Four Seasons: The Long Goodbye (CLOSED)

The farmhouse duck was perfect, perfectly carved, perfectly cooked, crisp-skinned and meaty.

          A funny thing happened to the Four Seasons on the way to oblivion. Quite suddenly, it’s become one of the hottest restaurants in town. Consigned by whim and ego to hospice care – eviction when its current lease expires in July 2016 -- the old gal has suddenly come alive. When my friend Wilfred. who had never been to the Four Seasons, suggested we should book a farewell dinner, it never occurred to me that we would not be the only mourners checking in. But I should have guessed.

Friends across the room had not been here for a decade. Four other couples they knew were here too.

          Last Wednesday evening I climbed the stairs early. “You’re the first to arrive,” Trideep Bose, host at the maître d’ pulpit, greeted me.

          “I’d like to wait at the table,” I said.

          ”Your table is not quite ready,” he said. “Please have a seat. Let me check.” He raced off to the Pool Room, avoiding my eyes as he returned to face a tirade from others parked on hold. My companions arrived. “This is so shocking,” I said. “I’m waiting for the table. Half the people at the bar are waiting.”

“The boys,” Alex Von Bidder and Julian Niccolini, were not to be seen in the chaos of overbooking.

          There was no sign of  “the boys.”  I still think of Julian Niccolini and Alex Von Bidder as “the boys,” twenty years after they took over running the place from the dignified and elegant Paul Kovi and Tom Margittai. I had a crush on Kovi, trim, graying and handsome as an old movie star. “If he does not wear a velvet cape, he should,” I wrote.

My great memories date from the reign of the elegant Hungarians, Paul Kovi and Tom Margittai.

          The dapper Hungarians in the full-page Times “two of us” ads signaled the Four Seasons renaissance as they shook up the kitchen, created the Power Lunch, and restored the gloss after buying the fading place from a then-swooning Restaurant Associates in 1973.

Gone now, the Picasso, the dessert cart, and the creators of the Power Lunch, Margittai and Kovi.

          After half an hour of racing back and forth, it suddenly occurred to the harassed Bose to offer us a drink. That meant he had to offer the irate regulars benched across from us drinks too. He assigned a female aide to the task. She seemed a little slow. First day on the job? First day on earth? Wilfred’s martini arrived on the rocks. He sent it back.

The original tabletop bowl and stand for bread designed by the Huxtables is still on the table.

          Finally, Bose led us to our table -- a prime table next to the pale green bubbling waters of the pool that might or might not be worth the 45-minute wait. I glanced around: the room was bustling, full. The party room above, open and full too. Instantly, a small bowl of olives arrived. And then the familiar bowl of bread was set into its familiar stand. “The runty little croissants,” I noted.

There’s nothing like a serious white Burgundy to elevate the evening.  Everything tastes twice as good.

          Bose returned with a bottle of champagne. “Not for me,” I said, my inner spoiled brat still simmering. “I don’t really like champagne.”  He poured for my friends. It was not just some sparkling ersatz champagne, I realized. It was real champagne. He turned the bottle so I could see the orange label: La Grande Dame from Veuve Clicquot. I decided to stop grumping.  “Yes, please,” I said.

Robert Indiana sent the art which may or may not be a comment on the Four Seasons drama.

          On the big wall above us there were two giant works. Not Four Seasons style, I thought. “Eat,” said one. “Art,” said the other. I was reminded of the new landlord, real estate and art collector Aby Rosen. And his immutable whim -- that the Four Seasons must go. The message seemed very Aby.  But no, it was a gift from the painter, Von Bidder told me later. “Robert Indiana loves the Four Seasons,” he said. “So maybe there was a little tongue in cheek there.”

Yes, I was there with my father when it opened in 1959 – here’s the bar and the pastry cart.

          I had four olives and took a bite of the dwarf croissant. It was delicious. I very rarely come by the Power Lunch scene. Once when I did, Julian seemed amused to give me Lally Weymouth’s table. “She’ll be furious,” he assured me. More recently I’d met a house regular to try the $28 Bar lunch for a report on the city’s great lunch bargains. I’d had asparagus soup and a tuna burger and hoped to witness a power tantrum from my post but not that day, alas.

We were two poolside in August, 2013. I had the corn ravioli. He had peaches, three ways.

          At dinner in a near-empty Pool Room one August Saturday in 2013, I’d tasted the ravioli and my host’s peaches three ways and had been thrilled by the sensuous ripples of the gold-anodized aluminum chain curtains as currents of air rise from concealed ducts. For some reason, I never cease to be fascinated by that dance. I didn’t notice the prices that summer evening. Now I did but I had no wish to obsess about the decadence of $68 lamb chops or a $72 filet of bison Rossini at this memorial celebration.

Wilfred treats us to a red Burgundy too, a Vosne-Romanee “Aux Malconsorts”

          My friend Wilfred was financing the wine tonight. I sipped his Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles, savoring aromas of fleshy melon and vanilla, feeling wonderfully, excessively indulged. Alas, Rita wasn’t interested in sharing the crisp farmhouse duck for two with me. Wilfred seemed focused on the concept of steak Diane. He discussed it with our captain, Steve, thin, serious, bespectacled. Steve had an ascetic look as if he could be a Sunday school teacher, not a steward to excite expensive cravings.  He’d been here 25 years, he told us.

Our Captain Steve MacArthur has had 25 years here to hone his carving finesse.

          “I don’t suppose the kitchen could do the crisp farmhouse duck for one? I asked.

          “Well, of course,” Steve said.

          “For you,” sniffed Rita. “Anything.”

          “It’s not like I’m somebody,” I protested. “I’m not anybody anymore.”

