What in the world has gotten into Jeffrey Chodorow?” muttered one of the food snobs at my table as he took a perfectly brined pickle from the exceptional “delicatessen” board at the rashly conceived, surprisingly accomplished “modern Jewish-American” restaurant Kutsher’s Tribeca and crunched it happily between his teeth. Chodorow, of course, is the restaurateur New York food snobs love to hate. Over the years, the successful entrepreneur (he’s made millions in real estate, among other investments) has been derided by members of the self-appointed culinary smart set as a hopeless populist (his five China Grill franchises are wildly profitable), a purveyor of overpriced, passé luxury foods and schlock décor (the samurai-sword-covered Kobe Club), and a serial sponsor of endless star-crossed, crackpot dining schemes (Rocco DiSpirito’s reality-TV restaurant Rocco’s, as well as Wild Salmon and Brasserio Caviar & Banana, to name just a few).
But lately, Chodorow’s dark reputation has begun to brighten. In the past few years, while many restaurateurs have been cowering on the sidelines, he’s put his money behind a string of popular, even critical hits, including Bar Basque, Zak Pelaccio’s Fatty ’Cue and Fatty Crab, and the fashionable new Chinese farm-to-table establishment RedFarm. Now comes Kutsher’s, which has been designed by Chodorow’s young partner Zach Kutsher as a kind of upscale homage to his family’s famous Kutsher’s Country Club resort in the Catskills. The room, on Franklin Street, is appointed in a stylish, nouveau-Fontainebleau way with gold-colored light fixtures, whitewashed backlit walls, and a bar top made of copper. There’s a dish called pickled herring “two ways” on the menu, the kasha varnishkes are made with wild mushrooms and quinoa, not kasha, and the house gefilte fish is molded into decorative gourmet pedestals and feathered with micro-greens and a parsley vinaigrette.
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