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Oh Mandy! We love your new wine bar

Having spent the last six years as the right hand woman of Le Bernardin chef-owner Eric Ripert, Mandy Oser, 33, might just be the most well-prepared rookie restauranteur in town. Along with a group of partners, Oser just opened Ardesia, a wine bar serving a tasty array of gourmet snacks, desserts, salads and sandwiches in far west midtown. The New Jersey native and former congressional staffer chatted with us about her unconventional career path, opening her own place and why celeb chefs aren't so different from senators.

This space is really dramatic, with a double height wine wall. How did you approach the design?
I asked a dear friend of mine, Mimi Madigan, who is an architect, whether she had any advice for us in our search for a designer and she said, "Can I throw my hat into the ring?" She ended up doing it as side project from her main job, which is working with Annabelle Seldorf. Like it is for me, this is her first independent project.

Speaking of day jobs, you haven't given up yours. How are you balancing Ardesia with your position at Le Bernardin?
I took a couple weeks off to get things up and running. Moving forward there are other partners involved so we'll sort of be balancing it that way.

Has Chef Ripert been supportive?
He's been really helpful. He and Maguy (Le Coze, co-owner of Le Bernardin) are a constant source of inspiration for me. In practical terms, the way they manage the team at Le Bernardin has been a great lesson. In Eric's book On The Line there's a list of 129 cardinal sins that a server should avoid and that just sort of rattles in the back of my mind all the time.

Tell us about the food.
Our chef, Amorette Casaus, came from [Chelsea tapas bar] El Quinto Pino and trained earlier in her career under Gray Kunz. We sort of conceived the menu as a collection of our favorite things to eat while drinking so we have homemade New York style soft pretzels, house cured charcuterie and ice cream sandwiches with a really thick cookie crust.

What are some of your favorite wine bars in the city?
I love Tia Pol, Terroir and Sorella, this little restaurant that two women opened on the Lower East Side.

How did you get into the restaurant industry?
After college, I moved to DC and worked as a junior aid for Senator Robert Toricelli. Then I worked at a law firm focusing on international trade -- pretty soon I was bored to death. On the side I was working at a little bistro in my neighborhood and I realized I liked it more than my day job. My best friend, who worked for City Harvest at the time, heard that Eric was hiring and said "Why don't you try it?" I didn't even know who Eric was but I thought "What the hell?" That was over six years ago.

Do you see any similarities between the restaurant world and the political world?
Definitely. It's very dynamic in the way that politics is, always changing, always something new. And in terms of how it's organized, the Le Bernardin office is not dissimilar from a senate office only instead of a press secretary, a scheduler, a legislative director and all that, there's just me. I'm a chief of staff of one!

Ardesia, 510 West 52nd St, New York, NY

By Jenny Comita

November 4, 2009

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Eric Ripert

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Jennifer Rubell is serving 2,000 lbs of ribs tonight

Daughter of art collectors Mera and Don Rubell and niece of Studio 54 impresario Steve Rubell, Jennifer Rubell is the closest you can get to art and entertainment world royalty. But she's made a name for herself in her own right as a cookbook author and crackerjack hostess, capable of masterminding culinary spectacles (such as a project she did on the subject of reconciliation at the National Portrait Gallery earlier this year, involving a 270-foot long table and 1,500 baguettes). Tonight, she's producing the opening dinner for the Performa 09 Biennial, transforming the X Initiative art space in Chelsea into an "interactive culinary experience" based on the book of Genesis. Five hundred guests will move through three floors, eating a course on each. Honey will drip from the ceiling onto 2,000 pounds of barbecued ribs (think: God creating woman) and guests will be asked to destroy and consume chocolate facsimiles of Jeff Koons's bunny sculpture (made by Jacques Torres).

How does one even prepare 2,000 pounds of ribs?
Adam Perry Lang of Daisy Mae's BBQ -- I met him through Mario Batali -- has a cooker that holds 1000 pounds of ribs. I called Adam up and I said, I'm doing this project and I need one ton of ribs, 2,000 pounds, and the first question he asked was, "Is that the weight before or after they're cooked?" He didn't even hesitate.

