September 5, 2011 |
Short Order
Sorry, Bentel & Bentel are the architects of Le Bernardin’s big makeover
It seems that I was definitely out to lunch naming David Rockwell as the architect of the new fun and youthful Le Bernardin. I missed Vanity Fair naming Bentel & Bentel as the visionaries in the August issue. The multigenerational family firm has won awards for The Modern, Craft, Craftsteak and 11 Madison Park.
It was a quiet, lonely Labor Day evening and I decided that the reason David Rockwell hasn’t called in a month was because he was consumed with…oh never mind. Please forgive me. It’s hard being a one-woman blog machine.
As partners, chef Eric Ripert and founder Maguy LeCoze keep LeBernardin soaring. Photo: Steven Richter
David Rockwell’s design to make Le Bernardin younger and more fun will be revealed any minute in the NYTimes and again Tuesday (September 6) at a press preview dinner, before this week’s reopening.
I’m just guessing Rockwell of course. Chef-co-owner Eric Ripert was coy Saturday evening July 30 when he chatted with us about the redo at the restaurant’s final dinner before closing but refused to name the designer. “I want to keep the surprise a little bit for when we reopen,” he told us. He admitted the surprise was promised exclusively to the Times. I didn’t even bother badgering Maguy Le Coze who was not there that night because it was the anniversary of brother Gilbert’s shocking death of a heart attack in l994 at just 48. I figure a deal’s a deal. Probably I would promise anything to get a story in the Times too.
Brother-and-sister Gilbert and Maguy LeCoze quickly beguiled our town’s crocodiles in l986.
Together Maguy and Ripert had reopened the restaurant in l994 after a period of mourning, subtly softened and brightened by designers Phil and Gail George, with a menu in homage to Gilbert and they’d gone on to polish and extend its classic aura, keeping it French but not too French.
George did the original design (published in the September 1986 issue of Interior Design) and various touch ups over the years, most recently delegated to Richard Bloch, a former member of his team. Anyway, we can assume it’s not fun designer Betsy Johnson or fun jeweler Kenneth Jay Lane or fun artist Damien Hirst. No need to list restaurant designers we love who are no fun at all. When Ripert pal Anthony Bourdain suggested in Crain’s that the goal was younger and fun, I decided the secret ingredient had to be my longtime friend David Rockwell who has been dodging my phone calls for exactly a month. If I’m wrong I guess I’ll have egg on my face. Not so bad actually, if it’s the chef’s amuse of caviar.
Click here to read:
My first review of LeBernardin in New York, February 25, 1986
Loaves and Fishes, July 30, 1990
What’s Nouvelle? La Cuisine Bourgeoise, Paris, June 1980
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