Jump to content

  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon NYC (2006 - 2008)

SeanDirty

By SeanDirty
in New York: Dining

 Share

Recommended Posts

Sneakeater

Sneakeater

Posted
Posted (edited)

Just got back from a meal at Atelier.

A full review will have to await my having time to collect my thoughts. Now, just let me say this.

The knives will be out for this place, and it's easy to see why: $20 cocktails?????? Wines by the glass that range from $12 to $20 to God knows what?????? (Let me repeat: $20 cocktails????????? Does it mean I'm a hopeless alchie that I ordered one anyway?)

But OTOH, they have a $160 seven-course tasting menu that, given their a la carte prices, is a pretty good deal.

And then there's this:

This food is in some ways at a level above anything else I've had in New York. Even better -- more creative, more audacious, and technically brilliant to boot -- than EMP. But still, for all that, not so fancy or complicated that it's inappropriate to the surroundings.

I have to think more to work this all out for myself.

But I'm VERY excited about this meal.

Go before September comes and you won't be able to get in any more.

Edited by Sneakeater (log)
BryanZ

BryanZ

Posted
Posted

Interesting. I can forsee a Gilt-like debate, given the high drink prices and what some might call a severe disconnect between the food being offered, the restaurant's overall vibe, and the prices being charged. Only this time the stakes are much higher, given Robuchon's reputation and all the hype that's been following the place.

Bryan Zupon

Twitter

ZKitchen

eG Foodblog

Las Vegas

Spring Break in Europe

Summer in Europe

Mexico

ChefGEB

ChefGEB

Posted
Posted

There is word he will be doing London next, and may come to Chicago in a year or so. With regards to a NY Times review and overall success, what impact do you think his having other outlets will have in the long run?

Graham Elliot

@grahamelliot

www.grahamelliot.com

Vadouvan

Vadouvan

Posted
Posted
There is word he will be doing London next, and may come to Chicago in a year or so. With regards to a NY Times review and overall success, what impact do you think his having other outlets will have in the long run?

Chef, one can never tell but I suspect dilution and it loses its special-ness.

I have eaten twice at Atelier in Paris but I would be hesitant to go spend all that money when they become high end chains like Nobu or Vong. I am all for capitalism but I assume other people are bearing the cost of building these places (like the 4 seasons), given that there is little economic risk.

As chefs build empires, I would rather go to an Avenues or alinea where there is a dedicated person in-house than one of these globe trotting chef establishments where the "chef" stays long enough to re arrange the deckchairs and move to the next location.

ASM NY

ASM NY

Posted
Posted
This food is in some ways at a level above anything else I've had in New York.  Even better -- more creative, more audacious, and technically brilliant to boot -- than EMP.  But still, for all that, not so fancy or complicated that it's inappropriate to the surroundings.

Sneakeater, I am very curious to hear what you had. I have not yet been to L'Atelier here in NY, but I did visit the one in Las Vegas, and from my understanding, the menu is not very different from one place to another.

With that said, I found the food at L'Atelier in LV to be very fresh, perfectly executed, and for the most part, pretty good. I did not however find it to be particularly creative or audacious. We ordered a la carte and spent more money there than I have spent in any restaurant in NY. It's very hard to explain, but I was expecting "more" for what we spent, and not necessarily because of the ambience. We loved sitting at the bar, seeing how everything was made, and we chatted with Robuchon and his head chef there. We are not rushing to try the one in NY just yet.

Arley Sasson

oakapple

oakapple

Posted
Posted
Hmmm, I don't know, Bruni's giving bad vibes already.  Judging from the prices looks like a comparitve meal at Per Se would cost less.  He's going to get the high powered microscope for these prices.  I predict (in 4 weeks) Bruni will scalp him with 2 stars.  Is it possible?

Two stars from El Bruni is entirely possible. We know these things about Frank:

1) The traditional trappings of old-school fancy dining are practically irrelevant for him.

2) He takes the Consumer Reports approach to restaurant reviewing. He doesn't like paying $40 for an entree the size of a golf ball.

3) At expensive places, he expects the service to be practically perfect.

I'd say the margin for error at L'Atelier de Joel Rubuchon will be close to zero. Given what happened at Gilt and The Modern, two stars is a very real possibility if any of Bruni's usuall pet peeves are violated.

Marc Shepherd

http://nyjournal.squarespace.com/

Sneakeater

Sneakeater

Posted
Posted (edited)

I thought last night (a Sunday in August) would be a good time to get into Atelier Robuchon in its soft-opening phase, when they take no reservations and operate strictly first-come first-served.

