The best dish I've had in God-knows-how-long, I had last night at Alain Ducasse New York (ADNY): peas with crayfish. The peas, crayfish, and sauce are each cooked separately: the tiny peas to a snappy al dente state of just-underdoneness, the super-sized crayfish tails quickly sauteed until just barely cooked, and the sauce made from crayfish heads and Armagnac. Just before serving, the three components are combined and warmed through, finished with broken whipped cream and topped with a frothy pea emulsion. The result is extraordinary: each ingredient retains it independence yet supports the others; the flavors are deep in the manner of a long-simmered stock yet there is a supervening sense of freshness and lightness as from a jus; the crispness of the peas gives way to the succulent texture of the crayfish, and both get carried away in a creamy river of sauce; the combinations and contrasts demand the sustained attention of the palate not just for two or three bites, but all the way through the dish. When Alain Ducasse announced that Christian Delouvrier would be taking over the ADNY kitchen, I didn't know what to think: it didn't compute. To be sure, they are two of my favorite chefs, and Delouvrier is also a friend. I've seen the two work up close, in week-long stages both at Lespinasse and ADNY. I've also got quite a bit of dining experience at both restaurants, having been to ADNY at least a dozen times (even, on one memorable night, with Delouvrier and his wife Mary) and, to Lespinasse, more like 100 times (under Delouvrier and the previous chef, Gray Kunz). I chose to get to know those restaurants and chefs because I was swept away by their cuisines. But none of this, in my mind, added up to a merger. Not only is it something that in a million years would never have occurred to me as an option, but also it rubbed me the wrong way the second I heard about it. Ducasse has helped me, and anyone else who has been paying attention to the restaurant business over the past decade, rethink what it means to be a chef: the chef (or at least the modern chef, who is likely to operate more than one restaurant in a corporate fashion as opposed to a standalone family business) is neither cook nor supervisor, but is rather an executive who, like any executive in any industry, is judged in large part by his ability to make the big decisions and delegate the rest. Just as Escoffier brought the modern industrial concept of the assembly line into the world of the restaurant kitchen, Ducasse has been the leader in bringing modern management theory into haute cuisine restaurants. Still, conceptually that knowledge only took me so far, because of another vestige of Old World thinking: the chef as individual artist. Yet, reflecting on my experiences in restaurant kitchens and on the interactions between many chefs and their proteges, I've slowly come to realize that cooking is much more of a collaboration than anybody wants to let on. It's a collaboration not just between executive chefs and their top assistants, but also between chefs and suppliers, chefs and sommeliers, chefs and pastry chefs, chefs and customers, chefs living and chefs long gone. What you eat in the best restaurants today is largely a result of teamwork. I've also been harboring some suspicion and resentment regarding Ducasse's handling of the Mix situation – his Bay of Pigs, as I have called it – and I couldn't help but suspect that the Delouvrier announcement, coming just a week after the Mix news hit the papers, was either a diversionary tactic or emblematic of a larger shift away from the United States by Ducasse. I'm still quite disappointed about the events at Mix, but I'm now comfortable concluding that ADNY is operating much closer to Ducasse's core and is still being taken as seriously as Mix should have been. And there was the matter of Delouvrier's seniority and status. Didier Elena, the former chef at ADNY, was essentially a kid. A superbly talented kid, one with culinary wisdom and skill beyond his years, but ultimately falling into line generationally behind Ducasse and with a background in Ducasse's kitchens. He was like the young attorney who makes partner after 8 years of hard work at a firm: a product of that firm's system, an integrated part of the organic whole. Delouvrier is older than Ducasse and his entire career has unfolded independently of Ducasse. He is the equivalent of that same law firm bringing in a partner laterally from another firm, perhaps the top partner from a regional firm who will now run the branch office of a national firm, all the while reporting to a younger managing-partner at the new, larger firm. The lateral partner may suffer a downgrade in pure hierarchical standing, but he may overall be in a more prestigious position, he will have better associates, better offices, better clients, and a larger budget. Provided he can integrate into the new team, it's a win-win arrangement. Organizations, after all, need to expand and adapt to fill their needs. If the organization has not raised someone internally who can carry out a mission, there's also