November 8, 2004 | Ask Gael
With Rocco out, why go?
Rocco fans' loss is catnip for devotees of Laurent Tourondel...
October 18, 2004 | Ask Gael
You got into Café Gray early. And . . . ?
What a sweet conceit to call it Café Gray. It’s an ebullient fantasy, Lespinasse-at-a-discount (entrées $22 to $34) with Gray Kunz hustling in his Bulgari of a kitchen overlooking Central Park. He’s been saving the silver cassolettes...
October 11, 2004 | Ask Gael
Can this be Greek, or am I dreaming?
Hellenes will recognize the flavors of home immediately at Onera. Michael Psilakis steeped himself in reveries of his mother's kitchen, invited his uncle up from Florida to trade recipes for the classics, and then turned it all into a fantasy of Greek food for the 21st century...
October 4, 2004 | Ask Gael
What's left of Ancien Gallic Grandeur?
With Lutece, La Cote Basque, and La Caravelle all six forks under, it's thrilling that La Grenoulle thrives. Owning the building helps the bottom line, of course, and owner Charles Masson's youthful makeover - opening up the facade with glass...
September 16, 2004 | Ask Gael
Is there one new dish that haunts your dreams?
I've become an absolute fool for the rosemary roasted potatoes at Vento. All I can think about as the taxi streaks down Ninth Avenue toward the meat market is whether I will have my roasted potatoes - "extra well done, please" ...
September 13, 2004 | Ask Gael
Is there a chef who digs my carbophobia?
No need to compromise your carbophobic vows at The Sea Grill. Just tell the waiter you want the kitchen to do you a carb-light tasting. Chef Ed Brown shed 30 pounds on Atkins and keeps his trim on modified South Beach, so he's your guru. At dinner, he has more time to dazzle, but at a recent lunch he sent out cured salmon-belly tartare spiked with wasabi tobiko...
August 16, 2004 | Ask Gael
How romantic can it be?
It doesn't get more romantic than Kittichai: two soot-defying gazebos out front, a lounge where petals float in jars, and a shadowy dining room with tea lights adrift on a shimmering pool...
August 16, 2004 | Ask Gael
What's swifter and surer than Prozac?
Thoroughly bummed out after bailing on a touted but listless place in Queens, the four of us speed toward Manhattan seeking instant comfort. That's how we get to Patsy's Pizzeria...
August 9, 2004 | Ask Gael
I’m in the Hamptons and need a reality check.
Crank down a few decibels with lunch at The Fish Farm. Get Marie Valenti to dish up her marvelous, peppery swordfish chili (a pint is perfect for two) and a couple of honest lobster rolls, barely mayo'd and sporting a big chunk of tail meat on top...
July 12, 2004 | Ask Gael
What Have You Found in the Raw-Food Craze?
I’ve been ignoring this nutty trendlet, hoping it would go away. And when Matthew Kenney started soaking nuts and sprouting grains, I wrote it off as a midlife crisis...
June 28, 2004 | Ask Gael
Is it true Mix has been demixtified?
It was arch and annoying, and it's not anymore. For a minute I wonder if we've tripped into Pleasantville, the welcome at Mix in New York is so sugary...
June 14, 2004 | Ask Gael
Are you a chef groupie?
I think of myself as a stalker, quick to follow a promising whisk on the climb. I first noticed Linda Japngie's assertive way with citrus and chili heat when she was in the kitchen at Jimmy's Uptown, gentrifying soul food and island classics with tricks picked up at Bouley...
June 14, 2004 | Ask Gael
What’s that exotic rhythm on Rockefeller Plaza?
That would be the keening ghazals of the sitar and the drum chant that herald Chinatown lion dancers leaping across the flower-decked esplanades of Rockefeller Center at Taj Hotels’ Feast of Many Moons—a giant cookout on June 14 in the garden below Prometheus...
June 7, 2004 | Ask Gael
Delouvrier and Ducasse: Can this marriage be saved?
My affluent restaurant-fan pal, famous for his exuberance, tucks into the chef’s offering—a supernal crayfish pea stew with a tickle of foie gras. And moans: “Oh, my God, it’s sublime.”
May 31, 2004 | Ask Gael
What happened to La Caravelle?
In 1968, an era of haute snoot in Manhattan's imperious French restaurants, I was a quaking outsider, braving the avowed snobbisme of the terrible-tempered Robert Meyzen for a red velour banquette in La Caravelle's farthest Siberia.