Crown
Images by Danny Kim
On this constrained, no-nonsense, post-boom period, most formidable New York cooks try and make their names by leasing darkish little areas in out-of-the-way neighborhoods and crafting spare, regionally sourced comfort-food dishes. However in the course of the course of his brief, meteoric profession, John DeLucie has prospered by doing issues the old style means. As government chef on the Waverly Inn, he was identified for dressing the well-known home model of macaroni and cheese with truffles. When he lastly opened his personal restaurant, the Lion, he exhibited an old-world fondness for costly caviars (golden osetra, $125), dear French wines ($1,850 for a bottle of Bollinger Blanc de Noirs ’00), and elaborate, Hollywood-style props (oil work, glowing chandeliers, and so on.). Like an old-school restaurateur, he choreographs his productions with a particular viewers in thoughts, and, greater than most cooks in the present day, he’s an entertainer at coronary heart.
DeLucie’s newest big-money culinary present is named Crown, and it’s been enjoying for practically three months now to packed homes, and characteristically blended evaluations, on the underside flooring of a complicated Higher East Aspect townhouse off Madison Avenue, throughout from the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel. As on the Waverly, the doorway to the restaurant is discreetly marked, and guarded within the evenings by a doorman who may simply be mistaken for a nightclub bouncer. Echoing each the Waverly and the Lion, there’s a cramped, darkly lit Black Gap of Calcutta bar space within the entrance of the home, which is designed as a sort of holding pen for individuals straining to achieve entrance to the grand eating room, and reservations are doled out to a choose, clubby clientele, which suggests regular civilians will discover themselves sitting all the way down to dinner, like I did, at 5:45 or ten o’clock.
The room at Crown is bigger and extra comfy than DeLucie’s hysterically loud, tightly packed operations downtown, however it seems, as these institutions do, like a Broadway set designer’s concept of what a grand New York restaurant should be. There’s the elegant glass-covered Atelier room behind the surprisingly giant townhouse area, and the partitions of the principle eating room are clad in wooden molding and stained in mushy shades of grey. The waiters put on starchy white dinner jackets, and the tables are coated with crisp white linens and set, cruise-ship type, with old style lamps fitted with tiny black lampshades. The partitions of the bar are plastered with evocative black-and-white images of gents in tuxedos and girls carrying flapper-era attire, and it doesn’t matter what time of the night you go to, the room is sunk in a shadowy, fastidiously calibrated speakeasy gloom.
“That is formally the darkest restaurant in Manhattan,” mentioned one in all my company as we used little push-button flashlights (supplied by our useful waitperson) to look at the primary wave of appetizers on the desk. They included two tartares (one made with Tasmanian sea trout, the opposite with overchilled Wagyu beef and an excessive amount of truffle oil) and a basic, decadently easy terrine of Hudson Valley foie gras garnished with a row of freshly minimize figs. The de rigueur caviar service is out there too (golden osetra from California, for $110), together with a well-constructed salad of sautéed boutique mushrooms tossed with chestnuts, a number of surprisingly good handmade pastas (attempt the carbonara-style penne tossed with pancetta and a fried egg), and a heat, faintly curried bowl of squash soup, which our waiter poured with nice ceremony over a lightweight, melting, savory flan flavored with candy onions.
Most of the aged totems of the basic uptown eating expertise are current on the marginally extra prosaic entrée listing, together with grilled Maine lobster; platters of overcooked, barely stringy Muscovy duck for 2; and several other cuts of respectable, if extravagantly priced, beefsteak ($55 Delmonico, $65 tenderloin, and $125 côte de boeuf for 2) served with large, tottering marrow bones and beneficiant spoonfuls of freshly whipped béarnaise. In contrast with the meat dishes, my expertly cooked rack of lamb (plated over buttery chanterelles with bordelaise on the aspect) was a relative discount at $46, and so have been the veal medallions ($37), which the kitchen wraps in strips of speck and plates over a pile of rapini and spring onions. The scallops I sampled one night lacked that plump, extra-fresh sweetness, so get the halibut as an alternative, which is wreathed in an emulsion tinged with vermouth and scattered with Romanesco cauliflower and crunchy slivers of almond.
The room at Crown was normally empty after I arrived for my 5:45 dinners, however the tables quickly crammed up with a festive assortment of DeLucie regulars (Star Jones cooling her heels on the bar) and native representatives of the One %, dressed for the night of their blazers and glittering, brooch-encrusted robes. They sipped fishbowl-size snifters of cognac from the intensive listing of spirits and hoisted $45 glasses of classic Champagne poured from large, frosty magnums. The dessert listing contains wedges of fig cake ready by Michael White’s former pastry chef Heather Bertinetti, and a big, bracing affogato made with zabaglione-flavored ice cream and two photographs of espresso. However one of the simplest ways to finish your meal at this elaborate uptown DeLucie manufacturing is with the surprisingly elegant milk-chocolate soufflé, which is completed in nouvelle Belle Epoque style, with a pour of heat malt-flavored crème anglaise.
Crown
Handle:
24 E. 81st St., nr. Madison Ave.; 646-559-4880
Hours: Dinner
Sunday by Thursday 5:30 to 11 p.m.,
Friday and Saturday to midnight. Lunch
Monday by Friday 11:30 a.m. to three p.m.
Costs: Appetizers, $14 to $25; entrées,
$27 to $65.
Very best Meal: Foie gras terrine
or housemade penne, Atlantic
halibut or rack of lamb, milk-chocolate
soufflé.
Notice: The restaurant’s lunch menu features a Pecorino-cheese fondue and, after all, a $22 Crown burger.
Scratchpad: One star for the cooking, which is a minimize above the standard DeLucie degree, and one other for the service and
the setting.
Crown
Picture: Danny Kim
Crown
Picture: Danny Kim
Crown
Picture: Danny Kim
Crown
Picture: Danny Kim
Crown
Picture: Danny Kim
Crown
Picture: Danny Kim
Crown
Picture: Danny Kim
Crown
Picture: Danny Kim