Who are some of the expected guests?
It's a great mix of people and generations. Maurizio Cattelan, Cindy Sherman, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim of Opening Ceremony, Zac Posen, Celerie Kemble, Lou Reed.

Will your parents be there tonight?
Definitely. And my brother Jason and his wife Michelle and my daughter are coming too.

What was it like growing up in a family of collectors?
It's impossible to exaggerate the degree to which art was the absolute central focus of our lives. We grew up around artists, curators and critics and we never had heroes who were anything but great artists.

Do you remember any in particular from your childhood?
I've known Jeff Koons since I was nine, I was in love with Richard Prince, I remember all the artists. When I think of my childhood- Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente, they were all there. I remember strikingly my mother coming downstairs and telling me that Andy Warhol had died. It was like a family member had died. I was probably a teenager.

Tell us where you like to eat in New York.
One restaurant that I'm loving is Roberta's Pizza in Bushwick. It's been open for two years but it's just kind of burst onto the radar. They're actually coming on Saturday with chain saws to cut the apple trees we're using in the Performa installation into wood to use in their woodburning oven. I've also been a consistent Indochine fan, it's their 25th anniversary, and there hasn't been a year in those 25 years that I haven't been a regular. I used to go with my uncle.

Your uncle was Steve Rubell -- are there similarities between you two, in terms of entertaining or otherwise?
He and I were very, very close, and we shared an interest in social interactions. But I feel like my whole life is atonement for the velvet rope. I try to be inclusive in everything. He used to say to me, "I'd never let myself into Studio 54," and I always thought that was heartbreaking, to create a place that he wouldn't feel adequate for. When I was 7 years old the crowds would part for me at Studio 54 -- I felt a little embarrassed. I just always had more sympathy for the people still standing outside.

By Haven Thompson

October 30, 2009

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Chanterelle's unseen last menu (sniff)

Manhattan food lovers are still mourning the loss of Chanterelle, the pioneering French restaurant that closed earlier this month. But as much as it was sacred culinary ground, Chanterelle was also a haven for artists, many of whom were early clients when the restaurant opened its first location in SoHo in 1979. A tradition was born: The artists would design covers for Chanterelle's menus, which owners Karen and David Waltuck would change periodically during the year. (Robert Rauschenberg and Matthew Barney were among the many vaunted participants.)

Before Chanterelle's fate was known the Waltucks had big plans for the restaurant, including a significant renovation and a menu cover by Chuck Close, who, fittingly enough, was one of their first customers. Here it is, below:

By Timothy McCahill

October 16, 2009

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Attention foodies! Five minutes with Amanda Hesser & Merrill Stubbs

New York Times food columnist Amanda Hesser and food writer/recipe tester Merrill Stubbs are the founders of food52.com, a new web site aimed at home cooks. Each week, the site runs two recipe contests (this week it’s best fig dish and best mushroom soup) and at the end of a year the winning recipes will be compiled in a book to be published by HarperStudio. Over bowls of Pain Quotidien gazpacho—which they like for its unexpected use of cumin—the two dished to W about their latest venture, their adventures in cooking and Gwyneth Paltrow’s culinary chops.

There are so many cooking sites on the web but Food52 is really a unique concept. How did you come up with the idea?
Amanda: When I started working on the update of the The New York Times Cookbook [due out next September] I put an author’s query in the paper asking readers to write in and tell me what their favorite Times recipes were. I was flooded with emails and when Merrill started working with me she created this enormous document that tabulated which recipes were most often picked.
Merrill: We noticed this interesting pattern: that more than half of the readers’ favorites—and a lot of the recipes that we just really liked, after testing 1,200 of them—actually came from home cooks. Back in the 1850s, the Times was full of recipes that home cooks mailed in, and in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when Craig Claiborne was running the food section, he often included recipes that were passed along to him by friends or people he met. We realized that there’s this history of great home cooks and feel that there are still great home cooks out there today.

