Le Chêne
76 Carmine St., nr. Seventh Ave. S.
Alexia Duchêne and Ronan Duchêne Le Could are the spouse and husband behind the brand new restaurant.
Picture: Andrew Bui
Alexia Duchêne’s first restaurant, Le Chêne, is present process the final bits of building earlier than it opens within the West Village this weekend. As of late final week, instruments have been nonetheless buzzing across the horseshoe bar behind the doorway and the kitchen within the again. However the 50-seat eating room was full, with darkish wooden chairs, velvety banquettes, white tablecloths, and a gauzy café curtain obscuring the underside half of the sidewalk-facing home windows. Rainbow-colored Basquiat prints are mirrored in a mirror on the opposite aspect of the room, which, in flip, diminishes the trio of Warhol flowers lined up in a nook. A gilded “Le Chêne” is painted within the chef’s lowercase cursive on the glass pane of the door, with an oak leaf drawn beneath for translation — although Duchêne is ready for everybody to mispronounce “Le Chêne.” “Actually each single account I open, they’re like, ‘Le Chenay?’” says the chef. “I’m like, Yeah, that’s tremendous.”
Le Chêne — rhymes with ten — is called after Duchêne and her husband, Ronan Duchêne Le Could. They met in France a few weeks earlier than the pandemic arrived and determined to isolate collectively when it did. “In my tiny condo in Paris, we simply spent our time cooking and attempting recipes and ingesting wine,” says Duchêne. “Ronan likes connecting with everybody. We full one another as a result of I love to do my factor within the again and I don’t have to exit and see each visitor. ”
As such, Duchêne Le Could will oversee the entrance of home, together with a 3,000-bottle wine cellar, whereas Duchêne runs the kitchen, the place the preliminary menu is greatest described as “tremendous eating, à la carte.” The menu begins with a altering collection of hors d’oeuvre since, Duchêne says, “snacks are the most effective a part of a ten-course meal.” Inexperienced-bean beignets are battered on the skin and steamed and snappy inside. Sea urchin tops French toast with bone marrow and red-pepper purée, and uncooked shrimp tartlets are sweetened barely with maple and brightened with shiso leaf. They’re all priced by the piece — between $12 and $25 — in order that tables can order nonetheless many they need, as an alternative of encountering that awkward drawback when a dish made from three items arrives at a four-top.
It is a French restaurant, so foie gras will seem within the type of the Lucullus, an intricate terrine named for an extravagant Roman basic. Le Chêne’s model includes rooster liver, apple, cognac, and port cooked down and layered with beef tongue that’s first poached in a star-anise- and coriander-scented broth, served with an agrodolce of sea buckthorn and honey. Equally labor intensive is a pithivier with pork, smoked eel, and potato gratin. Steak — giant, dry-aged cuts — might be less complicated. “I actually love beef,” says Duchêne, “however it ought to be grilled. Large steak. I don’t actually prefer it with an excessive amount of sauce or too many condiments. It’s not the right vessel for that.”
Dessert — till the full-time pastry chef, Theo Gardet, arrives from Paris — can also be below Duchêne’s management. Along with the chocolate tart with potato ice cream and a goat’s milk ice cream sundae with peas, strawberries, and nuts, there might be rice pudding as a result of it’s a favourite of Duchêne’s father. It is going to be topped with mango caramel, a nod to the fruit her dad and mom would convey it again from journeys to Egypt to remodel into sorbet at residence: “I need to pay somewhat homage.”
A pithivier from Le Chêne.
Picture: Andrew Bui
The meals is barely completely different than it was at Duchêne’s solely different actual New York cooking showcase, serving to to open Fort Greene’s Margot in 2023. By that time, she was already a star again residence, referred to as one of many youngest Prime Chef France finalists, for her social-media presence, and because the host of a regional cooking present on Canal+. A buddy initially linked Duchêne with Margot co-owners Halley Chambers and Kip Inexperienced after they have been searching for a chef. “I got here to New York to do a tasting, then they got here to Paris. We had a number of enjoyable,” says Duchêne. She and her husband moved to New York in February that yr, and the restaurant opened in Could. Duchêne ended up leaving the restaurant after a month and a half. “I feel it ended up not figuring out as a result of we don’t need the identical factor out of a restaurant, and I don’t assume there’s something unsuitable with that,” she explains. “We thought that it was higher for them to maintain their imaginative and prescient of the area as a result of additionally they did it earlier than I arrived.”
After a number of months, Duchêne and Duchêne Le Could, who at the moment was working as maître d’ at Café Boulud, determined to open a French restaurant of their very own. They spent six months growing a marketing strategy, adopted by internet hosting personal dinners to court docket traders and companions. Final December, they obtained the keys for the area on Carmine Avenue, which had been Gab’s.
The renovations solely took half a yr. “We’ve been actually right here on daily basis. We moved upstairs.” Duchêne says. The Fawlty Towers life-style has helped get contractor points and deliveries sorted promptly, as it’s going to when one thing arises as soon as the restaurant is definitely working. “It’s one thing you used to see within the ’70s. A variety of cooks in France, a minimum of, they might reside above and have this entire home. You don’t see it anymore as a result of, I imply, condo disaster and all the pieces, however we have been tremendous lucky that the owner took over the entire constructing once we moved in, and he was like, I’ll discover you one thing.”
Every thing has come collectively shortly by the standard requirements of a New York restaurant opening. The blue-chip artwork is on mortgage from one of many traders, a supplier, whereas the wine cellar is bulked by the consigned bottles from a special investor. Duchêne Le Could plans to make a behavior of choosing older and rarer wines to be served by the glass. He additionally needs to develop the borders of their largely French cellar, beginning with a Vermentino from California by the glass. One other pour, one that may not seem on the checklist in any respect, might be a Sauvignon Blanc mix from Chateau Turcaud, Duchêne Le Could’s household vineyard in Bordeaux. “As an alternative of pouring somewhat low-cost Champagne for individuals after they arrive,” he says, “we’ll simply use this wine since you’re a part of the household.”
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