ADNY (Alain Ducasse @ Essex House)

[ned]

Great pics. Particularly the fois. I'm headed to ADNY on the 8th of December. These pics are working as a slow-acting aperitif. Thanks. More. More.

[Fat Guy]

Several people have mentioned ADNY's $320 truffle menu. Why are truffles so expensive?

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Supply and demand.

[Jinmyo]

Ellen.

Ellen.

Ellen, Ellen, Ellen.

Thank you.

[Ellen Shapiro]

One more garde manger item before we get back to hot food. This is the way they were putting out the tuna tartare/carpaccio the night I was photographing it. The dish changes, though. The night we had it, it was a big square on a big square plate. Another night when we saw it go out to a table it was round and filled the whole plate. This is the first time I saw it plated with those little chunks of seared tuna.

[robert40]

These are some of the most beautiful food photo's I've ever seen.

Ellen, Thank you so much for letting us peek into the world of Ducasse and Delouvrier.

[docsconz]

Yes, Ellen, these are superb photos. You are certainly whetting my appetite for Ducasse.

[johnjohn]

Garde manger is usually the station where new cooks just out of school start - right? I doubt this is the case with ADNY - any idea what kind of experience ADNY garde manger cooks have?

Ellen, I've always enjoyed your photographs - keep them coming...

johnjohn

[Ellen Shapiro]

This is a fish dish that I found visually striking. It has been described upthread a couple of times. This is the Atlantic bass with clams (the clams are arranged atop) and watercress jus.

And this is, if I'm not mistaken, the chestnut and squash soup that was part of a tasting menu.

[emilymarie]

One more garde manger item before we get back to hot food. This is the way they were putting out the tuna tartare/carpaccio the night I was photographing it. The dish changes, though. The night we had it, it was a big square on a big square plate. Another night when we saw it go out to a table it was round and filled the whole plate. This is the first time I saw it plated with those little chunks of seared tuna.

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Ellen, I can't see the photo too clearly on my screen. A few questions: Is that a piece of fruit in the middle? What is the larger square undernath the carpaccio?And what is the sauce/liquid around the edge? This might be my favorite plate, next to the quail.

thanks again for these pics.

[Ellen Shapiro]

You're having trouble seeing it because it's underexposed and out of focus, but I posted the photo anyway because I thought it had informational value. Let me do the best I can to get closer in on what you're asking about:

As I mentioned, we've now seen this dish in three versions, so I can't be sure, but I think it's all fish. I think the underlayer is a tuna and herb salad based on cooked tuna, and I think the pearly colored thing on top is a piece of raw fish with a little sauce drizzled on it. The dark lines around the edges are very old balsamic vinegar.

[tanabutler]

So, Ellen, when DeLouvrier would tell staff, "Make it again," did you get the rejects?

[docsconz]

You're having trouble seeing it because it's underexposed and out of focus, but I posted the photo anyway because I thought it had informational value. Let me do the best I can to get closer in on what you're asking about:

As I mentioned, we've now seen this dish in three versions, so I can't be sure, but I think it's all fish. I think the underlayer is a tuna and herb salad based on cooked tuna, and I think the pearly colored thing on top is a piece of raw fish with a little sauce drizzled on it. The dark lines around the edges are very old balsamic vinegar.

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Ellen, could you highlight the centerpiece that you think is raw fish, please? That is difficult to decipher, although the qualioty of the photo looks fine to me.

[Ellen Shapiro]

This is the best I can do, John, on account of the limited depth of field in the original.

[Pan]

Thank you, Ellen. You're making this one of the most interesting threads on the site!

[Ellen Shapiro]

I'm nearing the end of the food photos. I have a few more, and if there are any specific requests I can see if I have something filed away, but I'm going to switch to a few non-food photos for a change of pace.

Before the service I wandered around the dining room and took a few snapshots. I figure most people haven't seen the place, given that about 65 people a day eat there out of 5 billion in the world, so this is the general environment. I didn't have any big lights or a wide angle lens, but I hope you can at least get a sense of the place.

These are a couple of different banquettes set for the dinner service. You'll notice there are some differences. The restaurant has a large collection of little art objects and table decorations and each table is seen as a composition by the staff. One of these tables has a bronze statue on it called "Cityman" and the other has those little trees. As far as I know every single thing on the table is custom crafted for Ducasse: you can't get those wine glasses or those plates anywhere. The banquettes are made of a very cushy "like buttah" sueded leather in those festive colors and if you're a woman on either edge of the banquette bench they put a little stool next to you on which you can rest your handbag (I kid you not).

