Showing posts with label le veau d'or. Show all posts
Showing posts with label le veau d'or. Show all posts

09 October 2010

How to Eat Old School


The folks at Eater, who like to map everything edible in the City, ask my to pick out of selection of old guard dishes from New York City's most venerable restaurants. Mutton Chops at Keen's, Pastrami on Rye at Katz's, that sort of thing. Such a task is a pleasure for me, so I was happy to do it. Thanks to Zachary Feldman for putting the post together. Here's the intro. You'll have to jump to Eater to read the rest, because the layout is too complex for me to copy here.

What are the makings of an iconic dish? While the critics and blogs dole out "least favorite food trend" memes annually, these stalwarts—provided, with commentary, by the erudite Brooks of Sheffield of our Who Goes There? column and the erstwhile Lost City—have stood the test of time to help define and inspire the city's ever-changing culinary landscape. Noteworthy dishes that offer something beyond the pizza, cupcakes, burgers, and fried chicken that seem to have strong-armed the market, you won't find this food on a truck anytime soon.- Zachary Feldman

03 December 2009

Two Landmarks Breathe Free


For the longest time, the view of Le Veau d'Or and Gino's, two Upper East Side landmarks, has been obscured by a tangle of unsightly scaffolding which doubtless hurt their business.

But no more. At some point in the recent past the scaffolding came down. Now a blogger can take a clear, unadulterated photo of both old restaurants. It's particularly a treat to see Gino's yellow-and-green sign in all its glorious garishness. Jump, Zebras, jump! Be free!

12 May 2009

Le Veau d'Or Can Be Your Landlord


Saw this sign in the window of 129 E. 60th Street—better known as the home of the 72-year-old French restaurant Le Veau d'Or. The owner of the venerable bistro, which does things as they were 50 years ago, is lovable, crusty old Frenchman Robert Treboux, and he is owner of the building as well. So, if you wish, you could have Monsieur Treboux as your landlord. I'm not sure he would be easy, but he certainly would be interesting.

30 January 2009

Lost City Asks "Who Goes to Le Veau d'Or"?


Ah, Le Veau d'Or, unsung time machine of French haute cuisine! It was a pleasure to visit the tiny place—ever masked from the public in scaffolding and a colorless facade—for my latest "Who Goes There?" column for Eater.

Unlike almost every other restaurant I've written up for this series, I actually had been there before visiting this time. A couple years ago, I was spurred on by the book "The United States of Arugula," a history of the U.S. culinary revolution, to check the restaurant out, as it is the last vestige of the fine-French-food invasion that blanketed New York after World War II. There I found owner Robert Treboux, living landmark and keeper of information about everything that's gone on in the New York food world over the past half century. He plays host every night.

I urge everyone reading this to go and dine at this wonderful little bistro. For it will only remain as long as 85-year-old Treboux is willing and able to get up every morning and unlock the door.

Here is the item:



Who Goes There? Le Veau d’Or

Midtown East: La Pavillon is gone. La Caravelle, Le Cote Basque, Lutece—all the post-WWII palaces of haute French cuisine—gone. But Le Veau d’Or remains. It was never as important as those other restaurants, but, unlike most of the places I visit for this column, it was actually a significant destination at one time, packing in the likes of Oleg Cassini, Truman Capote, Princess Grace and Craig Claiborne. They’re all gone, and Le Veau d’Or endures only because of the stubborn determination of Frenchman Robert Treboux, who once worked at La Pavillon in the 1950s with the legendary Henri Soule and bought the 50-seat restaurant in 1985.

He never changed a thing about the décor (red banquettes, French street signs) or menu (Coq au Vin, Tripe a la mode De Caen) of the eatery, which opened way back in 1937. Bald-headed, somewhat grouchy and ever dressed in a suit and vest, the 85-year-old Treboux usually hangs out near the front booth, where Orson Welles used to sit. He lives upstairs and owns the small building.

No one under 50 goes to Le Veau d’Or. Most know Treboux well and love him and the old traditions he upholds. They hobble down the few steps from E. 60th Street into the most tightly sealed culinary time-capsule in New York. With lace curtains on the windows, French music piped through the speakers, and an old-fashioned Table d'hôte menu, the space betrays no evidence of the events of the last eight Presidential administrations.

A single, aged waiter handled the six or so parties that paid homage to the place on a recent Wednesday night. Most of the couples greeted him by name; one lady was brought her regular drink before she sat down. Two octogenarian married with matching canes occupied a back table. A self-important, starchy UES duo talked of just having come back from the Inaugural and gossiped about facelifts, legal motions and Elaine Stritch. (For whatever reason, Le Veau d’Or has always attracted a theatrical element.) Many spoke French with the owner and waiter. One aged French coquette came in and thrilled at the sight of Treboux, proclaiming that they had know each other 40 years ago. Treboux did not remember, but nonetheless visited the table several times to chat.

