After Nearly A Century, New York's Pierre Hotel Gets The Restaurant It Deserves
New York is in the throes of a hotel restaurant renaissance, with the opening of Café Carmellini in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, The Otter in The Manner, Brass in The Evelyn, Vestry in the Dominick and others. By a renaissance I mean that hotel dining rooms of the 19th and early 20th centuries like the original Ritz- Carlton, The Plaza, the Waldorf-Astoria and the St. Regis were once held in the highest esteem.
But by the 1950s, the explosion of exciting, free-standing restaurants of individual excellence helped put the kibosh on impersonal hotel dining rooms as dreary alternatives. So, I'm delighted to find so many new hotels are opening so many wonderful restaurants run by top chefs all over town, as I am with the revivification of others that have brought in new chefs and new concepts.
The Pierre Hotel is an exemplar of the latter, with has long been one of the city's most historic and elegant spots, opening in 1930 on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park. For decades its Café Pierre, with its trompe l'oeuil cloudy sky ceiling by Valerian Rybar, was a major watering hole for New York society; Al Pacino's tango scene in the film Scent of a Woman was shot in The Pierre's Cotillion Room.
Since 2005 under the control of the Taj Group, the space that is now Perrine has had what seems like a shift of focus every few years or so, none successful: at one point it was a snooty offshoot of London's Le Caprice, then an Italian trattoria named Sirio managed by the Maccioni family, who hired Vincent Garofalo as executive chef. There was a brief tilt towards modern Indian cuisine. Now, with Garofalo back in the kitchen, the menu reflects a balance of contemporary American, French and Italian dishes.
You enter through shining brass doors into a long dining room as sleek as ever, with a classy bar up front, and done in tones of gray, black, white and silver to give it a sophisticated ambiance that is very much New York in spirit, like the white bow on a Tiffany box. The fine lighting, thick tablecloths, settings and stemware are first class, and the waitstaff, since my last visit a few years back, is now measurably improved in its amiable professionalism. The wine list, which is quite modest, has not.
Lobster bisque at Perrine
Perrine
Perrine's clientele ranges widely, from Upper East Siders, hotel guests and tourists who include stylish young Japanese women toting designer bags from the high-fashion shops along the nexus of Madison, 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.
Chef Garofalo's menu is clearly composed to please all of them, full of classic dishes like French onion soup and salade Niçoise along with American favorites like lobster rolls as well as steak au poivre and the Pierre burger. Given his background, the chef also makes four main course pastas.
I
was especially pleased by two appetizers found in abundance around Manhattan, because Garofalo's lobster bisque has the deep, briny flavor of the shellfish, enriched with a citrus-laced crème fraîche and a pretty green swirl of tarragon oil; tuna tartare is impeccably balanced between very flavorful, dark red tuna chunks and the subtlety of many seasonings and Dijon mustard, along with thin haricot verts, olives and basil-scented pistou.
'Coronation Chicken' takes its name from a retro dish created in 1952 for the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II, made of tender poached chicken with a curry mayonnaise, raisins, apple, cilantro and a dash of chili oil. It was unexpectedly delicious and deserves a wider audience. The warm lobster roll came with plenty of butter-poached meat in am equally buttery brioche roll with crisp French fries, and at $34 it's a refined match for lobster rolls sold for an equal price out of seafood shacks up and down Long Island.
Among the pastas I tried, I thoroughly enjoyed the ravioli stuffed with ricotta and spinach dressed with a creamy Alfredo-style sauce. House-made tagliatelle with some of that lobster bisque and fava beans livened with tarragon is as sumptuous as it sounds.
The Pierre Burger
Perrine
The 'Pierre Burger' toes the current line of overstuffed, overwrought, adequate burgers in fine dining rooms in New York, but the roasted half chicken with baby potatoes, mushrooms and salsa verde was a textbook example of how this bird can be ennobled with finesse. Half a dozen fat scallops are arrayed with a highly complementary sweet and sour puree sweet corn springtime's asparagus and a lemon-saffron sauce.
