Throughout the course of his illustrious career, Daniel Boulud has taken an impish pleasure in breaking down tired old culinary formulas and reimagining them in all sorts of distinctive and entertaining ways. He’s reinvented many tired old haute cuisine recipes at his uptown establishments, of course, and updated the aged French-bistro formula at his midtown restaurant db Bistro Moderne. He’s tinkered famously with the American hamburger (this summer marks the tenth anniversary of the iconic db Burger) and less famously with the hot dog at his populist downtown beer hall DBGB Kitchen & Bar. Now, at Boulud Sud, which opened recently next to the other Daniel outlet across from Lincoln Center, Bar Boulud, the great chef has turned his attention to that tired old world of olive tarts and rust-colored faux-Provençal fish soups that generations of weary restaurateurs on this side of the Atlantic refer to broadly as “Mediterranean” cuisine.
The question my guests and I kept asking, as we waited for our drinks to arrive in the long, airy room, is, What in the world has taken him so long? Monsieur Boulud’s latest restaurant (he has six of them in Manhattan now) is fronted on Broadway by a glimmering new “épicerie” parlor, which sells coffees, classic (and, of course, pricey) French pastries, and freshly made sandwiches decoratively wrapped in plumes of cellophane. The dining room has a high, multi-arched ceiling, like in a small modernist museum, and the blond-paneled walls are decorated with bright sun-splashed photographs inspired by famous Provençal paintings by Van Gogh, Matisse, and Cézanne. The tables in the well-lit space are set a little too close together (the room can seat 100 clamorous guests on a crowded evening), but they’re covered with fresh white linens and set with green, Mediterranean-style water glasses and napkins the color of lemon chiffon.
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