Well, that didn’t last long.
Fabio Trabocchi, the highly regarded chef who took over the kitchen at the fabled Four Seasons restaurant in October, is already gone, insiders said.
Trabocchi prepared his last meals yesterday. There was no immediate word on whether he quit or was fired — or a combination of the two.
But his nearly instantaneous exit from one of the world’s most famous restaurants — the place that first put high-end Modern-American cooking on the map and where the “power lunch” was invented — comes as a shock.
Trabocchi was hired by owners Julian Niccolini and Alex von Bidder to succeed longtime top toque Christian Albin, who died last summer. He waded in sporting a Michelin star from now-shuttered Fiamma, the Italian place where he’d worked previously. He seemed to have the owners’ confidence.
Although Trabocchi had yet to fully revamp the menu, which had lost its edge in recent years, the dishes I had recently were the best I’d tasted at the Four Seasons in years.
Albin, his predecessor, had the job for 19 years. Trabocchi lasted only three months — a very short season indeed.