VERNISSAGE
FRANC AND FEARLESS Maguy Le Coze and Eric Ripert, co-owners of Le Bernardin, in New York. Opposite: Le Bernardin’s main dining room.
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“I
Reggie Nadelson on the transcendent pleasures of dining want more of those langousat Le Bernardin tines.” This is my cousin Caite, and we’re just finishing lunch at Le Bernardin. It is the best restaurant in New York, possibly the world; the French La Liste has consistently rated it in the top slot or at number two since it opened in 1986. And who knows better than the French? The langoustines were sublime, warm and lightly cooked in a dashi broth, not so much poured as gently drizzled into the bowls, with exquisite finesse, from a little jug by one of the endlessly attentive staff.
Caite and I have come into the restaurant on a grimy, dank winter’s day, escaping from 51st Street, in the middle of the busiest part of the city, where the traffic is crazy and the noise cacophonous—trucks honking, people yelling, office workers dripping hot sauce onto tacos from food trucks. Inside Le Bernardin is a different world. The French have a word for it: dépaysement. It means, literally, “out of the country,” but the real sense of it means to be away, in another world, free of the quotidian. Almost as soon as we are seated, a bowl of salmon rillettes and glasses of La Caravelle arrive at our table. As we sip our Champagne, waiters dance around, bringing the tray of bread—baby baguettes, dense dark pumpernickel slices, fennel and tomato rolls, walnut and raisin bread, all seemingly just out of the oven. The butter is soft and sweet, and when we help ourselves and our knives leave a tiny mark on the surface, the pot of butter is replaced with another one, the surface smooth: no dented butter for us, not at Le Bernardin. This is dining on a grand scale. It belongs to the timeless New York of the dazzling skyline and the dry martini, the mythic city of the spectacular, of George Gershwin and Duke Ellington, of Jackie Kennedy, of Fred Astaire dancing in the dark in Central Park, of Hamilton on Broadway. The glorious dining room is outfitted with orchids in glass holders and lavishly comfortable tables and chairs, a plush carpet, an immense painting of the sea, and exquisite service. Le Bernardin is elegant—palatial, even—but never pompous or grandiose or intimidating. Sleek, stylish, swanky, sexy, it all works because the food and wine are, simply put, beautiful—but without that “touch me not” quality. This is food to relish, to savor. My most profoundly cosmopolitan friend, the journalist Vladimir Pozner, who is all at once
MAGUY LE COZE AND ERIC RIPERT: DANIEL KRIEGER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
From the Sublime to the Cuttlefish
AVENUE MAGAZINE | JULY—AUGUST 2021
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6/17/21 11:14 AM
