Daniel Boulud doesn’t need me or any other writer to sing his praises or cement his place in American gastronomy. For 30 years he has been a one-man French Revolution — educating and dazzling palates with the best of La Cuisine Français, as well as introducing America to the joys of the gourmet burger.
Yes, Horst Weinerschnitzel and Little Frenchie are baaaaaaack — with recharged batteries and re-calibrated palates.
We thank a series of great hotels for the former and France and Germany for the latter.
Unlike the crazy kids in this (raunchy, funny, underrated) movie:
….ELV and The Food Gal® didn’t encounter any soccer hooligans, gratuitous nudity or Dutch S&M brothels.
What we did encounter was a different Europe than the one we last visited seven years ago, with a much stronger dollar and 21st Century electronics making things both easier and more interesting.
When André Rochat closed his namesake restaurant downtown in 2009, it’s safe to say that nary a tear was shed around the ELV offices.
The story of the cheesecloth-skinned chef tossing me from Alize (one of three restaurants he once owned) in 2002 is pretty well known in our humble burg, and we never tire of showing the (mostly) rave review/profile we wrote about him (in April 1999) that inexplicably set him off and led to our banishment. (Yes, we didn’t care for a few items, and felt some wine bottles were massively overpriced, but on the whole, we sang his praises left and right.)