Hotels, which must cater to weddings and anniversaries, usually excel at desserts, and at the Perrine they most certainly do with items like Pavlova (now having something of its own renaissance), the pretty pink meringue confection made to honor the prima Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, as well as a peach Melba similarly honoring Dame Nellie Melba, and a rum-soaked baba with citrus cream.
For nearly a century now The Pierre has never lost its cosmopolitan luster, and Perrine, now re-incarnated with Chef Garofalo, matches that appeal as a restaurant of convincing posh and good taste. And a good lunch spot in which to show off your shopping bags.
Perrine
2 East 61st Street
212-940-8195
Open for breakfast daily, lunch Mon.-Sat., Brunch Sun., dinner nightly.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
22 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
‘Downton Abbey' star will bring her play about Ava Gardner to Chicago
Elizabeth McGovern, the American actress best known for playing Lady Cora in the British TV and movie franchise 'Downton Abbey,' will star in a show headed to Chicago that is based series of real-life interviews given by the Hollywood actress Ava Gardner. Titled 'Ava: The Secret Conversations,' the show was written by McGovern and is directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnagel. Aaron Costa Ganis also appears in the piece, which will run Sept. 24 to Oct. 12 at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago's Fine Arts Building. Karl Sydow is the producer of this commercial production, managed by Pemberley Productions, which has brought several shows to Chicago. McGovern becomes the third 'Downton Abbey' star to work in Chicago theater, following Brendan Coyle, who appeared at the Goodman Theatre, and Lesley Nicol, whose solo show was performed at the Greenhouse Theatre Center. 'Ava: The Secret Conversations' has previously been seen at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles and NY City Center in New York. It is drawn from the series of interviews Gardner gave to the British writer Peter Evans (played by Ganis) between 1988 and 1990, wherein the Golden Age star spoke of her various marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra, as well as her famously turbulent relationship with Howard Hughes. Evans had been hired to write Gardner's autobiography, but she ended up firing him. His book detailing the interview was not published until 2013, and has been re-imagined by McGovern for the stage. McGovern will also be seen this fall on screen in 'Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.'
Fast Company
28 minutes ago
- Fast Company
This corny ‘conservative credit card' ad signals a very scary future for AI
A fresh glimpse at our AI-filled future arrived this week, in the form of an unmemorable ad by a company most people have never heard of. The ad is kind of flat and will probably scan as goofy to everyone outside its target demo, but don't write it off just yet: It could signal the beginning of some very big (and scary) changes. The upstart fintech company Coign claims to be a 'conservative credit card company,' a distinction that boils down to the founders' pledge to never donate to liberal causes and candidates. And while that self-definition raises some questions, it pales in comparison to the actual ad. The 30-second clip is a patriotic parade of red-blooded, red-voting Americans boasting about recent Coign-fueled purchases such as deer-hunting gear, a stack of cartoonish gold bars, and the 'biggest American flag' available. But here's the most striking thing about the ad: All of those situations, and all of the actors, were created by AI. There's something a little off about Coign's ad, to be clear. The pacing of the phony satisfied customers' movements feels too jittery at times, and there's an eagle at the end that is not exactly natural looking. While the ad is spiritually the same AI slop as Shrimp Jesus, it doesn't carry the same overtly synthetic visuals. In that regard, it's a lot more casually AI-generated than many of its predecessor ads. When Coca-Cola released an AI-generated holiday spot last fall, it sparked an uproar. Creatives were livid about such a monumentally successful company neglecting to splash out on an all-human production, and even casual observers noticed the glaring flaws in the video: The truck's tires glided over the ground without spinning, Santa's hand was bizarrely out of proportion with the Coke bottle it gripped, and the entire ad sat squarely in the 'uncanny valley.' The same goes for the ad Toys R Us released last year using OpenAI's text-to-video tool Sora: The kindest thing one could say is that its human characters looked marginally more lifelike than the unsettling, motion-captured Tom Hanks from The Polar Express two decades earlier. So far, AI-generated ads have been rare enough and mostly the domain of heavy-hitter companies, making them lightning rods for attention and backlash just about every time a new one is released. The simple fact that they were AI-made has been enough to generate headlines, even before factoring in the slop. But maybe not for much longer. If the Coign ad is any indication, there may be an entire class of AI ads coming that will be subject to far less attention—and far less scrutiny. We're at a precarious moment with AI, collectively feeling out its least objectionable uses through trial and error. So far, uncanny ads from massive companies have triggered backlash, but when lesser-known brands dabble—especially without obvious visual glitches—they often escape notice. Advertising legend David Droga once noted the existence of a ' mediocre middle ' in marketing and entertainment, and that may be exactly where AI quietly thrives: in ads from companies too small to spark outrage. Advertising, after all, is already the most disposable and least emotionally protected form of media—expensive to make, widely avoided, and largely unloved. That makes it the perfect Trojan horse for AI—slipping past scrutiny not because it's good, but because few people care enough to notice. On a moral and economic level, the advertising industry should not be diving headlong into a technology that makes large swaths of professional workers expendable. And on an aesthetic level, just because AI technically can create an ad doesn't mean it can create a good one. Once a seemingly harmless use case eases people's minds about a given technological breakthrough, it's only a matter of time before the more flagrantly objectionable use cases take hold. The facial recognition tech that first allowed Facebook users to tag their friends in photos was eventually used to strengthen the surveillance state and threaten privacy everywhere. Today's drones that make aerial photography easier become tomorrow's drones that mistakenly blow up weddings in other countries and threaten to displace delivery workers. Obviously, AI is going to play some role in humanity's future. The size of that role, however, is not yet set in stone. As machine learning creeps into all creative fields, workers need regulations to ensure the technology doesn't spread too far too fast. The good news is that a majority of Americans seem to want AI regulation. Although the House of Representatives recently passed a major tax and spending bill with a provision forbidding state governments to regulate AI over the next 10 years, that clause is getting bipartisan blowback. According to a recent poll, 81% of voters agree that 'advances in AI are exciting but also bring risks, and in such fast-moving times, we shouldn't force states to sit on the sidelines for a full decade.' Even the CEO of generative AI company Anthropic is a full-throated advocate for stricter AI regulation. The people have spoken. Whether they are listened to is another matter altogether. A single, silly credit card ad may seem an unlikely step toward a dystopian future of unfettered AI and full unemployment, but if we laugh it off now, the bill may still come due later.
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
How a filmmaker couple's adoption story inspired the bloody dark comedy ‘I Don't Understand You'
A bloody horror-comedy isn't the genre that springs to mind as a 'love letter' to one's 5-year-old, but for Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig, it's the perfect way to express their devotion to their child. The married filmmakers started penning the semi-autobiographical screenplay as a therapeutic exercise during the COVID-19 pandemic shortly after adopting their son. 'With the tiredness of having a newborn, it was kind of our mutual catharsis during that time,' Craig said. But a deeply serious, emotional script about their difficult road to fatherhood didn't interest them. Instead, the final product begins as a lighthearted comedy then turns dark — complete with a few dead bodies. 'I Don't Understand You,' which hit theaters Friday, stars Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells as characters loosely based on Crano and Craig, who also co-directed the movie. The beginning of the story faithfully follows the real-life couple's journey to become fathers, including a heartbreaking experience with adoption fraud. They had been trying to adopt a child for nearly three years and felt weighed down by the challenges. In a twist of fate, they were matched with a birth mother just as they were traveling to Italy to celebrate their 10th anniversary. That trip was essentially a comedy of errors. Their car got stuck in a ditch during a relentless rainstorm and the couple was rescued by an old Italian woman and her family, whom they couldn't understand at all. When they told their friend — and the movie's eventual producer — actor and filmmaker Joel Edgerton about the travel nightmare, he encouraged them to get writing. But how did Crano and Craig go from crafting characters loosely based on themselves to making them (mostly accidental) murderers? By adapting their real-life coping mechanism to the film. 