Le Cirque 2000 (Closed)

[Wilfrid]

I will be at Le Cirque this weekend.  I have been twice before for dinner and once for lunch, but those visits were fairly spread out.  I will eat the tripes a l'armagnac if it's available, but with my luck they'll have sold out already.

I know this place turns a lot of people off, and I can understand why, but does anyone have any particular recommendations from the carte?  I have tried the sea bass wrapped in potato.

[Wilfrid]

Well, I may be talking to myself here, but that's not a crime yet.  I had a purpose in going to le Cirque, beyond hanging out with jaded millionaires.  I noticed when I had lunch there a few months back, that they were offering a series of hearty, traditional dishes as daily specials - blanquette de veau, tripes and so on.  It reminded me of what Patrick Kuh said in 'Last Days of Haute Cuisine' about Soule feeling unable to offer that kind of fare on the menu at Le Pavillon because - although he loved to eat it - he thought it not classy enough.  He would offer it, by word of mouth, to favoured customers.  Kuh had identified Maccioni as something of a latter day Soule.  It was with this in mind that I wanted to find out what it would be like to eat offal at Le Cirque.

They hadn't sold out of the tripe, and looking at my fellow diners I wasn't too surprised.  I started with a terrine of foie gras studded with rabbit rillette.  Professionally executed, very pretty (wrapped in a Savoy cabbage leaf) and well flavoured.  Some leeks had been laid in the terrine to make a nice pattern, and they were slightly al dente, but otherwise a classic piece of charcuterie.

The tripe came in a large bowl, steaming hot (as it should be).  I consider myself a pretty great tripe cook, and this was outstanding.  The meat was meltingly tender.  The brown sauce was sufficiently gelatinous to suggest that a calves foot had been involved.  It was slightly peppery.  I couldn't have known whether the richness derived from armagnac, cognac or red wine if I hadn't been told, but rich it was.  The accompaniment was a little pan of fresh, earthy little potatoes, dressed with melted butter and chopped parsley.  After eating vegetables converted into every kind of timbale, puree and gratin over the last few months, these potatoes were an eye opener.

Was the tripe outrageously expensive?  What do you think?  It was astronomical.  Was this the best meal I have had in a New York restaurant in a long time?  I'm afraid so.  Afraid so because, no, I can't afford it every week.   There are those who say it's easy to make a great dinner if you use expensive ingredients like truffles and foie gras.  In this case, a great dinner was the result of exceptionally skillful cooking.

I finished with some well kept cheeses.  A half bottle of Chapoutier Hermitage, 1996, was reasonably priced at ุ, given the venue.  This was a meal which reflected very badly on the pretensions of some more fashionable places I have eaten at recently.  Jo Jo springs to mind.

[docsconz]

According to the New York Times Le Cirque 2000 will be closing its doors at the end of 2004. Sirio Maccioni is planning his next moves

 

"Le Cirque is not closing,'' Mr. Maccioni said yesterday. "Le Cirque is moving out. . But anything I do after Jan. 1 will not be called Le Cirque 2000 because 2000 is already past.''

He blames his need to move on new managemant at The Palace Hotel, changes in the NYC restaurant landscape and the huge union expense he has.

[Gifted Gourmet]

"Sirio could open in a basement near the West Side docks,'' said Ahmet Ertegun, the music mogul who has dined at Mr. Maccioni's tables for decades, "and he would have all of New York come to him."

One can only hope that this will be true ... but there is nothing quite like "brand recognition", which is exactly what Sergio Maccioni certainly possesses.

[Jason Perlow]

Le Cirque is Moving

"I would love to move back to the Upper East Side, in the 60's, to a place that looked more like the old Le Cirque," he said about a month ago, when his lawyers began negotiating with the hotel, which is at Madison Avenue and 50th Street. "Some of my customers still wonder why I went downtown. I had to convince them to come."

[adegiulio]

Dishwashers making 29 bucks an hour!?!? Are they performing surgery while they scrub pots?

No wonder he wants to leave the location and the unions behind.

