Platt: New York Dining Finally Found an Identity in the Aughts

In one of the first in what will be a month of end of the decade retrospectives across the internet, Adam Platt looks back on the aughts and decides it was decade where New York's dining world really came into its own. No longer looking to imported French or Asian fusion techniques and traditions, New York settled on its own aesthetic, its own obsession—big city simplicity, a "bucolic vision of haute cuisine." Citing Danny Meyer's empire, along with Chang's, wd~50, Anthos, Blue Hill, and most vitally, Craft, Plattypants asserts New York, for the first time, boasts cooking and a certain kind of restaurant you won't find anywhere else in the world:

The bar is designed for eating, not drinking...The menus are spare, single-page documents, which emphasize top-of-the-line ingredients and the farms they come from. There’s plenty of elevated comfort food on the menu...The technique is still top-notch, and the influences...come from around the world. But for the first time in this great dining city, the alchemy—the heat—emanating from the kitchen has a flavor all its own.

As this "New York" restaurant is seen more and more in Chicago, San Francisco, LA, and elsewhere in the country, it will be interesting to watch how both New York diners and their chefs, always vulnerable to trends and quick to adapt, embrace this model over the next decade.
· The Apotheosis of Fresh [NYM]
[photo credit]

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Gramercy Tavern

42 East 20th Street, Manhattan, NY 10003 (212) 477-0777 Visit Website

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Blue Hill

75 Washington Place, Manhattan, NY 10011 (212) 539-1776 Visit Website

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Craft

43 East 19th Street, Manhattan, NY 10003 (212) 780-0880 Visit Website