If Jean-Georges Vongerichten was the multitalented Picasso of nineties auteur “superstar” chefs, then David Burke was the blustering cook’s version of Julian Schnabel. At hit restaurants like the Park Avenue Café, Burke embellished his recipes with fanciful props, created inventive sculptures on the plate from lobster shells and other oddments, and slapped countless fusion ingredients together in the hope that a few of them would stick. Like the market for Schnabel’s more garish canvases, however, the one for Burke’s expressive brand of showmanship has dwindled over the years. Recently he’s lent his name (like lots of the star chefs from the vanished nineties) to more formulaic enterprises, including seafood restaurants (Fishtail by David Burke), steakhouses (in Vegas, Chicago, and the Foxwoods casino), and even a string of signature comfort-food spots at unusual locales like Bloomingdale’s and the newish Bowlmor Lanes, in Times Square.
So it was only a matter of time before Burke (like Jean-Georges before him) tackled the most fashionable and formulaic trend of our time, farm-to-table dining. David Burke Kitchen, which opened not long ago in the basement of the starkly modernist, almost comically un-bucolic James New York hotel, in lower Soho, is decorated with all the familiar totems of our barnyard-mad era. The walls of the softly lit, dun-colored room are adorned with the usual giant color photographs of apple-cheeked “suppliers” cuddling the usual lobsters, piglets, and baby sheep. The ceiling is clad with planks of tastefully distressed wood that look like they’ve been ripped from the side of an Amish barn, and the café-style chairs are made with woven leather. The tabletops are cut from polished wood and set with blue-check napkins, like at a church picnic, and when you ask for a glass of water, it’s poured from specially made bottles stenciled with the image of a capering rabbit.
Read more at http://nymag.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment