New York chef shaped modern high-end U.S. cooking
David Bouley, the American chef who first translated French nouvelle cuisine into the New American style that shaped modern high-end cooking, died Monday at his home in Kent, Conn. He was 70.
The death, from a heart attack, was confirmed by his wife, Nicole Bartelme.
Bouley’s simple but sleek cuisine made a grand entrance in 1985 at Montrachet, the restaurant that put New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood on the map as a culinary destination. It was one of the first modern French restaurants to receive three stars from The New York Times.
At his restaurant Bouley, which operated in several locations from 1987 to 2017, he introduced New Yorkers to new ideas such as Japanese-style tasting menus, vegetable-based sauces and the value of locally farmed ingredients. “We never used caviar and truffles,” said Bill Yosses, the former White House pastry chef, who worked with Bouley at Montrachet and Bouley for almost 20 years. “David was much more interested in Tristar strawberries.”
Bouley persuaded diners to put themselves in his hands, with no printed menu or specific number of courses. He wielded sorbets, juices and vinegars to brighten the profile of restaurant food, which he considered overly dependent on butter, cream and stock.
“He got modern threestar Michelin dining to make sense to Americans,” said Dan Barber, who worked under Bouley for two years and is now the chef at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in northern Westchester County in New York. “He had an otherworldly ability to create and capture flavor, and he did it without menus or recipes, night after night.”
Eric Ripert, who cooked alongside Bouley at Joël Robuchon in Paris and briefly at Bouley before moving to Le Bernardin in 1991, said, “I have never seen a better chef on the line.”
Ripert and Bouley elevated fresh fish to a new status on American restaurant menus, which had long relied on steaks and chops as luxury items.
Bouley’s entrance, on the corner of Hudson and Duane Streets, was perpetually stacked with ripening apples, reminding guests that they were far from the cut flowers and crystal vases of midtown Manhattan’s classic temples to French cuisine: Le Cirque, Le Périgord and La Côte Basque. Earlier in his career, Bouley had worked in all three. He also trained influential chefs including Christina Tosi, Anita Lo, César Ramirez, George Mendes, Kerry Heffernan and James Kent.
Bouley’s restaurant empire expanded and shrank many times over his career. But his reach only grew, into the worlds of Japanese technique, European tradition and, in his last decade, nutrition and agriculture.
“He knew things about food that nobody else did, because he was so curious about the future and the potential and the new,” said Norbert Niederkofler, a leading chef in Italy who first went to New York to cook under Bouley in 1995, and returned nearly every year to try new dishes such as green pea ice cream, apple foam and tofu with trout roe. “He was all about innovation and product.”
In 2013, Bouley began a series of dinners called “The Chef and the Doctor,” working with medical professionals who shared his conviction that food could be optimized for nutrition as well as flavor. Since 2017, at Bouley at Home and Bouley Botanical, he ran test kitchens, lectures, classes and a “tasting library” but did not have a restaurant in New York.
Bouley’s path was shaped by his mother’s French heritage.
At a time when French chefs ruled global fine dining, his command of the language led him into the kitchens of chefs including Paul Bocuse, Joël Robuchon, Roger Vergé, Gaston Lenôtre and Frédy Girardet.
Like those chefs, Bouley was fascinated by the seasonality, beauty and precision of Japanese cuisine.
In 2015, he was the first American to be honored as a culinary ambassador of Japan; in 2022, he was named a chevalier by the French culture ministry for his “creative and visionary contributions to the French culinary arts.”
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bouley turned Bouley Bakery, a few blocks from ground zero, into a base from which he fed firefighters and police officers. With a $5.8 million contract from the Red Cross, Bouley, with an army of employees and volunteers, also fed rescue workers and construction teams, cooking 20,000 to 30,000 meals every 24 hours, rejecting shelf-stable ingredients in favor of whole salmon, lobsters and produce donated from around the country.
“I cook as if I were in love with everyone I’m cooking for,” he said in a 1992 profile. “I work best with my back against the wall. It’s when some of the best things surface.”