The site is called Food52, as in 52 weeks. Does that mean you’re planning on keeping it around for just a year?
Amanda: Not at all. We have a two book deal with HarperStudio so there will be another book of next year’s recipe contest winners and, in addition to the contests, we have other interesting things planned for the site. In a few weeks we’ll be posting our tournament of cookbooks. We chose 16 cookbooks and had 17 experts cook from them and judge them in rounds, like a tournament. It’s modeled after themorningnews.org’s annual tournament of books, which judges novels the same way.

Who will the judges be?
Amanda: It’s a wide range, everyone from Grant Achatz and Dan Barber to popular food bloggers to Gwyneth Paltrow.
Merrill: She was a model judge actually. She really got into the kitchen and cooked. I wish everyone was as into it as she was.

You’ve both logged countless kitchen hours. Have you ever had a real cooking disaster?
Merrill: Yes! It was two weeks after I moved into my new apartment and I was trying out a new recipe. It involved deep-frying eggs, basically poaching them in oil so they end up soft and crispy. I turned the heat on under the pot, put on the lid, and then forgot about it because I was doing something else. When I finally remembered, I went back into the kitchen, turned off the stove, and thought, “Maybe if I take the lid off the oil will cool more quickly.” And of course the whole thing erupted into flames. There was literally a column of fire shooting out of this pot on my stove. I called 911 and the firemen put it out with a fire extinguisher, then turned a hose on it and finally threw the pot of oil across the room into my sink, sending oil flying everywhere. I ended up with burnt oil stains all over the place, a water-damaged floor, scorched cabinets and soot from my black plastic microwave—which melted—throughout the apartment. I had to get the whole apartment painted and my kitchen had to be completely redone.

How about you, Amanda?
Amanda: A friend was helping me clean up and stacked two pots together, which got stuck. They were suctioned together and there was a little bit of oily water in the bottom pot. I was on the phone with my mother and she said, “Just stick it in the freezer. Maybe the metals will be different and one will shrink.” But my freezer was really tiny and really full so I thought, “Nah.” But you know how if a lid is suctioned to a pot you just turn the heat on under it and it lifts right off? I thought the same principle would apply. So I had the heat on high and I’m sitting right next to my stove and all of a sudden BOOM! I had basically created a bomb. The pot hit the ceiling and the oily liquid flew all over the room. I had second degree burns and I had to go to the hospital.

Finally, what are your guilty pleasures when it comes to food?
Merrill: I love Swedish Fish and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, but I only eat them on roadtrips or airplanes.
Amanda: I like Fritos—but I don’t feel guilty about it.

Read Jenny Comita's previous interviews with Eric Ripert and restauranteur Gabriel Stulman.

Photos: Sarah Shatz

By Jenny Comita

October 5, 2009

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Rockers rock Photopass

Aaron Stern, an event producer who has masterminded parties for the likes of Prada and Hugo Boss, showed off his other skill set at his debut photography show, "Photopass," which opened last Thursday at Studio 385 in Tribeca. Devon Aoki and Alexandra Richards were among the crowd who came to check out his exhibition, which documents the backstage scene at concerts and festivals like Lollapalooza and Coachella.

From left: Ann Dexter-Jones, Andrew Wyatt, Lykke Li.

Stern, of course, knows it's all about the party, so he lined up a roster of A-listers for the opening, including The Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr, Lykke Li and Miike Snow. Plans changed when Hammond, who was supposed to DJ, suddenly fell off the radar, fueling rumors that he was headed to rehab. (All Stern will say: "The day before the show, Lykke and I couldn't track Albert down and after speaking to his manager we found out that he had taken some time to get some personal matters sorted.") Mark Ronson stepped in take his place.

From left: Aaron Stern, Bjorn Yttling from Peter Bjorn and John, Mark Ronson.

Lykke Li, dressed in a feathery Alexander Wang fur coat and masses of vintage rings, was there in full force. The Scandinavian bombshell was not clearly pleased at the idle chatter and hob-nobbing going on in the background as she performed. "New York -- don't you have that Fame school here?" she yelled. "Stomp your feet!"

Some of my friends were particularly anticipating seeing Miike Snow play (they had a song on Gossip Girl recently). When we caught up with the band's singer/songwriter Andrew Wyatt, he told us that he would be playing a Fleetwood Mac cover though in fact he split early and didn't perform at all.

Lykke Li performing.

Before leaving, Wyatt did manage to plug the restaurant he's opening with restaurateur Billy Gilroy and Patrick McMullan in late October, East Side Social Club. As Wyatt explained, the eatery is modeled after Mafioso-style social clubs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. ("Where a lot of wise guys would hang out," he says.) So does he think the model-and-hipster crowd will make it up to 50th street? "It'll be hard to get them up there," Wyeth admitted, "But I think people who normally come downtown on the weekends will eat there during the week. It'll be like a cool place uptown."

East Side Social Club in progress.

"Photopass" is no longer on exhibit, but Stern's images can be seen at his blog.

Party photos: Bennett Raglin/WireImage

By Haven Thompson

September 25, 2009

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That's hot! Parisian baker Gontran Cherrier

With his disheveled hair, baggy jeans and a satchel over his shoulder, Gontran Cherrier looks more like a college kid than an accomplished entrepreneur. But the handsome Cherrier, 30, is Paris's most-buzzed-about-baker and a dynamic businessman who likes to keep his eggs in many baskets at once. This year alone he launched two cookbooks in France and opened his first wholesale bakery, where he makes breads and pastries for restaurants and caterers. And he's gearing up for Gontran Cuisine, a new show he's making for French television.

You're becoming quite the celebrity in France.
Just like for chefs some years back, the image of my trade has changed. It's a sexier image and I think it's good for young people who want to do this job.

Which type of bread is the most interesting to bake?
I'm very much into breakfast and Viennese pastries. I love to make brioches, chocolate breads, croissants, cocoa bread. I operate like a chef does, experimenting with a recipe. I like to add a pinch of aromatic salt here, pepper there, a dash of a special flour. I try out things and see if it works out.

What's your advice on picking the best loaf of bread?
For a white baguette, the crust has to be shinny and thin. The traditional baguette needs to be cooked more, and golden in color. As for pain de la campagne, it needs to be well-done and the crust must be much darker than the baguette.

One of Gontran's books

You travel a lot. What kind of inspiration do you find on your trips?
When I was in Saint Petersburg, I ate a German black bread with coriander seeds—to die for. I am doing it now at my bakery. It's good with gruyere cheese.

What would you have been if you had not been a baker?
I would have been into law. I love to learn.

With so many people still afraid of carbs, do you think there will be less bread in the future?
Maybe there will be less bread, but it will be better bread.

By Chantal Goupil

September 25, 2009

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Who knew? Carole Bouquet now a winemaker

Actress Carole Bouquet may be best known as iconic French beauty and the onetime face of Chanel N°5, but she has another calling: winemaker. In Pantelleria, an island south of Sicily where she bought land 15 years ago, Bouquet produces Sangue de Oro, a sweet, golden white. When not at her vineyard, Bouquet still stars in movies: Next February she’ll appear in Aude Lettellier’s new French comedy, “Protect and Serve”.

How did you get interested in wine?
Drinking it. Drinking and eating.

How do you stay so thin?
It’s in the genes! And luckily, I love swimming. I can swim for 2 hours every day.

What’s your best wine-tasting memory?
The first wine I drank, a Château Haut-Brion. I was 22, it was my first glass of wine, and I discovered voluptuousness. From there, I started tasting French wines, then Spanish wines, then Italian wines.

The laws against drinking and driving in France are getting more and more strict. How do you manage when you go out to dinner?
I don’t take my car. I can’t drink only one glass of wine—it’s just impossible. Wine is connected to abundance. And I tell my kids, “Drink—but don’t drive.”

Bouquet in Grosse Fatigue, 1994.

What if you had to choose between your acting career and winemaking?
I’m attached to my land in Pantelleria as if I’d inherited it. Acting is my job, Pantelleria is my home.

Photos: top, Julien Hekimian/WireImage

By Chantal Goupil

September 24, 2009

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The guys behind Tenjune talk their new club, doormen & more

Many a wannabe in the New York club scene has tried and failed to get into Tenjune, the Meatpacking District hotspot known for having one of the most selective door policies around. Keeping the boite exclusive enough for the likes of model Veronica Varekova and Maria Sharapova are Eugene Remm and Mark Birnbaum, two thirty-something impresarios with just a slight penchant for self-promotion (the club is named for their shared birthday on June 10). Now, just in time for Fashion Week, the duo have opened Simyone Lounge, which adjoins their first restaurant, Abe & Arthur's, in the W. 14th St. space formerly occupied by Lotus.