Soft shell crab is sautéed crisp and delicious, decked out in the fussy style of Chef Pecko.

          Well, maybe it wasn’t the most dazzling soft shell crab I’ve ever had ($65 as an entrée, $32.50 as a starter). But it was good enough, sauteed and fancy, served with pea shoots, shaved carrots, watermelon radish and cauliflower, a bit sweet, but delicious, in its Dijon-honey dressing. I sipped my lush white burgundy and was very happy.

I’m grateful that restaurants still fuss but this lobster gift was just too much between crab and duck.

          It’s not always sheer pleasure when the house has decided you are a person to be indulged. I rarely complain when a drift of truffles magnifies into a blizzard, but we’d already spent an hour in limbo and  had a generous starter when the lobster interrupted. A gift from chef Pecko Zantilaveevan -- executive chef here since 2010 -- in a flowery, tropical style, it was slow-poached and tossed with mango, coconut, hearts of palm and favas. I took a bite or two and decided to save myself for the duck.

Did someone eat the other half of my duck? Would I have paid $65 to take it home for breakfast?

          The Four Seasons long ago abandoned the brilliant dictates of its creator Joe Baum. It cost $7,000 in overtime just to change from fall to winter over a Sunday. Uniforms, accessories, flowers forced to bloom to change with the season, cummerbunds, matchbooks, ashtrays, cocktail napkins, even cloakroom checks, service plates, pageboy uniforms. That whole magnificent megillah is gone, along with the pageboys. But at least the tableside drama remains.

Our captain does a classic sear and flame on Wilfred’s steak Diane. Lost in duck, I missed the shot.

          Our captain mans the serving cart like an emergency room station, first manicuring the duck, scraping the fat from shellacked mahogany skin. His geometric carving is worthy of Pythagoras. He had urged me to choose bing cherry over the pepper sauce, as it was, after all, more seasonal. He presented my plate before turning to the gilding of Wilfred’s steak with gobs of butter, a river of cream and cognac flames à la Diane.

Rita thought the watermelon-feta salad would be light to follow lunch-excess at Jean-Georges.

          I might have asked for the cherry sauce on the side, but, in fact, I didn’t mind the sweet glaze at the edge of my duck. It was beautifully cooked, moist, meaty and not stringy at all.  The three of us shared tastes. I was surprised that, given its boost of green peppercorns and mustard, the steak was curiously wimpy. The three of us agreed, duck was the way to go.

The chocolate-pecan cake is more like an elegant candy bar with salted bourbon-caramel sauce.

          The crowd was thinning as we contemplated the dessert menu. All around I spied big pink cocoons of spun sugar. It used to be a dessert treat for children. Now suddenly, it’s a contagion. “Where is the pastry cart?” I asked.

          “Oh we gave the cart up long time ago,” we were told. Our captain, looking pale and exhausted now, suggested it was a question of redoing the pastry cart or cleaning the pool. And yes, the pool was pristine. But I missed the fancy cake that used to ride on the top of the cart and the Four Seasons chocolate velvet, my favorite. 

Our captain delivers the house ice cream sampler as his gift.

          Neither is on pastry chef Jim W. Hutchinson’s menu. But at least he has not succumbed to lawn clippings in his $18 desserts. These nights, it is not always possible to select a dessert without basil or thyme or parsnip. I chose the chocolate-pecan cake with Peruvian dark chocolate cream, a bourbon caramel sauce and bourbon gelée for the three of us to share.

Were the cookies always this low rent? I can’t recall. Do you?

          The cookies arrived, sad-looking and very ordinary on a tray that was set into the frame that held the bread bowl. At least the silver stand has lasted since 1959, even if the cookies seemed shopworn. (Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable and her husband, L. Garth Huxtable, an industrial designer, designed the tabletop.) Why had the dessert taken so long?  “I’m afraid your dessert collided with the desserts for the private party,” Captain Steve confessed, with the exhausted but triumphant air of a pitcher after nine scoreless innings.

          Fashionably sculpted, the cake was too chic to be called simply a cake; it was seriously chocolate, devilishly crunchy. A few minutes later Steve slid an ice cream sampler on the table. His gift. We had no problem exploring that too.

Here’s an old photo of the art collector landlord Aby Rosen with his real estate partner Michael Fuchs.

          Now it was late and the truth is I was…indeed I am seized with sadness. I cannot imagine there will ever be another Four Seasons. Niccolini and Von Bidder, with their partners, the Bronfman family, own the name. But the name alone, even if a corps of today’s power lunchers follow, will never be a stand-in for the Four Seasons we’ve known. Even here, with the city’s powerful roasting Julian Niccolini at the Fiftieth Anniversary dinner and the Dalai Lama lunching that same day, the restaurant has been less than its quintessential prime.

          I remember the Paul Bocuse Dinners the California Barrel Tastings with platoons of waiters holding trays aloft, marching in unison like Rockettes. It has taken the headlines of imminent closing to fill the Pool Room again.

It’s Urs Fischer’s monumental “Big Clay” out front, photo by Steve Cuozzo. He called it a turd.

          Could Rosen and “the boys” have worked out a new path for the Four Seasons that would please everyone? Von Bidder reminds me, Rosen thought the restaurant was perfect for the wedding dinner when he married Samantha Boardman in 2005.

          But it’s hard to envision that co-op team. And whatever Seagram Building owner Aby Rosen installs in this landmarked interior, even with the cascading metal chain curtains and the Lippold bronze stalactites intact over the bar, I cannot imagine it will be seen as the Three and a Half Seasons or the Fifth Season. Still it might be imprudently compelling. It might even be wonderful.

***

Photos may not be used without permission of Gael Greene. Copyright 2015. All rights reserved.

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