Coming of age
Beverly Stephen reports.
| More 'Front Burner' articles in this issue |
| Mango madness |
| Coup de foie gras |
| The summer of Slow Food |
| The real thing |
| Sad good-bye |
| A final toast |
New York City—These days there's nothing like a chef-fueled festival to herald the arrival of a mature culinary scene. This spring, the Upper West Side of Manhattan was the bar mitzvah boy when some 1,200 locals converged on the New Taste of the Upper West Side, held under a tent erected on a Columbus Avenue school yard across from the Museum of Natural History.
The festival, presented by the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District, honored publishers Tim and Nina Zagat, critic Gael Greene, and restaurateur Stephen Hanson. At the end of the day, $190,000 was raised for a Columbus Avenue landscaping project that will serve as a citywide prototype, according to presenting sponsor Robert Quinlan, a seminal developer in the area for 37 years. "It helped focus on the fact that there's a great population here that dines out at night," Quinlan says. "It will definitely help the restaurants that served samples of their fare, and that in turn will help other business in the area." Event chair restaurateur Don Evans adds that "there were 30 restaurants participating and they employ thousands of people and this got them together as a group."
And an illustrious group of chefs it was—Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Cesare Casella, Ed Brown, John Fraser, Michael Psilakis, Zak Pelaccio, Neil Annis, Jacques Torres, Bill Telepan. In the words of Brown, who recently opened Eighty One on—you guessed it—West 81st Street, "The Upper West Side has arrived. Yeah!"
The morsels they dished up were equally upmarket: spicy calamari salad with grapefruit gelée from Brown, Malaysian short ribs from Pelaccio, pea agnoletti with spring vegetables from Telepan, corned beef with house-made ramp pickles on pumpernickel from Fraser—all of which could be paired with samples of vino from some 20 Long Island wineries. Of course sometimes things other than an amuse are equally amusing. The soon-to-open Shake Shack had typically long lines, and nobody could get enough of Rosa Mexicano's guacamole and chips.
Evans explains that the demographic of the area long known more for its politirati than its fooderati has changed over the years. "The second and third highest earning zip codes in the city are now 10023 and 10024. The people moved here, and the restaurants developed to keep pace, whereas in many other neighborhoods the restaurants have come first and then the people."
Honoree Greene, herself a longtime neighborhood resident, says, "When Tom Valenti opened Ouest, I thought 'This is it!—the beginning of star chefs and great food on the Upper West Side'—but it was such a long wait. Of course my guy and I have our haunts—Compass for lamb burger—the constellation I expected any minute is just landing in Ed Brown, Daniel at Bar Boulud, Dovetail (a surprisingly impressive entry), Jonathan Waxman more or less at Madaleine Mae, Jacques Torres (and soon next door to him the Salumeria Rosi at 285 Amsterdam with carryout by Cesare Casella) plus Fatty Crab, and more Tom Valenti on 77th Street. When Bulgari replaces the porn shop a few doors down from Jacques, the metamorphosis will be complete."
