| 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?"
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"... sustenance - ... Or take the notorious "courtesy" stools for ladies' purses. ... vegetables - a sticky lump in a small bowl - was as congealed as bad Chinese takeout, drenched in a ... ..." |
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