60 W. 55th St., near Sixth Ave.
Tel. 646-943-7373
Opening Hours: Lunch: 11:30am – 2:30pm daily.
Dinner: Sunday through Wednesday 5:30 to 10:30pm, Thursday through Saturday to 11pm
Credit Cards: All Major
Prices: Moderate to Expensive
UPDATE: Alain Ducasse hired Chef Pierre Schaedelin and within a few months time he has turned the kitchen around, and on top of that introduced two amazing steals: a $19 two-course lunch and a $35 three-course dinner. The cuisine is now in good form, and if you choose properly, the price can be well below market too.
I think we have to face the fact that Monsieur Ducasse these days prefers being a businessman rather than a dedicated chef and as he has said himself, “The role of the chef is to train people to take care of clients . . . that he develops over the years”. With two restaurant closures in New York he is even more determined to win over New Yorkers and expects to do so with Adour Alain Ducasse, the name of his new restaurant. It opened at the beginning of 2008 in the St. Regis Hotel and is a much more elaborate version than the one in the Essex House that closed last year. His New York edition of Benoit, founded in 1912 in Paris, and now owned by Ducasse and a partner, opened its New York version in April 2008.
With his plethora of restaurants, cookbooks, endorsements and line of cooking supplies, Mr. Ducasse had three restaurants with three Michelin stars each—at the Essex House in Manhattan, the Plaza Athénée restaurant in Paris and the Louis XV restaurant in the Monte Carlo. In the 1990s, Mr. Ducasse became the first chef in 60 years to win six Michelin stars at once, for his restaurants in Paris and Monaco. And in 1990, at 34, he was the youngest chef in France to be awarded three Michelin stars, for his Monte Carlo restaurant.
“It is an honor to open in the former La Côte Basque space—it holds a sense of history very much in line with my vision to create a true bistro”, said Alain Ducasse. Executive Chef Sébastien Rondier presents dishes from Benoit’s 50-100 years old recipes.
I am personally delighted, as a diner and reviewer, that Benoit will offer some of my favorite old bistro dishes as; pâté en croûte, poached green asparagus with mousseline sauce (it is so seldom you can find this sauce), Sirloin steak, gratin Dauphinois, sauce aux poivres, Quenelle de brochet, sauce Nantua, garlic-roasted chicken with pommes frites L’ami Louis-style, steak au poivre with pommes soufflė. Individual wheels of cheese from Camembert to Cervelle de Canuts. For dessert classical bistro desserts as profiteroles, Baba au rhum and traditional tarte tatin. Prices are quite reasonable at Appetizers, $1 (for a single boiled “egg with mayonnaise”) to $19; entrées, $19 to $48.
Adam Platt, writing in New York Magazine, panned Benoit and said, “. . .one more cookie-cutter French brasserie in this brasserie-addled town.” While in the same publication veteran restaurant critic Gael Green said of it, . . “(we) have to be grateful he (Alain Ducasse) has resurrected La Côte Basque’s former space. . . and now offers bistro nostalgia to stand in for all the oldies that have disappeared.”
I personally believe that Alain Ducasse’s intention was to re-create a bistro, not a brasserie and this restaurant is certainly not a brasserie, although it is not in the strict sense a bistro either, but rather a restaurant serving old-fashioned bistro dishes.
From my experience, a French Brasserie is a large space originally based on a brewery, specializing in food from Alsace-Lorraine such as sauerkraut, beer on draught and the like, usually offering shellfish with a person committed to shucking them in their own station, and is open throughout the day and night. On the other hand, a French Bistro traditionally is a small place serving a limited menu sometimes using a blackboard or handwritten menu.
