Changing his pots
Panned top chef makes a comeback by ditching the French fussiness
VAUCLUSE is the Manhattan restaurant league’s Most Improved Player. Against the odds, Michael White’s Frenchthemed spot has put its disastrous launch behind itself. The restaurant’s September 2015 opening was highly anticipated, but reviews were brutal. White’s business partner, Altamarea head Ahmass Fakahany, didn’t help matters when he responded to a one-star review in the New York Times with a bitter public letter that read like a semiliterate Yelp rant. The embarrassing fiasco left the elegant dining rooms with too many empty seats for a place paying rent on 12,000 square feet of prime Upper East Side space.
But, these days, the rooms and lounge are usually full with a mix of well-off locals, classier-than-average tourists and foodies chasing the magic they know from White’s Italian flagship Marea. The menu is less fussy and less French than it first was, which isn’t a bad thing.
The menu that once offered a single salad now boasts five, including a spectacular Maine lobster number. Presentations have been subtly edited to reduce formality. Dover sole comes with Brussels sprouts on the same plate as the fish — unlike before when separate vegetable plates needlessly cluttered tables.
Rigid banquettes have been tossed from the front dining room and replaced by round tables and an airier layout. Live jazz Wednesday, Friday and Sunday nights and Sunday brunch enhances the buzz.
I’d mostly given up on Vaucluse because the food was underseasoned and too pedestrian for the price, although I’d occasionally stop in for the $27 White Label burger, a deeply-flavored, aged-beef blend.
But, on recent visits, I’ve found other dishes just as satisfying.
Fennel and trout roe lend soul to lobster and butternut squash soup. Duck breast delivers deeper flavor when served with figs and wild mushrooms than it did as duck à l’orange. A jumbo raviolo filled with lobster, crab and foie gras rivals anything at Marea.
White’s a bit guarded about the changes, but he admits that the food has “evolved” and that Vaucluse is now a “neighborhood” restaurant — not the high-minded culinary gamechanger it set out to be.
But it’s also a much better restaurant.