You're known as nightclub guys. So why a restaurant?
Birnbaum: A restaurant can last for 100 years. For us, at our age and where we're going, we don't want to see a nightclub every day for the next 50 years.

blog_abe&arthur_interior.jpg

How long has Abe & Arthur's been in the works?
Remm: We started talking about the project two years ago, and we took over this space about a year ago. We were adamant that it not look like Lotus in any way -- we didn't want people thinking, "Oh, it's just like Lotus, with green paint instead of red paint."

What was wrong with Lotus? Did you guys ever hang out there?
Birnbaum: I lived at Lotus, practically. It had one of the longest runs ever, but no matter how great you are as a nightclub there's a certain longevity that can't go past X number of years. It's just what it is -- they come and they go.

So, what's going to make your two new places stand out?
Remm: The synergy between our restaurant with the club downstairs is going to keep it new. The focus will be on the restaurant; that's where we see nightclubs going -- away from the big mega-clubs.

What do you say to people who think the Meatpacking District is becoming too clubby?
Remm: What the neighborhood was before was transvestites and crackheads. I don't know what people could possibly say about the neighborhood that's better than it is now: it's safer, it's got amazing retail, amazing restaurants, and it's got a great vibe that everybody in the world talks about.

Tenjune's got one of the toughest doormen in the business, Aalex Julian. Will he be working at the new club?
Remm: Yeah. [Laughing.] He's had someone training underneath him, an intern, at Tenjune.
Birnbaum: We asked him to shave his head, the new guy.

Read our related blog: Avenue Doorman Wass Stevens Can See Right Through You

By Timothy McCahill

September 17, 2009

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Five minutes with restauranteur Gabriel Stulman

After three years as co-owner and manager of the impossible-to-get-into West Village foodie hangout Little Owl, restauranteur Gabriel Stulman has opened a homey eatery on Waverly Place called Joseph Leonard, which Stulman describes as "a bar with really good food." (He's underselling it a bit. Three kinds of oysters, duck rillette and roasted lamb t-bones with pistou are not exactly standard pub fare.) The place, named after his grandfathers, is his first solo venture but the third New York restaurant he's opened in three years. That's an impressive feat -- especially when you consider that he's all of 28. The Doogie Howser of New York restauranteurs shares a few secrets of his success.

You opened Little Owl when you were just 25. How did you get your start?
During college at the University of Wisconsin, I tended bar at a place called Montmartre, where a lot of local chefs and restaurant people were regulars. That was my real introduction to food, and when I started messing around with cooking. When I moved to New York after graduation, I interned at Food & Wine and tended bar at Hearth and Pace, Jimmy Bradley's Italian place in Tribeca. I also started a supper club, The Blueblood Cafe, out of my apartment on Rivington Street. I'd cook for ten people every other week and the chef at Pace, Joey Campanaro, would help me out by letting me order ingredients through the restaurant. When Pace closed, Joey and I opened Little Owl.

With all the success of Little Owl, why did you decide to sell your stake?
Little Owl really became its own beast. As it got more attention from reviews and stuff, it turned into the kind of place where you had to make dinner reservations a month in advance, which started bringing in a different crowd. Who plans where they're going to eat dinner a month in advance? Tourists and people who have assistants to book things for them. It wasn't a neighborhood place anymore with real regulars. It's hard to tell friends who stop by that they're going to have to wait two hours and you can't even offer them a barstool to wait on. I realized I wanted a change. I wanted something more like Montmartre.

Interior of Joseph Leonard

That might be a first, a New York restaurant that aspires to be more like someplace in Madison, Wisconsin. What was it about the place that inspired you?
Well, Montmartre was really a bar that functioned as a restaurant part of the day and that's kind of what I want this to be -- a bar with really good food. We're not taking reservations. And I just wanted to start taking myself a little less seriously. I'm turned off by how people are dining now in this blog-inundated world.