As a side note, yesterday in the Times' Real Estate section, it was mentioned that Andre Soltner is selling the Lutece building and moving somewhere else in the city. The building is up for $4 million, and the apartment he bought was around $800k. He still owns his Hunter Mtn. home, where he says he does all of his entertaining. Chef Soltner, if you are reading this, I would love to come to your next dinner party.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Even more on Le Cirque and Sirio, the sexiest man in the business....

a little of the "backstory" on Sirio Maccioni

"Sirio: The Story of My Life and Le Cirque," written with Bloomberg Radio food critic Peter Elliot for John Wiley & Sons, charts his life from his youth as an Italian war orphan to his young adulthood as the sexy maitre d' of the old society hangout the Colony, which closed in 1971.

The book celebrates Le Cirque's history and captures the rise and fall of old caf‚-society - the high-society, drinks-dinner-dancing era - that peaked in the '60s and '70s with him at the helm.

It was an era of fine French food - three full pages are devoted to the obscure French edible bird the ortolan, and there's great detail on how the restaurant's signature dish, pasta primavera, could only be prepared in the dining room because the chef wouldn't allow Italian dishes in the kitchen. It was also a "jacket-and-tie required" era of $35 appetizers, impossible-to-get reservations and lunching ladies who welcomed a braiding of food, sex and hospitality.

In one chapter, Maccioni discusses how Lauren Bacall once caught him looking up her skirt at El Morocco, and invited him to continue.

In another, Elaine Kaufman of Elaine's says Maccioni in his days as a maitre d' at the Colony in the '60s was "the hottest-looking man in New York."

And Ruth Reichl describes him as a man who assured "there was always this little bit of sex hanging over the room," and had a "way of packing the room in the right way, and filling it with enough glitz and enough money and enough glamour to make it always vibrate a little."

But most of all, the book captures a fading time where a restaurateur's charisma could be more of a draw than his establishment's menu and could make already expensive meals seem worth twice the price, as long as the check arrived with a handshake or a kiss on the cheek from the owner.

Maccioni would send over free champagne as if it were tap water, and could remember the birthdays of each one of his regular customers, their wives and their non-wives.

"Le Cirque has always been about Sirio. He's the master of the universe," says Julian Niccolini, the equally charismatic co-owner of the Four Seasons. "It doesn't matter who his chef is."

[Bond Girl]

Having just read the book, I wonder the timing of the book release has anything to do with the announcement of the move of the restaurant.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Having just read the book, I wonder the timing of the book release has anything to do with the announcement of the move of the restaurant.

That was my "take" as well, on the timing ..

(not unlike Bill Clinton's book being released today, just in time to help push the Kerry campaign ... )

But then I am such a skeptic when it comes to "hidden motives" ... surely, Sirio is not being of much assistance in helping me in the rethinking of my suspicions ...

[Bond Girl]

The book party was tonight and the place was packed with celebrities. I saw Michael Bloonberg, Rudy Giuliani, the Donald, Gray Kunz, Ruth Riechl, Twiggy among others. There were vintage champagne, lots of it. A red french wine from '82 and lots of other alcohols. Food wise, Le Cirque pulled out all stops. The guests were allowed to circulate through the kitchen and eat cod fish croquets and vegetable dumplings, slurp raw oysters, and sample the famous creme brulee. Sirio sat on his velvet sofa with wife and daughter, kissing ladies' hands and signing his book. The mood was so upbeat that you hardly knew that Le Cirque was moving.

Edited June 17, 2004 by Jason Perlow (log)

[bloviatrix]

FYI - Sirio Maccioni will be a guest on the Leonard Lopate show (WNYC). The show airs at noon. I'm not sure what time he will appear.

[Jason Perlow]

Bond Girl's post updated with images.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Bond Girl's post updated with images.

What an exquisite dessert montage of photographs, Bond Girl! I am in awe of the entire array of delectable desserts! also in sugar shock! Thank you for this pictorial! Is the final photo of you?

[Bond Girl]

Actually that is the actress Bai Ling, Not sure what she's been in recently.

[Jason Perlow]

Bond Girl's post updated with images.

What an exquisite dessert montage of photographs, Bond Girl! I am in awe of the entire array of delectable desserts! also in sugar shock! Thank you for this pictorial! Is the final photo of you?

Bond Girl is actually a lot hotter than Bai Ling.

[Bond Girl]

Awww! Thanks!

[Gifted Gourmet]

Never met Bond Girl nor Bai Ling, but those desserts are totally hot!!

[bloviatrix]

I love that blue enamel stove in the first picture. Does anyone have any idea if that will move with them to the new location?

edit: forgot a word

Edited June 17, 2004 by bloviatrix (log)

[Jason Perlow]

I love that blue enamel stove in the first picture.  Does anyone have any idea if that move with them to the new location?