They're supposed to open for dinner at 5 or 6 (I forget which). I got there at 6:20. There were a couple of people sitting at the counter and nobody at the dining room tables. I figured (gleefully) that I'd be able to stroll right in. But the hostess took my name and told me they'd be able to seat me in an hour. I looked around and saw there were a lot of people waiting outside. Apparently, they didn't open right on time and then they trickle in the first seating while they're firing up. At least now during the soft opening.

I had left myself some chores to run in the neighborhood in anticipation of this possiblity. When I can back about 55 minutes later, the hostess, with a very broad smile, led me to the counter, where I had my choice of two (noncontiguous) open seats.

The cocktail menu was shocking. It's all classics -- no chef-generated special cocktails here -- at $20 apiece. I was very thirsty, and so ordered one (a Singapore Sling, after I searched the room carefully to ascertain there was no one I knew there who would see me drink it). It was ordinary. I was getting a bad feeling.

One glance at the $160 seven-course tasting menu was enough to convince me to order it. It had two dishes that I very much wanted to try -- the uni dish and the so-called langoustine fritter -- which the preview in Frank Bruni's blog noted were both extremely expensive (something like $39 for the uni, a very small plate, and somewhere in either the $50s or the $70s for the langoustine). $160 for seven courses, when those were two of them, seemed like the clear way to go.

I looked briefly at the a la carte menu. All I can say is that it's very confusing, what with the different categories of dishes, and that prices were all over the place: every which way but low.

I asked if there were wine pairings, but that turned out to be nothing more than my server and me conferring on which by-the-glass glasses I should get to go with which sequences of dishes. The server's enthusiasm (more about this later) made that a fairly fun process, though. By-the-glass prices are high, however ($12 for a California viognier and $18 or $20 for a Rully).

Painful as it will be, I guess I'm bound to do a dish-by-dish runthrough.

1. Amuse: a lemon-vanilla gel, with a layer of fennel foam topped with a bit of olive paste. This is when I began to get turned around in favor of this place. An extraordinary blend of flavors, with a beautiful blend of textures, the silkiness of the gel standing out. And the sweet/tart/salty flavor combination was piquant.

2. The Famous Uni Dish: uni in a lobster jelly, topped with a layer of cauliflower cream dotted with parsley reduction. A great uni dish. Maybe the jelly was rendundant after the amuse. Maybe it was all so good I didn't care.

3. Capellini in a very light tomato sauce topped with caviar. A simple dish including a big mound of caviar. But it really worked. Not as a luxury ingredient gratuitously ladeled on, but rather as a completely unexpected flavor element that turned out to work beautifully.

4. Crispy Langoustine Fritter: what this really turned out to be was the meat of a langoustine served inside a (greaseless) fried wonton, with some pesto inside as well. If Joe Ng served something like this, we'd all be bowing before him, singing the praises of his subtlety and technique. So, too, here.

5. Softboiled Egg on Stew of Eggplant. This was, in its way, my favorite dish. Favorite because unexpected. The eggplant stew was very spicy (I wish I knew enough to say with what). The egg on top was like a poached egg on top of a serving of corned beef hash (I am one classy food analyst, aren't I? nothing but the most refined comparisons here), having the same effect of moderating the full flavor of the matter underneath.

6. Cod fillet, with something like a steamed dumpling skin covering it, in a chicken broth. We've all been served a lot of cod lately. (Oddly, as I had thought they were nearly fished out.) Here's a fish where, if you overcook it even a little, the rubber comes in. This was as perfectly cooked a piece of fish as ever I've had. The cliche is to say it was like silk -- but it was. The highly flavorful chicken broth in which it was served wafted up fragrance as I ate the delicate fish (cod isn't a fish you necessarily think of as delicate, but I swear this was).

7. Quail stuffed with foie gras served with truffled mashed potatos. My least favorite course. Dare I say that the quail (described on the menu as "carmelized") was a bit greasy? Also, just from a menu-planning point of view, I thought it was a little late in the multi-course meal to start in with the foie gras and a bowl of potatos that were something like half butter. Also, the foie gras didn't add as much flavor as I'd have expected. This wasn't bad, but it wasn't of the highest excellence.

8. Green yuzu granite with Vervain jelly. More jelly. The have a calling here. This was an excellent palate-cleanser. But, like a six-month-old looking at a mobile from his crib, what I found most interesting about this item was how they contrived the dish so that red light was reflected up from the red glass plate under the clear serving dish so as to sort of illuminate the bottom of the granite, making it look like it was glowing red from within. It was a beautiful and fascinating effect. Having stared at my food, I did not go on to play with it.

9. Souflee with cherries and almond ice cream. They know how to make souflees here. They also know how to make ice cream.

