A while ago I found myself touring New York with Seattle
culinary legend, Tom Douglas. Tom and I have known each other for a while and I
was sure that he would have a laundry list of restaurants in New York that he
would want to visit. A creative mogul like Tom would certainly need to visit
new places and old favorites for inspiration and nostalgia alike. I was
mistaken. There was one place he said he needed to go: Gramercy Tavern.
I don’t blame him.
It’s the granddaddy of Flatiron restaurants. It may be the
second of Danny Meyer’s places, but you could easily argue it’s his flagship restaurant.
You can sense its prestige from the moment you walk in, but then everything
shifts when you’re greeted by the staff. Gracious and unassuming, they don’t
make you feel like you’re necessarily walking into one of the top rated
restaurants in New York City (which, of course, you are). The food is
unmistakably gourmet, well executed cuisine, but all the dishes seem to stem
from old favorites and trusty stand-bys. From the door to dessert, that’s
Gramercy Tavern to me. Everything looks pretty fancy, but at the heart of it
all is comfort and great hospitality.
Next week we’ll cross Park Avenue to check out my next
Flatiron Fave, Mario Batali’s Casa Mono!
Welcome back to my little Flatiron tour! I hope you enjoyed the recipe I posted last week. Make sure to let me know if you try it! I’d love to know how it turned out for you and what little tweaks you may have added.
Back to New York! From 22nd Ave, we make our way back down Broadway to take a left onto 20th. En route, we find ourselves across the street from Beecher’s itself. That doesn’t mean we’re anywhere near done though! We’ll be coming back to Beecher’s from the south at the end of our tour.
That this week’s restaurant, Veritas, follows last week’s visit to Almond, makes sense not just geographically, being just off of Broadway on the north side of 20th, but also thematically. As you’ll remember, Almond had an atmosphere of comfort that I really enjoyed because of the great way it translated the neighborhood French bistro into an urban, Big Apple living room.
Veritas was a really big deal when it opened in 1999 to rave reviews and a three star review from Ruth Reichl in the Times. Over time, its reputation waned from being an exciting scene for new food to just another expensive New York restaurant.
I guess my return to New York was well-timed, because the whole restaurant was apparently re-imagined last November, which is when Chef Sam Hazen took over the food side of things. I’ll have to admit, I didn’t actually get a chance to dine in the restaurant itself – I just spent time in the bar.
Similar to Almond, what struck me was the warmth and friendliness of the staff, which I almost didn’t expect given the more haute cuisine style of food it seemed to offer. The “haute-r” you get in the culinary world, the more difficult it is to avoid that exclusive pretention that has historically stigmatized really creative chefs and dedicated kitchens. Some places fight this perception tooth and nail, which often ends up in a contrived sense of pseudo-informality.
Veritas seems to take the opposite approach. The tooth and nail strategy is replaced by keeping it simple: engaging staff and a warm, welcoming atmosphere surrounded in unobtrusive earth tones. I should note that I’m not the only one who thinks they’ve done well in their transformation. Sam Sifton of the Times recently bestowed another three star review of Veritas as well.
From one haute New American restaurant to another, next week we’ll cross the street to Gramercy Tavern, the second of Danny Meyer’s restaurants on my list of neighborhood favorites.
Have you been to Veritas? Or any of the other places on my list so far? I’d love to hear what you think about them in comments, especially specific dish or drink recommendations!
See you next week!
Last week, we came back down the revitalized Broadway to visit the Calexico Taco Cart in General Worth Park. This week, as the sun is setting, let’s head into the middle of the Madison Park, where there’s a bunch of tables and chairs that are illuminated by what seems like countless strings of suspended lights attached to a small-ish building. From that little shelter extends a line of people that sometimes gets so long that it stretches out to the edge of the park onto the sidewalk of Madison Avenue. The building is the first location of Danny Meyer’sShake Shack.
A little history: Danny Meyer has opened a number of critically-acclaimed restaurants, all known for impeccable service, incomparable culture and innovative cuisine. These include Union Square Café, 11 Madison Park (just across the street from this Shake Shack), Gramercy Tavern (which we’ll visit later) and many others. If you’re counting, he’s gotten 24 James Beard Awards (kind of the Oscars of the restaurant industry) over the twenty-some years he’s been in the business. His approach to business is very people-focus and he attributes his restaurants’ success to making his staff the top priority.
Before Danny Meyer started opening restaurants there, the Flatiron/Gramercy neighborhood was known as unsavory and largely unsafe. Danny Meyer’s opinion was that bringing good business into the neighborhood would make it a better place to work and live, even when everyone thought it was a horrible idea. “A rising tide lifts all boats” was his philosophy in locating restaurants, with Shake Shack opening right in the center of the questionable Madison Park. What used to be a place many people wouldn’t dare to go soon became a place where all kinds of New Yorkers, families included, could come to enjoy quality, wholesome versions of American staples: burgers, hotdogs and shakes.
I wrote in my last post about how the city of New York focused on making public spaces more enjoyable, and I want to emphasize that Danny Meyer’s restaurants, like Calexico Cart from last week, serve as an example of how that type of transformation is never one-directional. Yes, there’s a top-down part that the city plays in developing spaces, investing in public works, etc. But more importantly, there’s the bottom-up, foundational effort from the local business owners and residents that is necessary to really make a difference. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his ventures have been so successful while being so community minded, both externally and internally.
Next week we’ll cross the street from Madison Park to the brainchild of another culinary mogul, Mario Batali’sEataly, which I like to refer to as the DisneyLand of Italian cooking. See you then!
Wow. What an amazing month of July it's been!
Beecher's New York opened at 900 Broadway on June 24th and it has been CRAZY in the best possible way. I was really excited to see it open, but I could not have imagined how wonderfully welcoming and enthusiastic New York would be. I could hardly have asked for more.
As most of you know, I've been in New York for a while now and I've had plenty of time to explore the city, especially the Flatiron neighborhood surrounding BCNY (our short-hand for Beecher's Cheese New York).
I've had such a great time working and playing here, I thought I'd take a blog post (or several) highlighting my favorite nearby places, sort of our super-neighbors.
That's how I got the idea of doing a series on Kurt's Flatiron Faves. Over the next couple months, I'll do a little post at the end of each week about one of these local spots. Expect a little history, a recommendation or two and some photos. As I go along, I'll build a map so you can see where all my favorites are in reference to Beecher's (which I'm sure will be everyone's starting point).
You can always come back to this post to see where we've been so far. Like an evolving table of contents!
A while ago I found myself touring New York with Seattle
culinary legend, Tom Douglas. Tom and I have known each other for a while and I
was sure that he would have a laundry list of restaurants in New York that he
would want to visit. A creative mogul like Tom would certainly need to visit
new places and old favorites for inspiration and nostalgia alike. I was
mistaken. There was one place he said he needed to go: Gramercy Tavern.
It’s the granddaddy of Flatiron restaurants. It may be the
second of Danny Meyer’s places, but you could easily argue it’s his flagship restaurant.
You can sense its prestige from the moment you walk in, but then everything
shifts when you’re greeted by the staff. Gracious and unassuming, they don’t
make you feel like you’re necessarily walking into one of the top rated
restaurants in New York City (which, of course, you are). The food is
unmistakably gourmet, well executed cuisine, but all the dishes seem to stem
from old favorites and trusty stand-bys. From the door to dessert, that’s
Gramercy Tavern to me. Everything looks pretty fancy, but at the heart of it
all is comfort and great hospitality. 
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