Drew Nieporent has scaled many mountaintops during the course of his storied restaurant career. He was among the pioneers who led the fine-dining exodus out of midtown (to his Tribeca restaurants, Montrachet and the Tribeca Grill), and he helped turn Asian fusion into a respected branch of haute cuisine (at Nobu, and its subsequent outlets). But Nieporent’s latest venture, called Corton, may be his greatest challenge of all. His chef is Paul Liebrandt, a tempestuous diva of the old school who has a reputation for conjuring up impractical, brilliantly abstruse recipes, then bolting (or being fired) from the kitchen shortly thereafter. The mannered, Continental type of cooking Liebrandt and Nieporent are attempting to peddle has been losing market share to the casual Greenmarket style of dining for years. Then there’s that fearful sucking sound emanating from Wall Street. The city’s cratering economy has already wiped out a sizable portion of Corton’s potential clientele and threatens to take many of the city’s gilded, big-money dining establishments down with it.
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