodies like lollipops and cookies that took forever to be served. Once during lunch, I remarked to my colleague on how late it was getting. "You can't rush mediocrity," he observed. Maybe not, but they sure could discount it 40 percent. Thanks to ADNY, everyone else can raise their entree prices $10 and boast, "See how much cheaper we are than Ducasse?"
- Skinny 7-27-2000 6:07 pm
back to sustenance

ahhh, maybe you don't want to be posting that which you don't have a license to publish...
am i going to have to stop sending you information intended strictly for your own personal use?
(tsk,tsk)
- anonymous (guest) 8-01-2000 7:43 pm [add a comment]


  • i copied this word for word from the post newspaper on weds--what are you talking about and who are you??
    - Skinny 8-02-2000 5:12 pm [add a comment]



can we close comments on this post? Lots of $ P 4 M
- steve 5-02-2007 1:01 pm [add a comment]


steve i dont know how and what does this mean?? Lots of $ P 4 M
- Skinny 5-02-2007 1:42 pm [add a comment]


$=S 4=A / spell it out now.
- bill 5-02-2007 3:38 pm [add a comment]


This thread is now closed.
- jim 5-02-2007 4:44 pm [add a comment]




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