These are some non-banquette tables. These are also nice to sit at. A lot of people request them over the banquettes. I generally like chairs better than banquettes, but both arrangements are very comfortable here. There really aren't any bad tables in this dining room; it's more a question of preference.

A visual focal point of the dining room is this sculpture by one of my least favorite sculptors in the world: Arman. Love him or hate him (and most people feel one way or the other) it is a dramatic centerpiece for the room.

[Ellen Shapiro]

A few things that caught my eye as I was walking around the kitchen:

[tan319]

Hi, Ellen!

Great photos, all looks wonderful.

If you're taking requests, I would love to see some of the dessert plates.

P.S. Do you ever go to MIX?

I would love to see some of those plates.

Thanks again for posting these pix.

[Fat Guy]

Ellen has an appointment to visit the ADNY pastry kitchen in a couple of weeks in order to photograph some dessert production.

[tanabutler]

A visual focal point of the dining room is this sculpture by one of my least favorite sculptors in the world: Arman. Love him or hate him (and most people feel one way or the other) it is a dramatic centerpiece for the room.

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Ack, he's the Dale Chihuly of sculpture! It looks like he Mod-Podged a Jackson Pollack onto an entire brass section. That can't be good for one's digestion. I wonder if people request to be seated away from it. I'm surprised no one's mentioned it yet in this thread.

But back to the photos, which are so wonderful, Ellen. What did they make from the round cookie cutters through the tubes of pasta? That looks like a great low-tech application that could yield wonderful results. Any idea how they get the pasta to stick together? (I know my grandmother could have done it: you should have had her rice.)

[Ellen Shapiro]

This lamb dish illustrates the more rustic end of the ADNY menu. It's meat and potatoes served with just enough panache to remind you of where you are. The lamb is browned in butter and the potatoes are finished in a rich lamb jus before being plated.

I'm pretty much at the end of the "roll" here. This weekend I'll try to get some answers to some of the questions that have been asked upthread. And, as Fat Guy mentioned, if all goes well I'll be going back at a later date to visit the pastry kitchen.

[oakapple]

How does ADNY compare to Lespinasse at its height?

[Ellen Shapiro]

Fat Guy and I had dinner at ADNY with Christian and Mary Delouvrier during ADNY's first year in business. Approximately one year before that, if I have my timeline correct, Lespinasse had received four stars from Ruth Reichl in the New York Times. What I remember most vividly from that dinner, in addition to a dreamy sea urchin royale the likes of which I never tasted before or since, were Christian's comments about Ducasse the chef and the restaurant. Chefs, especially the good ones, can be brutally honest with themselves. Christian was effusive in his praise for Ducasse's food. "He's the guy," and "If only we could do this," were the types of comments he kept making. Christian was invited in for a tour of the kitchen and must have spent half an hour in there. He emerged looking like a kid who had spent the night locked inside a Baskin Robbins. And since at the time everybody in the world except for my husband and Christian was sure that ADNY would be out of business within a year, Mary and I observed that maybe Christian would get the restaurant back someday. Nobody could have predicted the way it would happen, but it happened.

I'm making a point here somewhere. Yes, it's that at or near Lespinasse's peak under Delouvrier we know that Delouvrier would have told anybody who asked that ADNY was the better restaurant. He probably also would have said, if asked, although nobody would have thought to ask, that working with Ducasse he could make ADNY even better than it was. My personal opinion is that he has done that.

[Fat Guy]

Just got an e-mail saying ADNY is now on OpenTable.com

[MobyP]

With such a small menu - realistically - how many times a season do we think a fan of Delouvrier or Ducasse might eat at ADNY?

[oakapple]

Just got an e-mail saying ADNY is now on OpenTable.com

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It has actually been there a while — I believe a few weeks, at least. Although ADNY is apparently filling up most nights, reservations aren't that hard to come by. I did a search on the next available date, and November 22nd came back.

MobyP wrote:

With such a small menu - realistically - how many times a season do we think a fan of Delouvrier or Ducasse might eat at ADNY?

If you ate there once a month, you still wouldn't exhaust the possibilities. The menu shows four appetizers and four apiece of fish & meat entrées.