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Is Oprah’s chef Art Smith fated for the White House kitchen? On Sunday Obama and friends will be eating Mexican catered by Oprah’s chef Art Smith - an Obama favorite - through his restaurant Table 52. No one was saying where Chicago’s triumphant favorite will be worshiping, but insiders in the Chicago food chain were planning a homey supper of guacamole, tacos, rice and beans, dips and salsas through the restaurant’s catering arm. Even before the momentous huddle with Hillary, the Sunday supper SOS went out. Chicago fooderati, gathered at Smith’s home Monday for the backyard cookout launch of a new free-range organic veal, were buzzing about whether Oprah’s chef of a decade might take over the White House kitchen. Smith’s confidantes are sure he would agree to handle ceremonial events but not daily feeding. The Jasper, Florida-born Smith – touched by the golden Oprah effect – has won two James Beard Foundation awards – one for his first cookbook, Back to the Table, and the second in 2007 as Humanitarian of the Year for founding Common Threads, a children’s organization fostering cultural awareness. Smith is also a consultant to Chicago meat supplier Allen Brothers, a partner with Strauss Brands of Milwaukee in their campaign to market Meadow Reserve Veal, billed as sustainable, ethically-raised, leaner and mothers’ milk-fed. 6-6-08
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Dubai wants Brooklyn Diner but Rockefeller Center has grave doubts. Shelly Fireman thought Pino Luongo’s abandoned Tuscan Square duplex would be perfect for an annex of his top grossing Brooklyn Diner. “I love the space,” he told the Tishman-Speyer rep. Alas, the rental power was less than eager, according to Fireman. “Would you be willing to give up using Brooklyn in the name?” he wanted to know.
Meanwhile, Shelly and wife Marilyn were planning a dinner of Brooklyn Diner classics for the team wanting to franchise the 57th Street landmark in Dubai. One partner is Indian; the other from Bahrain. “If the Arab is a Muslim, he probably won’t eat pork,” Marilyn mused. “And the Indian could be vegetarian, or just not eat beef," she added.
“He could be a Jain,” a friend at dinner warned her. “He might not eat after sundown.”
“I’ve already told the chef, whatever you do, don’t call them pigs in blankets.” 6-4-08.
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You won’t find three lentil chili or chicken vegetable soup with cous cous at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery on the third floor balcony of the Time Warner building, but no big deal – Hale and Hearty Soups is coming soon to the Columbus Circle monolith with chunky chicken chowder, $5.19 for a medium bowl with crackers. 6-2-08
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Las Vegas fooderati are expecting A Voce chef Andrew Carmellini to fly in this week prospecting for gold. Still forbidden by lawyers to talk about the drama that left him out at A Voce, pending a settlement, the long time mainstay at Café Boulud has already visited Wynn Resort where chef wrangler Elizabeth Blau is trolling for talent to make stoves sizzle at the new Wynn Encore. My hear-all ear in Vegas tells me Carmellini thought the Wynn setup was a cult, and didn’t like it. 6-2-08
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Wynn Resorts may be a cult but veteran chef Larry Forgione is totally smitten. Watching Forgione emerge from River Café in l977 as the force (with owner Buzzy O’Keefe’s cash) behind the first “free-range” chicken on his menu…to elder statesman of our city’s American chefs at 56, I find it hard to imagine Forgione in Las Vegas. “I didn’t imagine me going to Las Vegas either,” he confesses. “But the Wynn organization is wonderful. Truly. I’ve been back and forth 12 times since February.”
A pioneer graduate of the CIA in Hyde Park, Forgione, who has ridden his iconic An American Place from upper Madison to Park Avenue South then over to Lord & Taylor, will move it into the Wynn Resort Tower space now occupied by Tableau. “I get an anxiety attack walking into the other casinos, but at Wynn, there’s a sense of calm,” Forgione says. “There’s a buzz but not that casino chaos.” He plans to live in Summerlin or Lake Las Vegas. “Once you get off the strip, it reminds me of Sante Fe in 1956.” Sarabeth’s will go into Lord & Taylor, with a probable late fall opening, says Sarabeth Levine. 6-2-08
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Designer Adam Tihany’s “Image Board” for La Fonda del Sol’s Café.
La Fonda Del Sol, named for Joe Baum’s long-gone pink hacienda by Alexander Girard in the Time-Life Building, will open this fall on Vanderbilt Avenue on the hip of the MetLife building. Critics and fans liked to say that Restaurant Associates’ Pan-Latin Fonda del Sol, one of the first theme restaurants, in its revolutionary modernist setting, was “totally ahead of its time” in 1961. It was “fiercely, perhaps fatally authentic,” I wrote in New York (November 2, 1970) though, in fact, it lasted a decade. Tattered menus still sell on Ebay. Now, Nick Valenti, chief of Patino Group (formerly Restaurant Associates) thinks La Fonda’s time has come at last. Having surrendered Tropica, in its time a major destination, then later overlooked in the core of the MetLife building, to a Chase ATM center, he emerged with this space on the street.
I loved La Fonda, coveting Girard’s folk art collection of Central and South America toys and puppets installed throughout in illuminated windows (now in a New Mexico museum). Indeed, except for the uniforms by Rudi Gernreich and low-back pedestal chairs by Eames, Girard had a design hand in everything, using bold geometric patterns and uninhibited color: carpets, tile, dishes, salt and pepper shakers, napkins, matchbooks, stylized metal suns everywhere, the little adobe house that enclosed the bar. My favorite memory is walking into the ladies room and finding a customer bathing an infant in one of the pink sinks.
