Restaurant Reviews

David Bouley: Magic Chef

David Bouley: Magic Chef December 24, 1990 Perhaps it is not necessary to be crazed, obsessed, and monomaniacal (if not megalomaniacal) to flourish in New York. And yet so many are. Count David Bouley in that pantheon. True, he seems deceptively gentle, soft-spoken, retiring, too handsome to be the Woody Allen of the range. Bouley knows he is mad. Everyone moment of his existence is focused on his obsession, the majesty of a dinner in his charming country auberge on Duane Park, the measured pace, the quality of products, the deep-sea divers who stalk his sea urchin, the farmers who planted the seeds he chooses. Could any normal woman possibly comprehend this consuming fixation? тЂњThey inevitably leave when they see the guy is nuts,тЂќ says Bouley. Planted among the late-nineteenth-century TriBeCa buildings that house the cityтЂ™s butter-and-egg dealers, Bouley could be a sunny inn on the road to Arles or Avignon. Behind the heavy carved wooden door (salvaged from a church), there are cases of apples and pears perfuming the entrance and beyond, the soft pastel-edged room with its graceful vaulted arches тЂ“ a miracle of computer, plywood, and Sheetrock тЂ“ built by his contractor brother Martin and the restaurant crew slowly, slowly, slowly in that creep of days before opening тЂ“ a cathedral as a house of worship for Bouley. Never mind any concept of how a meal should be paced. Tonight you dine to BouleyтЂ™s beat, magisterial, sensuous. At first, you imagine the kitchen must be in chaos тЂ“ the waiters fly about like small brown sparrows, and the food does not appear. ThatтЂ™s a mistake. The kitchen, immaculate, with its center range that permits the chefs to face one another, works like a dazzling ballet. The tiniest misstep provokes the chefтЂ™s soft jabbing sarcasm. With his sous-chef, a friend from apprenticeship days at Roger VergУ©тЂ™s Moulin de Mougins, Bouley communicated without words. Give him credit for creating magic, the soft, filtered light, the flower-filled escape, the richly furnished nether passages that lead not to suites in a luxury inn but to the restroom тЂ“ so magnificent that the craftsman who came from France to hang the door was stunned. The kid from Connecticut, born one of nine children to a family of French У©migrУ©s, star-struck from his days understudying the great chefs тЂ“ Bocuse, Girardet, LenУґtre тЂ“ must have Limoges and real space between tables, the jewel-like offerings that precede ordering, the sweet tidbits in a coda that marks a house of serious ambition. We giggled at the pretentiousness of his first menu, with its 1001 geographic markers тЂ“ тЂњthe New York State milk-fed organic hen,тЂќ тЂњthe organic FisherтЂ™s-Island-cultivated oysters,тЂќ тЂњthe scuba-dived sea scallops from Casco Bay.тЂќ But these days, he"s not so cartographic, or maybe weтЂ™ve just become used to it. Bouley germinates wheat the way the Indians did. He stuffs his duck wit lavender flowers and uses whole fields of fresh herbs and their blossoms each week. At the moment, heтЂ™s infatuated with loquette, an ugly critter with a monkfish-like texture that тЂњtastes sweet because it feeds on barnacles and seaweed.тЂќ Recently, his divers discovered a bed of rare scallops beyond the reach of trawlers. They arrive on Duane Street тЂњstill moving and jumping.тЂќ The woman in his life is Adelma Simmons of Conventry, Connecticut, doyenne of the herb farm Caprilands. He discovered her as a kid riding his bike, a scholar of history and architecture. Today, she is 87 and still thrills him with her knowledge and her cooking, her use of garlic flowers and oregano blossoms. Every Sunday, when the restaurant is closed, he drives north or south to visit farmers, to get them to grow what he needs. HeтЂ™s been reading the new seed catalogues like a child anticipating Christmas. Below the restaurant, he has packed root vegetables in earth into clean garbage cans. тЂњWith the lids closed, they can last till February or March,тЂќ he says. Most restaurateurs treasure eating out with their families on Sunday, seeing what other chefs are up to. Bouley would rather be talking to a farmer. "They know so much,тЂќ he marvels. He sounds too sincere to be real. But thatтЂ™s the true Bouley. Gifted and a bit loony. Like the best usually are.

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