'We processed our own trauma around what happened to us personally through really dark comedy to each other,' Craig said. 'It just felt like that was the story we were prepared to tell.' 'Doing a polemical, flag-wavy, tear-jerky adoption movie felt like really the wrong vibe for us,' Crano added. As the couple described the process of making the film, they frequently finished each other's sentences. They were in sync despite being on a Zoom call from different coasts, with Craig in New York ahead of the film's premiere and Crano in L.A. Their overlapping responses seem to mirror their writing process — each is attuned to his partner's strengths and how his mind works, and they're both 'obsessed' with iteration, as Crano said, hoping to find the perfect turn of phrase or one-liner through repeated conversations. 'Not to interrupt, Brian,' Craig interjected at one point, 'but I think this is where you were going.' Kroll and Rannells' Dom and Cole, like Crano and Craig, learn the happy news of a match after adoption struggles, get their car stuck in a ditch on their anniversary trip and find refuge in an old Italian woman's home. Then the plot departs from reality and descends into macabre humor, with Cole accidentally pushing the old lady down the stairs, killing her. The duo didn't have much of the plot drawn out ahead of time. Crano said they just wanted to explore the question: 'What's the worst thing that they could do next?' For Kroll and Rannells, playing characters inspired by their directors enabled them to tap into the emotional heart of the story in an authentic way. Both actors, speaking to The Times via Zoom, said the directors were transparent about their adoption experience. 'It would be so funny if we had been like, 'Hey, what was it like when you found out that you weren't gonna get the baby?' and they were like, 'How dare you?'' Kroll quipped. 'But it was super helpful to have them as references and resources, but also at the same time, their willingness to let us make choices that may not have been exactly what they would have said or how they would have said it. David and Brian had a really clear vision for it, but also were quite open to things organically taking shape that was new to the film.' Rannells, who was working with a directing team for the first time, commended the duo's ability to run the ship collaboratively. 'They were very much always on the same page, which was great,' he said. 'That was maybe a little bit of a fear of going into it. I was like, 'How is this really going to work?' Like, 'Who are we listening to and how?' But they did it really seamlessly and it never felt overwhelming.' Much of the comedy Kroll and Rannells deliver is rooted in cultural misunderstandings. Dom's Duolingo streak proves insufficient in helping the couple communicate in Italy, and they often mistake the locals' remarks or actions as homophobic. Craig said the characters' frequent misinterpretations took on the role of the 'monster,' since this is a horror movie without a true boogeyman. Their ignorance leads them to believe they're in danger. 'Our monster is their own perception of hostility,' he said. 'There's such a deep desire to be comfortable that they would almost rather do violence than be uncomfortable,' Crano added. Craig chimed in, 'And have to talk about it with somebody they can't communicate with.' Although they have committed American tourist faux pas like their characters, Crano and Craig said the adoption story is the most true-to-life aspect of the movie. The couple's beloved dog Axel — who died just a few months after they wrapped shooting — is Dom and Cole's pet in the film and their young son, Washington, nicknamed 'Washy,' plays Dom and Cole's child in a brief scene. After seeing himself on the big screen at the film's debut at South by Southwest last year, Craig said the 5-year-old thinks he's a movie star. His one demand, they said, was to wear a cowboy costume for his scene, which they obliged. Crano and Craig said Washy will likely be allowed to watch 'I Don't Understand You' at a younger age than he should. 'The thing we really hope he gets out of it is the true message of the movie: 'What would you do for your child?'' Craig said. 'And we hope he really understands that we would do anything for him.' 'It is a love letter to him,' Crano said. 'In a purely strange way,' Craig added, finishing his husband's thoughts once more.
