Daniel60 E 65th St. (Between Madison and Park)
212-288-0033
Subway: F to Lexington Ave.-63rd St
6 to 68th St.-Hunter College
www.danielnyc.com/daniel
Free meals don't come along every day. A free meal at Daniel, one of New York's proudest bastion's of fine French cuisine? That's extraordinary. And to have the meal cooked by chef Daniel Boulud himself? Too good to be true. But true it is, friends, true it is. Last week I was lucky enough to attend a publicity luncheon for a new advertising campaign being launched by an organization called Cheeses of France, which is precisely what it sounds like.
Daniel is exactly the restaurant you would expect to find serving haute cuisine on the Upper East Side. You enter through a huge revolving door into a sumptuously appointed anteroom where hor'dourves and wine were passed around like wafers at church (just as reverent, just as free). Passing through a set of massive wooden doors, you enter the main room, redolent of those pleasure domes in 1940s hollywood films. They just don't make 'em like this anymore. Decorated in Venetian Renaissance style, the sunken dining room sits within a white collonade, making the arrivals and departures of servers with food both less conspicuous and more theatrical. This is a temple to fine food.
And oh how fine it was. First course: three preparations of organic heirloom tomatoes paired with a beautiful 2004 Sancerre. Second course: Chicken with morel and potato gratin and a fava bean puree paired with a magnificent 2003 Burgundy. Third course: three tables of unlimited French cheeses, each selection hand picked by one of the city's top maîtres fromager paired with a 2001 Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Finally, plates of miniature chocolates and petit fours as well as a basket of madeleines so perfect they sent me into Proustian ecstasies (this is only a very slight exaggeration.)
Perhaps my favorite part of the afternoon--and certainly the most amusing--was the manner of the other attendees. I was by far the youngest person in the room, the lowest of the low at Men's Vogue, the publication that had sent me specifically because it cared so little about this Cheeses of France campaign. My name tag, however, said nothing of the sort, and it was assumed that I was someone of significance. I received endless complements on my 'exciting new publication' and fielded innumerable questions about the magazine, questions that I answered with considerable aplomb given that I've only worked with the magazine for about two months. It is a testament to the power of Chef Boulud's cooking that the sheer density of solicitude in the room (or might I call it obsequiousness?) failed to overwhelm the food.
By the time Chef Boulud made his rounds in the dining room four sumptuous courses, four glasses of wine, and $0 later, I had finally found religion. Heaven, as it turns out, looks an awful lot like a French restaurant.