a whole world out there. Ducasse, never accused of lack of vision, figured this out and ran with it in a big way: he reached out to the most accomplished available practitioner in the relevant market and put him in charge of the local office. Of course, there is more artistry to being a chef than there is to being a lawyer. And it's deeply ingrained in aphorism that “too many chefs spoil the broth.” But two chefs, working closely together with a shared vision, seems not to be too many. For ADNY, it may be just the right number. To paint Delouvrier and Ducasse with broad brush strokes, I've always felt Delouvrier's strength was his ability to develop depth of flavor, primarily in his meat dishes (and especially game) and also with shellfish. His cuisine is earthy, substantial, and in some cases tinged with a little well-intentioned vulgarity. Ducasse for his part is a technician, a perfectionist. His dishes have a brassy freshness that is extremely modern, despite their roots in classic technique. Nobody has ever accused Delouvrier's cuisine of lacking soul; yet that accusation has been leveled at Ducasse (in its most noteworthy incarnation, by Gael Greene who called him “Robochef”). Meanwhile, nobody has ever accused Ducasse – perhaps the world's most tightly wound chef – of a lack of precision; whereas Delouvrier's menus and dishes have always tended to be more free ranging. The combination of influences, visible in several of the dishes I tried last night, may very well have brought ADNY – already the top restaurant in New York – to a new level. With a brand-new menu (it launched this past Wednesday) it's too early to say, but the signs are all there. Delouvrier has given ADNY's food a studied rusticity and grittiness that many have said it needed. For his part, Ducasse contributes lightness and a sense of order. As for how much of each dish is Ducasse and how much is Delouvrier, I have no idea – and ultimately I'm more concerned with the integrity of the final product than with what went on during its creation. One thing is sure, though: no dish I tried felt as though it was generated by a committee; they were clear expressions of flavor, technique, and product. It was clear I was eating at ADNY; it was also clear that the cuisine at ADNY had evolved into something more personal. As far as his demeanor, I've never seen Delouvrier so excited and youthful. I had wondered, was he settling for being Ducasse's man in New York (one way to look at it) or did he view his new position as the highest possible accomplishment in New York (the other way to look at it)? Clearly the latter: Delouvrier thinks (and I agree) that Ducasse is the top French chef in the world, and he's honored by the association. It takes a rare combination of confidence and humility to accept such an arrangement, but Delouvrier seems to be made of that stuff. When he came out into the dining room (I had wondered about that as well, but apparently Ducasse very much wants Delouvrier to be out there) he was beaming in the manner of a new father (or a renewed father, since he was the chef of the Essex House fine-dining restaurant when it was Les Celebrites). After giving me a guilt trip for not returning an answering machine message a year ago (really, I didn't get it) he announced “We've come a long way, you and me!” Him farther than me, though. (As an aside, if you are interested in reading about Delouvrier's life and career arc up through Lespinasse, you should grab his cookbook, Mastering Simplicity, which contains a number of autobiographical sections in addition to the best cassoulet recipe I know of.) I wanted to try as many things as possible so I asked Delouvrier to do a tasting of dishes from all parts of the menu (the regular sections and the tasting menu). This allowed me to sample seven savory items (it's not physically possible to eat more dishes than that in the ADNY portion size) as well as about a million sweets. There were many highlights. Perhaps my favorite dish after the crayfish was roasted halibut with razor clams and almond butter. After poaching, the razor clams are sliced on the bias and replaced in the shell, then topped with almond butter and gratineed. The halibut is cooked a la plancha, finished in the clam juices, and then drizzled with a bright green sauce of spinach and watercress. On the one hand it's an immensely attractive haute cuisine dish, with the kinds of delicately reinforced and amplified flavors one expects from the genre. On the other hand, who knew razor clams with almond butter could taste so much like comfort food? For pure quality of product, ADNY's sea scallops marinated in olive oil (they are never heated) are a revelation. Every other slice is topped with oven-roasted tomato; the other half of the slices are naked. The scallops sit in a golden-colored gelee made from tomato juices, white stock, and calves' feet. The sommelier's smart pick of a 2000 Vire-Clesse from Domaine Rene Michel (60-year-old vines, picked late) to accompany this dish reminded me that I need to focus more on the Macon as a source for well-priced, excellent