The wine list is French, of course. It’s not very long, and not very specific, identifying only the Bordeaux winemakers. (A half century ago, they were the only vintners that mattered, right?) Dinners costs from $28 to $38 and the menu includes every saucy, heavy French classic you can think of. Most dishes are quite satisfactory, if not exactly inspiring. The most expensive entrée is the Carre d’Agneau Roti, the Rack of Lamb, and it is worth the price if only because is affords the buyer one of the last examples of old-world table service available in the city. The lamb is shown to the customer and then carved and prepared in front of them. No one does this anymore. It’s like watching a butter-churning exhibition. Fascinating. The lady seated next to me, a regular for decades, preferred her lamb served in a particular way and the waiter executed her desires without asking.

If you’re bored easily, you don’t want to come here. But if you want a little respite from the madding crowd, want to hear not the restaurant’s soundtrack but what your companion has to say, crave the abiding comfort of constancy and tradition, and expect to leave full, Le Veau d’Or will cradle you into happiness as surely as mother’s arms.
—Brooks of Sheffield

19 March 2008

Lost City in the News


AM New York reporter David Freedlander has done admirable work for some time now covering the New York scene, particularly those parts of it that are in danger of vanishing. I am fortunate enough to be the subject of his latest story. I met with David a couple times over the past month, talking and taking miniature walking tours of Manhattan. No tape recorder, only a notepad; old-school reporting. One such travelogue can be found on AMNY's website here. (Nice atmospheric music; very Gershwin.) There's also a nice array of envy-inducing photos from those trips. Why can't I make these places look this good?



Here's the story in full:

Blog Testifies to Disappearing New York History

By David Freedlander

New York is a city of the things unnoticed until it's too late.

The faded wall advertisement that one day gets covered up by billboards, the odd dimly lit bar that closes to make way for a health food store, the shoeshine stand that suddenly disappears.

That vanishing world is documented in the blog Lost City, a Web site that is part archaeology of New York and part screed against rapacious developers and the politicians who enable them.

Its author is a freelance writer, who requests anonymity for fear of upsetting editors or sources with his screeds against the "new" New York, but who agreed to talk to amNewYork as long as we used his "nom de blogosphere," "Brooks of Sheffield."

"I would always plead to my editors and say, 'this bar is disappearing, this restaurant is closing, and we need to write about it,'" he said one recent afternoon over a bowl of matzah ball soup at the Edison Cafe, one of the oldest cafes in Times Square and one of the few places where it's still possible to dine on the cheap under big, bright chandeliers.

"And they would always tell me that's the nature of the city, and you can't get sentimental about New York."

Brooks began the blog in January 2006 after the abrupt shutdown of McHale's, a legendary Times Square watering hole where all the old theater hands used to go.

"I keep wondering where all the stagehands go now," he said. "Theater people need to drink."

As the pace of change in a city already known for rapid turnover accelerated, the tone of Lost City changed as well, growing more insistent and placing more blame at the feet of the Bloomberg administration.

"New York has always been fueled by money, but never so baldly as right now," he said. "It adds no value to the city or to history, but only to the people building them. I think we can add housing and jobs and all of that to the city and still put up buildings that people are happy with and proud of,"

He added, "I really wish I could close the blog down. The sad thing is though there are more and more things to write about all the time."

Lost City is now just one star in a constellation of sites devoted to documenting the idiosyncratic corners of the city. Forgotten NY, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, and a host of others contribute to the choir, and they have begun to get the notice of the city's professional preservationists.

"It's indicative of the lightening pace in which development is going through in this city," said Andrew Berman, president of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. "They focus less on architectural pedigree, and more on the things that capture people's eye, which are harder to advocate for in front of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but they allow people to connect who are troubled by the losses of the city's history."

Brooks divides the great spaces of the city into four categories. There are those that are gone, like the Moondance Diner or CBGB; those soon to be lost, like Astroland; those, like Katz's or the Ear Inn that own the building and so are safe; and finally those that, through a miracle or landlord's generosity, are holding on.

"A place like Katz's, it tells the story of the history of New York," he said. "I don't think its Pollyannaish or unrealistic to say that those kind of places enrich the city. We have a lived history here that tells why New York is great, and why it has been many things for many people over the centuries."

Brooks bristles at the notion, though, that he is only engaged in a romantic reverie for a gone world.

"These things are still a part of the city, they are not nostalgia, not yet anyway," he said.

"I guess you could call it overly romantic but the people who wanted to save Grand Central were also overly romantic, but they were also right."