French chef Daniel Boulud, originally from Lyon, has been living in New York since 1982. He was named the best restaurateur in the world on Monday for his restaurant “Daniel”, announced the association Les Grandes Tables du Monde.
Lyonnais Daniel Boulud, who has been living in New York for 40 years, has picked up the timpani: he has just been consecrated best restaurateur in the world for his restaurant “Daniel”, which sits on Manhattan’s 65th Street, between Park and Madison.
This welcoming Lyonnais and discreet 66-year-old, landed on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1982 to never leave this posh neighborhood of New York, is now a celebrity in North America. At the helm of the “Daniel”, two stars Michelin (the third was lost in 2010), he was elected by his 184 peers from 25 countries “best restaurateur 2021”, according to the French association Les Grandes Tables of the World.
Daniel Boulud has been there since 1998 with his hundred employees who scramble six evenings a week to serve 150 place settings in a beautiful New York building with an interior architecture of art deco influences and Venetian palaces.
According to the Association Les Grandes Tables du Monde created in 1954, this chef “embodies all by itself for many North Americans, French gastronomy, even just gastronomy “, notes in a statement the Association.
The restaurant “Daniel” is a bit like a Perigord embassy in the heart of Big Apple. Pheasant terrine sprinkled with sumac, venison topped with beetroot sauce, the chef practices classic French (…) cuisine, “but with a lot of products American, seasonings, techniques and compositions “ borrowed to Asia, Latin America, the Middle East.
With its pan-fried foie gras, “it feels like the Périgord and yet we are in New York (…) a very multicultural world”, he enthuses. .
The price of “luxury” and an “exceptional dinner”? About $ 300 per person with wine and service, according to the restaurateur.
“Lover” from New York, now American, Daniel Boulud still boasts of being “the most French of all French chefs in the United States “ thanks to a “cuisine that has its French landmarks” but who “never stop innovating”.
The chef defines his cuisine as French in its cooking and textures, but
with American products and flavors. This award is added to the list of achievements of this chef. Daniel Boulud’s small gastronomic empire weighs, by his own admission, some $ 100 million thanks to some twenty establishments – almost all of them bearing his name – in the United States, Canada, London, Dubai or Singapore.
His peers also see him as “a businessman as wise as he is conscientious”. This boss, who congratulates himself on not having “debts”, opened in May an ultra fashionable and a little less staid restaurant at the foot of the new One Vanderbilt skyscraper, in the heart of Manhattan, the economic and financial lung of the world .
During the Covid 19 pandemic, “Daniel” maintained a terrace of sheds on the sidewalk “with heating in winter and air conditioning and music in summer” for a few die-hards.
According to the Consulate General of France, New York has 183 French restaurateurs.
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