“It was very sophisticated for its time,” the designer Adam Tihany says, “But what worked then, doesn’t work now. Tastes have changed. Golden suns?” he scoffs. So don’t expect an homage to Girard in Tihany’s scheme for the street-side bar-lounge and raised dining room. “But if you know, you might see a trail. The pattern of the terrazzo floor hints of the tile he used on the counters. And that pink appears in the upholstery pattern.” As both Valenti and Tihany point out, a lot of people didn’t get it at the time anyway. “Seviche in the 60s,” says Valenti. “That was before sushi. But savvy people were thrilled.”
5-27-08
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Tony May says the new San Domenico will reflect daughter Marisa’s generation. Photo: Steven Richter
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| Chef Odette Fada goes downtown too. Photo Steven Richter |
Before moving
San Domenico downtown with a radical makeover to a new, hipper, sexier, more au courant image, veteran restaurateur Tony May will celebrate 20 years on Central Park South by bringing back the opening menu at 1988 prices, three courses for $55. Beginning May 29 through June 16, look for vintage oldies like beef carpaccio with slivers of goose liver in raspberry vinaigrette, garganelli quill pasta with caviar and cream, and Sicilian prawns with cannellini beans, rosemary and olive oil. Parties for friends will follow, beginning with a gathering of stars who passed though the kitchen – Paul Bartolotta (now at Wynn in Las Vegas), Theo Schoenegger (now with Patina Group), Scott Conant (
Scarpetta), Andrew Carmellini (wherever he is) and Valentino Marcattilii from the original San Domenico in Imola, Italy. So farewell and phooey to the landlord who refused to make a deal May and daughter Marisa could live with. The new larger space (the Mays aren’t saying where, but I hear it’s downtown in the Gramercy Park area), with separate wine bar menu will be the first U.S. restaurant for Massimo Vignelli, master designer of books, magazines, furniture, Bloomingdale’s Big Brown Bag and the classic NYC subway map. Marisa May says the family and team, including chef Odetta Fada, will spend August at the May home in Capri, exploring Sorrento, Positano and Ischia, “always eating,” with a hoped for opening in fall. 5-27-08
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Chef Michael Huynh can’t quite hide at Rain as he preps for new deal. Photo: Steven Richter
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I found the peripatetic chef Michael Huynh looking a bit dazed in the kitchen at Rain Friday night. “Jet lag,” he said, just back from Vietnam and turning out charred beef on lemongrass sticks and quail atop a toss of daikon cake bits and duck confit with a tiny fried quail egg to a full house dining mostly on the house classics. It’s a temporary gig - four specials a night - till Rain closes this fall for a big makeover and new name (not yet revealed) with Huynh on stage.
Given the trail of bruised restaurateurs left behind by this shooting star who fancies himself the Nobu of Vietnam, it’s
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Shrimp salad, short ribs sticks. Photo: Steven Richter.
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possible to forget the raves for his Vietnamese home cooking at
Bao III, the delicious surprise of a new sophistication at
Mai House and his dazzling debut at
Bun/So with wife Thao Nguyen pouting by his side as she whipped up spring rolls. But Main Street Restaurant Group’s Stephen Scher, saddled with a certain weariness at 13-year-old Rain, remembers. Undaunted by Huynh’s love’em and leave’em rep, Scher is sure the deal he’s given him will cure the chef's attention-deficit-syndrome. “We have promised each other we are committed to this project,” Scher says, gingerly choosing his words.
“We’re going to be 50-50,” Huynh tells a friend. At 43 and recently married, Huynh snaps: “I need to make money. My wife yells at me. She wants to know what happened. I had a bad partner at Bun. Now is the first time anyone gives me an even deal. She’ll be here with me when we open.” True, there is Michael’s hotel consulting job in Vietnam, but “they don’t mind if I’m away for a week once in a while.” 5-19-08
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Etherworld spies report spotting peripatetic Bunster Michael Huynh in the kitchen at Rain (100 West 82nd Street). Why don’t I hear trumpets and huzzahs? Is he on a secret mission? In March I reported here that the restless chef of Mai House, Bun/Soho and the recently expired Bao III was saying he had a deal with Main Street Restaurant Group to do something delicious on the Upper West Side. Main Street partner Steven Scher insisted then it was only talk so far. But now it could be yam soup and sweetbread pho. I’m waiting for newlywed Sher to call back. He could be on his own extended honeymoon. With Huynh the honeymoon is sometimes brief. 5-16-08
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Some people I know will think these triple chocolate truffle monsters are just the right size.
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Readers might think my passion for chocolate means I’m a raging chocoholic. No. I am merely a woman who deeply appreciates the fruit of the bean. I feel that one small bite of chocolate is the essential ending to any meal…an inspired finale to the day. Last week a thumping big triple chocolate truffle monster landed in front of me at dinner. It was an evening of smartly calibrated gourmand excess at the home of my longtime pal, Arthur Schwartz, who has been out promoting his new book, Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited, by introducing himself as America’s second longest running food critic, citing me as the first.
I only meant to have a taste and broke off a modest chunk. But then I bit into its midnight dark cake-like exterior, struck an island of exquisite even deeper chocolate, and out-of-control, broke off another nubbin and…it was gone! It seems that when Michael Glosman isn’t organizing Arthur’s life as his personal assistant, he’s baking cookies (and rugelach in seven flavors) for shipment all over the country. Nothing is baked in advance. When an order comes in, he starts melting the chocolate. A dozen of these quarter-pounders (as big as a full size bagel but weightier) in a basket is $40 plus shipping. His “cherry cordial” is the same triple truffle cookie, land-mined with dried cherries. For information and orders, call 212 246 4205. 5-14-08