NETJETS EU VOLUME 15 2021

GOURMET SCENE
“The classic French version is poached chicken with a sauce made
with cream and champagne, but Le Pavillon changed it to rotisserie
chicken served with its jus and a champagne sabayon. We have
brought back the rotisserie, but now the champagne sauce is foamed
in a siphon, taking out the egg yolks and making it much lighter.”
It is, however, one of only a handful of meat dishes on Le
Pavillon’s extensive menu. Seafood and vegetables share the
limelight, and Boulud is happy to see diners “having a seafood
dish each, and ordering vegetables to share”. Grilled avocado,
for instance, is served with bulgur wheat, kale, harissa and
Boulud’s sophisticated, fines herbes take on green goddess
sauce. “In classic French bistro cooking,” he says, “vegetables
are often just a garnish, a sprig of watercress or corn salad,
perhaps. At Le Pavillon, we let them take centre stage.”
And Cornelius Vanderbilt, the founding father of Grand
Central, is honoured with an oyster, redressing the balance, as
Boulud – slightly tongue-in-cheek – says, with fellow magnate
John D Rockefeller. The version at Le Pavillon is filled with oyster
chowder and shredded seaweed, topped with a hazelnut gratin,
and Boulud expects them to be a permanent fixture on his menu.
THE OPENING OF LE PAVILLON marks what Boulud hopes is “the end
of the rollercoaster”, a hugely traumatic year-and-a-bit for New
York’s hospitality business. Thinking back to the start of lockdown
in March last year, Boulud recalls his feelings at the time. “It is
one thing to lose the opportunity to be with your customers, but
quite another to lose your staff. That was even more devastating.
“So many of our staff had been with us for decades
– they had shown great loyalty, and we always took
care of them. Suddenly, we couldn’t.” A payroll of
800 employees was reduced to single figures overnight.
Boulud did what he could, paying many staff for weeks
afterwards, until they could claim benefits. “Some of them were
particularly hard hit, some lost family members to the virus.
“We put three staff members on the company’s board. Together
with our HR director and our director of operations, they allocated
funds to the neediest. Thanks to the generosity of friends and
customers, and some Zoom classes I did for corporate clients,
we managed to raise $750,000. And we made sure that staff
didn’t lose their health insurance, which was really important.”
The second phase was launched in cooperation with Marc
Holliday and SL Green: as well as One Vanderbilt, the realty
company owns a dozen or so other properties in Manhattan and
it is the landlord for many of the city’s restaurants. The Food1st
initiative brought back many staff into kitchens to cook meals both
for first responders and for vulnerable populations throughout the
city. Boulud tips his toque to SL Green: “Not many landlords, in
that situation, would say, ‘I’ll pay you to cook meals for the city.’ ”
Boulud reopened his downtown prep kitchen and, in
partnership with World Central Kitchen and Citymeals on
Wheels, they started cooking and distributing food to those most
in need. By August this year, they had served 627,000 meals.
He also made the decision, when rules were relaxed, to
open a sidewalk restaurant at Daniel, his Upper East Side
flagship. “We had to close Café Boulud when the owners of the
hotel we were in went bankrupt, so we brought in tables and
chairs from there and tried to recreate a kind of fantasy South
of France garden. We had never done it before, but it went
very well.” As winter approached, he had bungalows built,
complete with foam insulation, music systems and heaters.
“Inside, when we could open for limited numbers, we called
Hermès, who very kindly gave us wallpapers and fabrics, and
we screened each table with trees and flowers. Thankfully, we
don’t need the dozen or so 3.3m panels we used anymore,
so we have cut them down to 2.9m and sent them to the
studios of some young American artists. We will sell them to
benefit Citymeals on Wheels. I hope I can afford to buy one!”
Daniel closed for eight weeks in summer for refurbishments
originally slated for 2019. Meanwhile, Boulud is looking for a
new Café Boulud site and planning the reopening of Boulud
Sud, at Lincoln Center, and db Bistro Moderne in Midtown.
He is optimistic for the future. “I look out from Le Pavillon to
42nd Street, and the open-topped tourist buses that run every
45 minutes are packed, which is a great sign. And I’m looking
forward to taking my son to basketball games again: he loves it.”
The Knicks? “And the Nets too,” he says, quickly. Boulud is far
too canny an operator to alienate the Brooklyn basketball fans.
In August, he managed to escape to France for a few days
with his family; passing through Paris, he and his wife Katherine
went for dinner at Michel and Sébastien Bras’s new restaurant
La Halle aux Grains. Bras père is revered as one of the founding
fathers of modern French cooking, and his Laguiole restaurant
in the southern French countryside is one of the country’s most
famous: “I love Michel, I have known him for many years.”
THE RESTAURANT IS on the third floor of the newly renovated Bourse
de Commerce (see page 74), owned by François Pinault, who – as
well as owning many luxury brands and thousands of contemporary
artworks, many on display at the Bourse’s gallery – is the owner
of Château Latour, and a loyal customer of Boulud’s in New York.
The price of the Latour was too rich even for Boulud’s
blood. “But I knew I had to order Latour, because of
François. So I ordered its second wine, Forts de Latour,
which was delicious and very reasonably priced.
“It is a beautiful restaurant. The interior is very modern,
industrial-chic, designed by the Bouroullec brothers, but
when we had dinner, my wife was facing inwards and I
was looking out of the window, at the corner of the Saint-
Eustache church, and the canopy of Au Pied de Cochon.”
Au Pied de Cochon is a legendary Parisian brasserie that, until
the pandemic, had not closed its doors since 1947. Once again, it
is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “I looked at the neon
sign, and I thought, ‘Well, if we’re still hungry after this, we could
always go over the road for a pig’s trotter!’” Daniel Boulud may
be famous for embracing the present and looking to the future,
but he still likes to keep one eye on the past. lepavillonnyc.com
ALL ABOUT ALFRESCO
A garden table at Le Pavillon,
the New York icon that Daniel
Boulud has reimagined
66 NetJets