That looks like either a Diva de Provence or a La Cornue.

For a while, Craft had Diva de Provence ranges, but they didn't hold up to daily wear and tear in such a busy kitchen. According to Marco Canora and Tom Colicchio, they had to be repaired constantly.

[Fat Guy]

The metal plate on the side of the island suite looks like it bears the Bonnet insignia. It seems most restaurants that are striving to have top-level showcase kitchens are using Bonnet or Molteni island suites.

[Jason Perlow]

The metal plate on the side of the island suite looks like it bears the Bonnet insignia. It seems most restaurants that are striving to have top-level showcase kitchens are using Bonnet or Molteni island suites.

Yeah, but do they all have to have the same Louis-XIV inspired garish ornamental look to them? Can't they make something that looks modern and streamlined?

And are they all engineered like French peices of shit like the Diva?

[Jason Perlow]

Here is a page with pics of Molteni Stuff:

http://www.hotellerie-equipement.com/fr/molteni.html

Apparently these are what Ducasse uses. Per Se, Daniel and WD-50 has Bonnet stoves, but I cant find a web site for it. Manressa restaurant in San Francisco apparently has one of the only 5 in California, and its made of Titanium. Gordon Ramsay in the UK has a Bonnet and paid £130,000 for it.

Here is a quote from Daniel about his Bonnet excerpted from an article at the Institute of Culinary Education web site:

Restaurant Daniel’s kitchen is dominated by a very large Bonnet range “island.” Can you tell me about it?

It’s massive. It projects a lot of heat, so I made it 1 1/2 inches higher than the way it comes. It’s on a cement platform that is 5.5 inches off the floor instead of 4. Then there is the stove. The stove arrived in one huge piece, and they put up the hood first. When they rolled the stove into the kitchen, it looked like it wasn’t going to fit! But there was 1/4 inch of space, so they managed. It weighs about three tons and all together the restaurant has about a quarter of a million dollars in stoves. As a long-term investment, it’s worth it. It’s a fantastic stove.

It looks less cheesy than the Diva or La Cornue stuff. Still, even with a Titanium steel frame, the French aren't exactly what you would call geniuses in industrial design. Unless you're Mssr. Eiffel. Now I bet that dude could make a stove.

[Fat Guy]

How does Jay Weston do it? Weston, who publishes Jay Weston's Restaurant Newsletter, is based in Los Angeles and writes primarily about Los Angeles restaurants. Yet he periodically breaks stories about New York restaurants ahead of any of the local New York and national media.

For example, awhile back Weston's newsletter was the first to break the story that Charlie Trotter would be opening at Time Warner in New York. Nobody even believed it when Weston wrote about it. It took weeks for anybody else to print the story.

Weston was also the first to call Amanda Hesser "winsome" in print, and look where that got us.

Now Weston has broken the news on the new location of Le Cirque. I haven't seen any mention of this anywhere else, but in the July/August issue of his newsletter it says:

"Now that he [sirio] has announced his plans to move Le Cirque 2000 from the Palace Hotel as early as January, we have a scoop for those of you who care: he'll be taking over the two-level Nicole Farhi store and restaurant at 10 East 60th Street."

[Ocean_islands]

Those sugar-covered bismarcks look positively revolting and the plastic-chocolate covered "strawberries" look even worse.

[bloviatrix]

The new issue of The New York Observer contains an article by Bryan Miller about Le Cirque's last night -- New Year's Eve. But don't despair, Sirio is moving the restaurant to the new Bloomberg building on Lex and 59th and plans to reopen in the spring.

Another Le Cirque Farewell: Finally, Goodbye to that TV!

(you might have to click through to the table of contents and scroll down to the link)

The prix-fixe last supper was exceptional, especially for a hectic New Year’s Eve: sliced baked potatoes with smoked salmon and osetra caviar, lobster and vegetable ravioli in fennel sauce, venison noisettes with pumpkin purée, chestnuts and caramelized pears and white truffle sauce. And it would not be Le Cirque without one of its towering Euclidean desserts, in this case a massive chocolate mousse cake impaled with chocolate triangles. At the stroke of midnight, the kitchen crew marched through the dining room banging pots and pans—a surprisingly sanguine troop of cuisiniers, considering they were about to join the unemployment line.