chardonnay. Two meat dishes demonstrate the kitchen's facility with jus. Sauteed rack of milk-fed veal with lightly creamed morels, asparagus, and fingerling potatoes is the best meat-and-potatoes dish you're likely to find. The jus, drizzled over and around everything, has the visual appearance of a sauce based on long-simmered stock but it's light and fresh, with the kinds of high flavor notes one expects more in wine than in food. Spit-roasted saddle of baby lamb with seasonal vegetables was an equally powerful demonstration. It's hard to imagine a better pairing than that lamb and its jus with the infamous '91 Lafite, thank goodness I wasn't paying. Poeleed duck foie gras (I had to look it up too: “poeleed” just means pan-seared) with lemon-date marmalade maximizes the efficacy of combining foie gras with a sweet ingredient but is reined in by lemon and a hint of vanilla. There was quite a bit of the marmalade left over after I inhaled the foie gras, and I found myself eating it straight with a fork, taste after taste. The only dish I didn't particularly thrill to was “wild Alaskan salmon, served warm, clear Osetra caviar, 'belle-vue' garnish.” This was too old-school for me: more of a display of luxury ingredients than anything else. The garnish was a pretty impressive display of garde-manger work, though, with little quail eggs, various baby vegetables, and a well-disciplined pool of gelee. Because the two restaurants operate in their own category, it's worth taking a moment to compare ADNY and Per Se. (There are other chefs in New York with Delouvrier and Keller's level of skill, though perhaps none on Ducasse's level, but neither Boulud, Vongerichten, Bouley, nor Ripert has an outlet that can compare to ADNY or Per Se.) The restaurants have very different styles and Per Se is quite new (ADNY, although it is in the process of changing chefs, is already a well oiled machine) but they are as remarkable for their similarities than their differences. They are really the only two restaurants in town that are playing the same game as the three-star restaurants of Europe. In both cases, the best ingredients, equipment, and kitchen talent are givens, as is the time and staff-customer ratio to make anything possible. Per Se has it all over ADNY in terms of its physical space. ADNY is certainly a luxurious, comfortable, attractive restaurant but it is ultimately a hotel dining room with only an expensive decor job to distinguish it. Per Se is a truly dramatic space, both inside and on account of its view. ADNY has, in my opinion, much better service at this point. I presume Per Se's service will improve with time just as ADNY's has over the past few years, but ADNY even had better service the week it opened. No matter how close the two waitstaffs get to their respective definitions of perfection, though, I think I'll always prefer the ADNY approach overall. I find the Per Se/French Laundry style of service to be overly cult-like and self-congratulatory. Although it gives the appearance of being contemporary and laid back, there's a control-freakish aspect to the whole thing that I find condescending. I prefer the easy formality of ADNY, without all that psychological baggage. As for the food, I would be ecstatic to dine at either restaurant on any given night. But if forced to choose I'd go with ADNY. The cuisine at ADNY strikes me as more disciplined and rooted in a more significant body of thought than the cuisine at Per Se. In addition, I prefer the style of dishes at ADNY – I think Keller has pushed the concept of the tasting menu to a rather absurd extreme. I emphatically don't agree with his belief that dishes get boring after three bites. A good dish is interesting far beyond that, as generations of chefs have demonstrated with the creation of dishes that customers wish to order time and again. I'd rather have 5 medium-sized savory plates at ADNY, each a full composition, than 10 of Per Se's little teases. Most importantly, at least at the time I ate there (and this seems to be confirmed by several subsequent reports), there is a certain arc to the meal at Per Se that I found lacking: it starts off on several high notes but declines at the meat courses and falls off considerably with dessert. At ADNY the meal builds to a high note after a couple of warmup tastes and that level of intensity and focus is maintained all the way through to the end: the meats are fabulous and deeply satisfying, the cheese cart is well stocked and presented with warm olive-laden brioche (the Per Se attempts at cheese are embarrassing by comparison), the desserts are among the best anywhere (as opposed to Per Se's desserts, which are just very good), and the follow-ups to dessert are sui generis – no restaurant in the United States comes close to what ADNY is doing with candies, cookies, and the like. In any event, with Per Se now back in business, and with Delouvrier's presence at ADNY likely to guarantee it a long and fruitful run, New York has managed not only to hang on to the fine-dining tradition that so many say is doomed, but also to raise the stakes.
