In November 1987, a 34-year-old David Bouley opened his flagship restaurant on Duane Street in TriBeCa. By then, he’d worked under top chefs in France and New York, most famously earning notice as the chef of nearby Montrachet. But nobody could have predicted the wild ride that would follow. By any measure — critical raves, celebrity overload, Zagat-rating domination — Bouley was a phenomenon, right up to the night it closed in 1996.
On Thursday, as part of the New York Food and Wine Festival, a who’s-who of city chefs will gather at a dinner paying tribute to the Connecticut-born chef and the 25th anniversary of restaurant Bouley — which, after reopening in 2002, is going strong in its third location.
To mark the occasion, some of those chefs, food-scene vets and Bouley himself shared memories of the restaurant that ate New York City.
David Bouley: “There was a group of us — Jean-Georges [Vongerichten], Daniel [Boulud], Gray Kunz — who’d decided that French cooking needed to be updated to the way nouvelle cuisine had re-energized the world. I wanted to get away from butter and cream, and build a cuisine that was clean and full of energy.
“In those days, a lot of people pretty much knew what they wanted to eat when they went to a restaurant, and it would be, ‘I don’t want this; give me this on the side.’ I didn’t want to be told how to cook — I wanted them to trust us.”
Danny Meyer, restaurateur: “[He] introduced New York diners to the multi-course tasting menu, and to the notion that an American could do a French restaurant just as well as any Frenchman could.”
Bouley: “I found all these crazy social misfits, and we built a family. And I just became obsessed with cooking.”
Anita Lo, chef: “My first job was at Bouley in ’88 and we really felt we were somewhere special. It was very tough. He had a motto, and I believe it was written on the wall: ‘Chaos Equals Quality.’ He meant, it took so much to prepare everything, but it was worth it.”
Bouley: “We were doing everything you can imagine to get better quality while maintaining value. I’d send guys up to Cape Cod in my pickup twice a week; they’d bring back fish that wasn’t even rigor mortis. Then it was, why don’t we sit down with the farmers? Next thing you know we’re sitting with farmers looking at seed catalogs.”
Eric Ripert, chef: “He loved to go to the market, and he would come back with products and change the menu late in the afternoon. Sometimes he would start improvising in the middle of service, which is very unusual. Dinner could take quite a long time because of this, but the customers loved the place.”
Gael Greene, critic: “Everyone was complaining about long waits for tables and endless dinners ending in the wee hours. Me too, in my first review. Then David called to say he had installed a clock in the kitchen and I should come and watch how it had speeded up everything. So I parked myself against a wall. Everyone was swooping in and out like a ballet. In the middle of service, a couple arrived who had already eaten the tasting dinner that week, so he decided he had to do a completely different tasting just for them. He grabbed a sauté pan and started cooking.”
Bouley: “I was nuts, you know? I was obsessed, and it wasn’t just me. We’d feed cab drivers, and train them to listen to customers leaving the restaurant and take notes to see what they liked and didn’t like. We did so many things like that, it was insane. We started to keep notes on regular customers, so when people came in, we’d know what they ate last time, where they sat, what they drank.”
Dan Silverman, chef of The Standard Grill: “There were so many tasting menus. There was a VIP tasting and a super-VIP tasting, and there was one where he would just wing it. We’d put our heads together and someone would say, ‘Oh no, he had that one other time, give him something new.’ It was all very exciting.”
Bouley: “I was working 100 hours a week. We were all stressed out, but we partied like crazy too, because we had to release it. Each night it was focus, finish and celebrate.
“Some of the biggest actors and musicians in the world at that time would sit in the dining room and we’d open up a bottle of port and talk until all hours. People like Keith Richards, Liam Neeson, Warren Beatty, Gérard Depardieu, the list goes on and on.”
Bill Yosses, chef: “David used to invite customers into the kitchen, which was a very hot and intense place. So Robert De Niro or Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt would come in and start asking questions about what we were making and we were always nervous, because it was like, ‘I know you’re famous, but I have to get this food out to 10 people.’
“Bill Cosby used to treat the dining room like his living room — he’d go around throwing off one-liners.”
Bouley: “When I closed the restaurant, people thought I should be institutionalized. Close a restaurant that’s turning away 200 people a day?
“The landlord was raising the rent, and personally, I was wasted. I was burned out, and thinking, man, I want a life.”
In the years that followed, Bouley pursued a number of ventures, some of which — Bouley Bakery, Danube — were big successes, some of which — a planned cooking school and massive retail market — never materialized.
Bouley: “If you do something well, you start thinking you can do more than that, and you kind of lose your way. I looked at what got me where I am and where I got distracted, and I realized I should go back to cooking every day in a restaurant. And now I’m back with 100 percent focus.
Tim Zagat: “For many years he was No. 1 for both food and popularity. And if he stays focused, he will be No. 1 again. I don’t know anyone more dedicated to being perfect.”
Daniel Boulud: “I am a big admirer and very patient with David because everyone knows you need to be patient with David. But when he’s ready, you never forget his magic.”
Bouley: “Where I’m at today is trying to create a form of cooking that in no way isn’t focused on taste, but is equally focused on health. I’ve been studying Japanese kaiseki cooking and its health benefits, and I want my food to be like that, to be so clean. That’s what my obsession is today. I can’t even sleep I have so many ideas about what’s going on in here.”