Manhattan’s most scorching restaurant scene this scorching summer isn’t about “scene.” At the once-nowhere corner of Lafayette and Howard streets, Le Coucou is the city’s finest, most fun-for-everyone new brasserie to open since Balthazar nearly 20 years ago.
It’s also one of the 21st century’s four or five best restaurants of any type. Lovingly sculpted into the side of the neighborhood-lifting hotel 11 Howard, Le Coucou is an instant classic that’s perfect for its time — yet it ignores every rule of its time.
While new restaurants all seem cut from one predictable cloth or another — either uptown plush or downtown raucous — Le Coucou propels a cleansing typhoon of fresh air through the too-precious dining firmament.
It isn’t overworked regional Asian or “interpretive” of anything, but rather it’s unfashionably French. Not boringly traditional or unrecognizably weird French, but French made new by the genius of Chicago-born, Parisian-famed chef Daniel Rose.
How many ways does Le Coucou break the mold?
No obnoxious tasting menu! The lineup’s all a la carte and the menu’s organized into easily understood categories.
No concocted culinary “concept”! Instead, it offers a modestly described “tribute to classic French technique and dishes.”
No Instagram obsession! Most of Le Coucou’s dishes aren’t especially photogenic.
No ear-splitting din or dim lighting! You can hear and see your companions without a struggle.
No squeezing in as many mouths as possible! Le Coucou’s floor is easily big enough for 100. Some owners would jam in 120. But it seats a mere 80 happy gourmands.
And — OMG — they answer their phone (212-271-4252) and take reservations over it!
All these pleasures repose in the most gorgeous man-made setting south of Central Park, bankrolled by real estate mogul Aby Rosen and patrolled by a well-trained (how not-2016 is that?), attitude-free floor crew. The chandeliered, concrete- and brick-framed confines are as cozy as they are sexy. Mohair fabrics and white tablecloths mellow the high buzz. The design by Roman and Williams gives everyone a good view, whether you’re in the arcade, set off from the nobly proportioned main room by mullioned windows, or on the lip of the open kitchen inside.
Rose made his tiny Paris restaurants, Spring and only slightly larger La Bourse et La Vie, the toast of Gaul. On Chinatown’s northern fringe, he’s improbably teamed up with megarestaurateur Stephen Starr, whose other New York eateries seat hundreds each.
The chef is just the thing for a city starved for a major new talent. At a time when the creative powers of kitchen lions such as Mario Batali, David Chang and Michael White seem stuck in neutral, Rose stirringly revives the rich, rustic pleasures of great French cooking, refined only slightly through a prism of American raw materials.
Classically based dishes seem revolutionary. A deceptively simple salad of tomatoes, peas, strawberries and pistachios makes you want summer to last forever. Golden ossetra caviar brings glory to humble veal tongue. Not to miss is Rose’s virtuoso spin on oeuf norvégien — a whole soft-boiled egg and an artichoke heart, cooked separately, bound with chive cream and wrapped in smoked salmon.
“Tout le lapin,” or “all of the rabbit,” includes no ears. But legs, saddle, liver and parts unknown boast such disparate flavors and textures that they might be different species altogether, thanks to inspired application of herbs and mustard. Manzanilla sherry adds a sensuous, sweet-and-sour note to rustic pan sauce.
Le Coucou’s been packed since it opened in June. It proves New Yorkers who crave novelty in dining also crave the old ways — as long as the best of the old ways are made to seem blessedly new.
