In this constrained, no-nonsense, post-boom era, most ambitious New York chefs attempt to make their names by leasing dark little spaces in out-of-the-way neighborhoods and crafting spare, locally sourced comfort-food dishes. But during the course of his short, meteoric career, John DeLucie has prospered by doing things the old-fashioned way. As executive chef at the Waverly Inn, he was known for dressing the famous house version of macaroni and cheese with truffles. When he finally opened his own restaurant, the Lion, he exhibited an old-world fondness for expensive caviars (golden osetra, $125), pricey French wines ($1,850 for a bottle of Bollinger Blanc de Noirs ’00), and elaborate, Hollywood-style props (oil paintings, sparkling chandeliers, etc.). Like an old-school restaurateur, he choreographs his productions with a specific audience in mind, and, more than most chefs today, he’s an entertainer at heart.
DeLucie’s latest big-money culinary show is called Crown, and it’s been playing for nearly three months now to packed houses, and characteristically mixed reviews, on the bottom floor of a posh Upper East Side townhouse off Madison Avenue, across from the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel. As at the Waverly, the entrance to the restaurant is discreetly marked, and guarded in the evenings by a doorman who could easily be mistaken for a nightclub bouncer. Echoing both the Waverly and the Lion, there’s a cramped, darkly lit Black Hole of Calcutta bar area in the front of the house, which is designed as a kind of holding pen for people straining to gain entrance to the grand dining room, and reservations are doled out to a select, clubby clientele, which means normal civilians will find themselves sitting down to dinner, like I did, at 5:45 or ten o’clock.
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