How so?
Everyone wants to dissect and overanalyze their food and take pictures of it. What about enjoying yourself and the people you're eating with? It's, like, have a shot of whiskey and relax. You're off-duty!

And where do you like to eat when you're off duty?
I have a love-hate relationship with Chinatown. I can't stand the filth but it's so f---ing alive. Shanghai Cafe, on Mott just north of Canal, is a favorite and I love Barrio Cino on Broome Street. The decor is Chinese, the food is Mexican. It's a strange but great combination.

You grew up keeping kosher and now own a place that sells oysters and crispy braised pork hock. How did that happen?
In college, I had my first cheeseburger and it was really like a gateway drug for me. Within a month I was freebasing bacon and pepperoni pizza. When the New York Times review of Little Owl came out, the headline was "A Little Love and a Big Pork Chop." My parents definitely got a few comments from the relatives for that one.

See our previous Q&As with chefs Andrew Carmellini; Eric Frechon; Graham Elliot Bowles, George Mendes and others

The Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Kitchen: Le Bernadin's Eric Ripert give us the scoop on his new TV show and gives us a rare glimpse of his untethered side.

By Jenny Comita

August 20, 2009

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Andrew Carmellini: Two stars & perfectly happy

Though not exactly a household name, Andrew Carmellini is seen as something of superhero by his fellow chefs. A veteran of Lespinasse, Le Cirque and Cafe Boulud -- where, as chef de cuisine he won two James Beard Awards, Food & Wine Best New Chef, and three stars from the Times -- he returned to his Italian roots with the launch of A Voce in 2006. The place was an unqualified hit, so New York foodies were taken by surprise two years later when, after receiving a Michelin star and another three star review from the Times, Carmellini walked away from the venture amid rumors of tension with the owners. This past spring, he resurfaced at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Hotel, saving its much maligned eatery, Ago, by transforming it into Locanda Verde, a casual Italian trattoria that's been winning raves.

How is Locanda different from what you were doing at A Voce?
Locanda is what I originally set out to do at A Voce. At A Voce, the design was so high-end and the reviews started coming in and so the prices increased dramatically because there was more expectation so it ended up being a little bit more fancy than what I'd wanted to do. I looked at the Locanda space when it was Ago and it had the feel of a casual, airy, neighborhood Italian place, which is what I'd always wanted to do.

How is that reflected in the food?
The prices are all $25 and under, and we have some sandwiches, which we worked really hard to make awesome. And it's not all traditional Italian. Also, we really only reserve half the restaurant because we want to encourage walk in business. One thing that Ago didn't do is engage the neighborhood. So I think the best thing we did, if I'm going to pat myself on the back, is draw in a lot of neighborhood people who are eating here all the time now. They can call down and say "Do you have anything?" And if we know them we can say "Ok, why don't you come in half an hour?"

You received two stars from the Times versus three for A Voce. Is it hard to go down a star?
No, the reviews have been exactly what we wanted. We didn't want to get too crazy with the stars because it's just not that kind of place. In some of my past culinary lives, like at Cafe Boulud, we were going for that because it was very technique driven, very pretty on the plate, very high-end ingredient focused, a little bit more reverence in the dining room. Locanda
is definitely about great ingredients, all cooked to order, but instead of using milk-fed super high-end chickens, we're using regular all-natural chickens. And the chicken is nineteen bucks. So we're not a three-star restaurant. I've done that. I've done three stars. I've done four stars. Two stars is right for this restaurant in this climate.

Where do you like to eat in the city?
I finally went to Corton. Once all of my reviews were done and I could take a day off, that was kind of my celebration night out. It was great. The squab with red char and chanterelles has this great umami kind of sauce and it was delicious.

And have you been working on your music at all?
For the last three months, not so much but during the year I had off quite a bit. It's mostly hip hop beats. I've done three albums -- I print them myself and just give them to friends. It's just fun. And I have another album coming out in a couple weeks.

Photo: Emilie Baltz

See our previous interviews with chefs Graham Elliot Bowles, George Mendes, Sam Talbot, and more.

By Jenny Comita

August 6, 2009