What is there to say about all this? The food was all amazingly well prepared. In terms just of technique, I've never had anything in New York to exceed it, and little to even match it. In terms of the conceptions of the dishes, they seemed to me to be extremely well-thought-out and unstinting but not overcomplicated, avoiding, say, what can occassionally seem (to me) to be the overeleborateness of some dishes at Jean Georges. It's food obviously conceived of by one of the great chefs in the world, but simplified a bit to avoid a lot of the rigamorole.

Which brings us, inevitably, to the price issue. You might very reasonably say, why pay top dollar for pared-down cuisine? Especially since what is pared down is not only the complexity of the food, but also the surrounding ritual.

To me, the answer is this. The value question comes down to, is this experience, in its entirety, worth the money to me? As for the food, I can't get this food elsewhere. It's different enough from other similar food on offer in New York to make it something with no competing replacement product. It's not like Chinatown Brasserie, where they're charging at least twice as much as places that serve fairly similar food that isn't materially worse. This is more like, I could go to EMP, which I like almost if not equally as much and it costs less -- but it's different. I could go to Jean Georges, which maybe I like a bit more -- but it's different. If I want THIS food, I have to go here. And at least the tasting menu price doesn't seem out-of-line to me for the quality and quantity of what you get.

As for the non-food parts, let me put it this way. It isn't like Cafe Gray, where the ambiance and service are so actively unpleasant as to diminish your experience of the excellent (but expensive) food. To me, sitting at the counter was sort of fun, if not the absolute height of comfort. (For solo dining, it's optimal, in fact -- better than eating at the bar in most places.) (Not that the [Michelin] three-star version of a Robuchon-type place would even have a bar.) But even looking at the tables, it wasn't the kind of thing where the setting would diminish your enjoyment of the food. At worst, it wouldn't augment it.

And as for the service, it had this one impressive aspect. Everyone appeared to be retrained holdovers from Atelier's predecessor in the space, Fifty Seven Fifty Seven. And their excitement at being involved with this new level of product was palpable. The woman who took my order and doled out the wine was visibly excited. So was the busboy who brought the food. His smiles when he presented each dish weren't feined. He was psyched. That was fun, too.

So is it a four-star restaurant? My answer is, I don't give a fuck whether it's a four-star restaurant. What I care about is, did I like -- I mean, REALLY like -- my dinner? The answer is, yes. Did I feel ripped off by the price? The answer is, no. (The FOOD price, anyway: I'm NOT happy about the beverage prices.) Is it the best restaurant in New York? I'm sure it's not -- but I don't see how that conceivably matters. What matters is that at least the tasting menu is well worth trying.

Edited by Sneakeater (log)
Sneakeater

Sneakeater

Posted
Posted

(For all you star fans, I think two stars is a real possibility, too. But that says more about Frank Bruni and his preferences than anything else. If you tied up my nieces and nephews and pointed a gun at them and ordered me to give Atelier Robuchon a NYT star rating, I'd probably say three. But it just doesn't matter.)

Sneakeater

Sneakeater

Posted
Posted (edited)

Also, I think it might be illuminating, in some sense, to explain why I've never eaten at ADNY and Per Se -- two obvious comparisons -- so I can't compare them.

ADNY is the kind of hyperfancy restaurant that my late wife WOULD NOT TOLERATE. So we never went. It's too ostentatiously luxe for business entertaining (at least the kind I do). And it's also too ostentatiously luxe for dates -- there is such a panoply of wrong ideas that could be conveyed that it doesn't matter which one would be picked up.

Per Se, OTOH, would have been fine for my late wife, and, even despite its high price, is to my mind sufficiently low-key in the ostentation department for a date. But you can't get in. I can't plan meals a month in advance, and even if I could, I won't spend all morning on the phone trying to get through (much less have my secretary do it), and can't eat a big multi-course meal at the odd hours that are usually avaibable anyway.

Also, neither of those restaurants seems fit for solo dining, my other frequent option. ADNY because, even if you occassionally COULD snag a table at the last minute, it just seems too fancy/ritualistic, and Per Se because you can't walk in. (I NEVER plan solo dining in advance.)

So I never go to those places.

Atelier Robuchon, at least during its soft opening during these waning, inhabitant-free months of summer, is perfect for a solo semi-walk-in. Once the modified reservation policy kicks in, I'll never be able to do it on a date (since we'll be unable to get a reservation for one of the tables, and will be unable to ever expect counter seats without an intolerably long wait), and I'm sure the wait at the counter will be such that I won't be able to walk in anymore. So it goes out of my repetoire after Labor Day.

