Tribute & novelty on the menu
New eatery in Bourdain’s Les Halles spot
When the late Anthony Bourdain blew the lid off the restaurant industry in his book “Kitchen Confidential,” he was Brasserie Les Halles’ executive chef — where he’d been since 1998.
Now that space — closed since 2016 — has reopened as La Brasserie. Francis Staub, who operates a cast-iron cookware company under his name, signed a 15-year lease for the 173seat restaurant so closely associated with Bourdain that, when he tragically committed suicide in 2018, grieving New Yorkers turned the area outside Les
Halles into a spontaneous shrine.
The spot at 411 Park Avenue South, which includes a 20-person zinc bar and a 12-seat terrace, reopened this spring.
“I always loved Les Halles, even if the food wasn’t perfect,” Staub tells Side Dish. “It was an old-fashioned place, like La Coupole in Paris.”
Staub’s first foray into New York restaurants was his popular upscale poultry spot Le Coq Rico in the Flatiron District, renamed and temporarily closed for renovations. He has another restaurant, Le Théatre in Alsace, in the town of Colmar.
La Brasserie’s design features the type of dim lights, red leather banquettes, dark wood and white tablecloths that French-loving New Yorkers adore.
When Bourdain ruled Les Halles, the eatery, which opened in 1990, was known for the butcher shop up front and bistro in the back, along with lots of meatheavy dishes, from steak frites to steak tartare prepared tableside.
Its new iteration will be a little more glam — but not too much, and will still boast those classic French and American bistro dishes, with a decent French wine list.
But does a new spot rising at the iconic brasserie stand a chance?
“I think it’s cool,” said top French chef Eric Ripert, of Le Bernardin, who said he used to dine there once a month even before he knew Bourdain, who became a close friend. “But it has to be its own entity and not stay in the past.”
Touches of Alsace
Staub agreed, though he’s keeping a steak dish with homemade French frites in honor of Bourdain.
New dishes — from Chef Jaime Loja, formerly of Del Frisco’s Restaurant Group and Brasserie Ruhlmann — will include plenty of soufflés and touches of Alsace, where Staub is from.
They’ll include: soufflé with caviar, a côte de boeuf for two, finished with brandy and served on a bed of rock salt, along with a foie gras torchon with date-lemon chutney, and curried mussels in coconut milk.
In his book, Bourdain describes working at Les Halles with a multicultural crew in a tiny kitchen hard to navigate with his 6-foot-4 frame. As an award-winning TV personality, he returned to shoot a segment there with Ripert, working as a line cook.
“It was insane,” Ripert recalled. “The volume was so fast and I was having a lot of fun. It was a very good team.”
Bourdain’s legacy transcended cooking to “reinvent journalism on television,” Ripert said. “He had the background of a chef but he wanted people to travel and be curious and learn — to leave the resort and go and explore.”