Aaaahhh… Frites Out!
DOLLY FAIBYSHEV/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
Now that New Yorkers can once again savor their beloved restaurants at full capacity, Heather Hodson and Angela M.H. Schuster round up a short list of some favorite French menu venues
UPTOWN
OOH LA LA! A Moulin Rouge-themed 40th birthday dinner for Julie Macklowe at La Goulue in December 2017.
CAFÉ LUXEMBOURG 200 West 70th Street cafeluxembourg.com (212) 873-7411
This Upper West Side bistro, which opened in 1983, was the second dining establishment opened by Lynn Wagenknecht and “wasband” and friend Keith McNally, cofounders of the wildly popular Odeon, which has remained in Wagenknecht’s hands since the two parted company in 1994. Café Luxembourg has a faithful following of patrons seeking out its French bistro staples of steak tartare, moules frites, and croque monsieur, which have been complemented by comfort-food sides such as mac and cheese. In addition to Odeon, which has become a Manhattan institution of sorts—being the birthplace of the Sex and the City signature Cosmo and the cover star of Jay McInerney’s 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City—Wagenknecht’s French portfolio includes the charming Café Cluny on West 12th Street, which opened in 2006.
DANIEL 60 East 65th Street danielnyc.com (212) 288-0033
No list of French restaurants in New York, indeed America, would be complete without Daniel, the Michelin-starred flagship of restaurateur Daniel Boulud, who has no fewer than ten Gotham establishments. At the age of 13, the New York–based French chef was an apprentice cook in one of the great restaurants in his native Lyon, receiving training in both the ancient culinary art of French cuisine, and the local, Lyonnaise methods. Possibly no one has more knowledge at his fingertips of la grande cuisine than Boulud. At Daniel, the lucky few sit in a modern yet majestic dining room framed by old-world colonnades, dining on gastronomic creations that verge on ambrosia. Best dishes: wood-roasted pigeon and suckling pig.
JULY—AUGUST 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE
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