But for now, in a way, for my needs, it's perfect. A place with great food, but no ritual. I wish it could stay that way.

Edited by Sneakeater (log)
rich

rich

Posted
Posted
(For all you star fans, I think two stars is a real possibility, too.  But that says more about Frank Bruni and his preferences than anything else.  If you tied up my nieces and nephews and pointed a gun at them and ordered me to give Atelier Robuchon a NYT star rating, I'd probably say three.  But it just doesn't matter.)

Excellent report SE. Did you happen to notice the bottle prices of wine? You are certainly correct is saying the wine (by the glass) and drink prices are over the top. But the food prices seem fair based on your description - certainly in line with other NYC places striving for the same level.

Rich Schulhoff

Opinions are like friends, everyone has some but what matters is how you respect them!

rich

rich

Posted
Posted
I'm sorry, but I knew I wasn't ordering a bottle and I just didn't look.  I simply forgot my reportorial obligations to the eGullet community.

OK - but don't ever let that happen again. :wink:

Rich Schulhoff

Opinions are like friends, everyone has some but what matters is how you respect them!

Sneakeater

Sneakeater

Posted
Posted

Looking around at the people in my immediate vicinity at the counter, I saw almost no Americans (paying for their meals with unexchanged dollars) ordering anything but the tasting menu. All the Europeans (paying for their meals with dollars bought with Euros) were ordering extensively a la carte.

jsmeeker

jsmeeker

Posted
Posted

I'm glad you enjoyed your meal there. I greatly enjoyed mine at the Las Vegas location. Someone upthread had mentioned the menus were pretty much the same for the different locations, but the tasting menu you had was totally different than the one I had with the exception of the quail stuffed fois gras. IMHO, that's a GOOD thing. One could dine at the NYC location, then if you were in Vegas, you could give it another shot, spend less money, and get a meal that didn't have a lot of duplication. Your wine service was exactly like what we expereienced in Vegas. No set pairings, but the server did a nice job selecting some wines, asking us at one point of anyone objected to Champagne, then asked if we cared for dessert wine for the desert courses and solicited input on what we may like. And like what you experienced, the server was enthusiastic.

Will this become a "big" high-end chain with lots of locations? (like the aforementioned Nobu). I dunno. But based on your report and my expereience in Las Vegas, if it does get sort of like that, it seems like they would keep the wuality level very high.

Jeff Meeker, aka "jsmeeker"

ASM NY

ASM NY

Posted
Posted

Thanks for the great report Sneakeater. While it appears many of the a la carte items are the same as the ones I had in Las Vegas, the tasting menu looks completely different, and I imagine, changes more often.

With that said, I agree with you that this place is all about the food, not at al pretentious.

(BTW: The langoustine fritter at $15 is a steal).

Arley Sasson

DutchMuse

DutchMuse

Posted
Posted

Wine list is something like 2.0 to 2.5 x retail.

I can't predict how many stars Bruni will give it, but it deserves 3 stars. I ate there last week and it was superb. Not a **** place (NYT) but certainly 3; if Bruni gave 2 then I'd consider him way off the mark. Both food and service were exemplary.

Sneakeater

Sneakeater

Posted
Posted
(BTW: The langoustine fritter at $15 is a steal).

I really have to agree with you on that.

With all the ridiculousness on the a la carte menu, it's amazing to find a bargain.

(Don't anybody tell them.)

Sneakeater

Sneakeater

Posted
Posted (edited)

On the topic of these "chains", of course I'm against them on principle, just like Vadouvan. But putting my prejudices aside, it really depends on how you staff each of your branches. Clearly, whoever's running the kitchen here at Atelier NY is very very very good. Just like -- at least according to Fat Guy -- the apparent nonentity Alain Ducasse currently has running his NYC branch is in actuality a highly skilled executant with a near-perfect understanding of the Ducasse esthetic.

Sure, the more places you open, the less likely you are to be paying attention to any one of them. But it isn't like there aren't any number of highly-skilled people available to run your branch kitchens for you. So if you do pay attention, the branches can be, if not as good as the original, at least highly creditable.

Edited by Sneakeater (log)
stetson99

stetson99

Posted
Posted

Did anyone catch Joel Robuchon's appearance on Charlie Rose last Friday? I missed it, and for some reason it hasn't been posted online yet. It should pop up at http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=tvsh...arlie_Rose&so=1 any day now.

Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of dining at the Las Vegas outpost. It was one of the best meals of my life. I'll post a full review in the appropriate thread tomorrow evening. If you visit the NYC location then be sure to order the poached baby oysters with salted French butter. It is hands down the best small course I've eaten in my life. Incredibly simple, but amazingly delicious.

 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...