Charolais Crisis 

I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one.  Sleep tight, Charolais.

              Midnight by cell phone I got the news. Charolais must close. Charolais had opened and closed once already and had changed its name three times.  It has moved itself into a space not exactly cursed but certainly not blessed…where Thomas Keller’s Rakel failed to entice folks downtown...inspiring the master-in-embryo to seed his empire out west.

This time Charolais was closing because restaurateur Simon Oren and his chef-partner Philippe Roussel had decided the landlord’s pesky barricade was keeping customers away in droves.  Oh that: The barricade. I remember looking out at the careering traffic on Varick during dinner at Charolais last week. My guest noted that our corner window was a perfect spot for a car to leap the curb.

            “Well, the barricade will break the impact,” I offered.

            Why would I care what happens on Varick Street? Well. I cared. I had just closed on a sweet little rave first tasting-at-Charolais for my Insatiable Critic column due to come out Monday August 15 in New York Magazine.

“Was there anything I could do to kill the piece?” the publicist’s plaintive message asked - at midnight. The barricade was supposed to come down in July, then August.  Now it looked like it would be blocking the view of the joint, not to mention the sign till October.  Charolais would close and save a few months rent and salaries since no one could find it anyway. 

             I hadn’t planned to spend Wednesday morning rewriting my column but the editors more or less stopped the presses or whatever they do now that the world is digital. Probably they press “delete.”

I was out of the country and missed the first summer tryouts of Charolais aka La Côte d’Or né Charolais. But my confreres at Grub Street and busybodies elsewhere documented it all so I knew vaguely.  Oren and Roussel didn’t really like the taste of American-raised Charolais for their French steakhouse, it seems. So they reached out for La Cote d’Or. But the Belgian candy company was not about to ignore Cote d’Or – the stability-deprived child was now described as their homage to Burgundian cooking with a focus on beef.

An invitation to come for a freebie tasting had arrived just the Tuesday afternoon before the midnight call.

I tried to talk Oren out of closing. “Do you really think you can open this place yet again? People will laugh.”

“They are already laughing,” he said resignedly.

“What will it cost to reopen?”

 “$200,000…but it will cost about that either way.”

 “Why don’t you put a cow out front,” I suggested. “Rent a cow. How about girls in bikinis holding signs?”   I hinted that my column was a rave. “Maybe people will come. New York Magazine is powerful.” I must confess I even read him the first line:

 “If Charolais had launched almost anywhere in Manhattan except this awkward little corner of Varick, there would be lines trailing down the block.”

 At noon today Oren has not yet told the staff he is planning to close. In fact, when I found him at the construction sight of Nizza, a Ligurian adventure he hopes to launch in fall next to his restaurant Marseille, he had not closed Charolais, not even told the chef, he tells me, nor the staff.  Now he was not sure when he would close the place. Or if.  Sixty reservations for dinner tonight had roiled his brain. How could he do that to his investors? Close with sixty reservations in the book? He was only trying to protect me from writing a column in case he had to close a few days late.

 I feel betrayed.  I feel like a tool.  I remember when Warner LeRoy closed Maxwell’s Plum after clearing the facts in a review I’d written of his new chef Geoffrey Zakarian’s menu. That was a rave too. My review ran the Monday after the restaurant closed.   I’m hoping my editors at New York are going to forgive me. 

 Anyway, this gives you a chance for a pretasting before Charolais morphs into a sleep state.  But then, maybe it won’t.                      

The chef's small contemporary touches do not mar a splendid coq au vin.  Photo: Steven Richter

             Real sweetbread texture in a fricasee, Burgundy classics like coq au vin or egg simmered in red wine at pennypinching prices.  If Charolais had launched almost anywhere in Manhattan except this awkward little corner of Varick, there would be lines trailing down the block.

One taste of the marvelous duck terrine and it’s clear there’s a real French chef in charge. Being Brittany-born didn’t strain chef-partner Philippe Roussel’s Alsatian homage uptown at Café d’Alsace nor does it compromise his Burgundian memories here in this bistro with a steak house fixation.

 Are those sweetbreads tossed on celery root? Is there frisee in the egg meurette?  Roussel has picked up on New York’s affection for accents of greenery since his youthful days in the kitchen of the Brothers Troisgros. Call this place what you will -- restaurateur Simon Oren expanding his Tour de France feeding empire with Roussel, wigged out settling on a name  (La Moelle, Charolais, Côte d’Or) changing it yet again days after opening.

 But that hasn’t spooked the kitchen. If it can consistently turn out an aged strip as perfect as tonight’s for just $23.95 and first-rate fries like these -- we specify extra crispy -- it may conquer the loneliness on this corner (once Thomas Keller’s underappreciated Rakel).

             Definitely a plus are appetizers starting at $5.95, entrees from $14.95 and $5 sides. To me the unremarkable design seems somehow unfinished. A sampling of the evocative French advertising signs that pepper Café d’Alsace might help.