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Brasserie Ruhlmann, a New York bistro, is an artistic attractionElegance of Art Deco enhances artistry of French cuisineBy Lucy Komisar
Art Deco was launched at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, 1925. The style took its name from a shortened version of Arts Décoratifs.
Ruhlmann’s furniture and interiors comprise a major collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which presented a retrospective of his work in 2004. His designs have been exhibited by such museums as the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Ruhlmann made his furniture for people who prized refinement. Brasserie Executive Chef Laurent Tourondel shares that sensibility. This restaurant, which opened in January 2006, has a French wait staff dressed in typical black vests and white sleeves which is proudly knowledgeable about the cuisine, which in France, of course, is an art form.
If you go Brasserie
Ruhlmann At dinner, hors d’oeuvres including a selection of seafood cocktails and salads from $9 to $18. Main courses including fish, duck, chicken, lamb and beef, plus the specialty, Choucroute, from $21 to $44, the latter for a 22-ounce steak big enough for at least two! Desserts including Paris Brest and Floating Island, $8 to $10. Photos by Lucy Komisar. |
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Brasserie Ruhlmann is a paean to the world’s most important
designer of Art Deco, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879-1933). The French bistro sits
on West 50th Street in the midst of Rockefeller Center, a complex whose lobbies
and passage-ways and outer building design are great examples of the style,
which started in France and swept the art world in the 1920s. From the outdoor
café, you can see the flat golden metal sculptures over an entrance door. How
surprising, and delightful, to dine in a place that feeds the soul as well as
the body.
The Brasserie was created, named and designed by Jean
Denoyer, a devoté and collector of Ruhlmann’s work and co-owner of the
restaurant. Part English, part French, he’s lived in New York since 1965 when he
moved from Paris where he had trained at The Ritz to prepare for the family
hotel business. He was just 23. Seven years later, he opened the famous “La
Goulue” restaurant in New York, and that was followed by restaurants in New
York, San Francisco and Houston.
This latest Denoyer endeavor – an homage to Ruhlmann –
emulates the artist’s formal, elegant Art Deco design, which featured precious
and exotic woods shined to a high gloss and fitted with ivory and gold. He liked
curved edges and slender tapered legs. He used circular and spiral designs in
the wood. A floor of Italian mosaic tiles in muted colors creates intertwined
arches. The restaurant features reproductions of Ruhlmann’s work including faux
ebony Macassar walls inlaid with equally fake ivory (real ivory is banned to
protect endangered species). Even the bar follows the theme.
My tablemate and I shared appetizers of briny Kumamoto West
Coast Oysters and shrimp in delicate remoulade sauce mixed with avocado. Our
main courses were subtly flavored Dover Sole Meunière and Skate Grenobloise. The
chef understands the value of flavors that are discreet and not overpowering.
Desert was “Paris-Brest,” which comes with a story. A
pastry chef traveled by bike from Paris to Brest in Brittany -- more than 350
miles -- to visit a friend who was having a birthday. When he arrived, he
decided to commemorate both the birthday and the journey and created a hazelnut
custard in the shape of a bicycle wheel. He declared, “We’ll call it
Paris-Brest."
We ate on red plush chairs with Ruhlmann’s signature
tapered legs, surrounded by the famous burnished wood walls decked with large
octagonal mirrors and lined with lush banquettes. I loved the Art Deco ambience,
but I was sorry we couldn’t also be outside in the street café, looking across
the road at the glittering lights above the Rockefeller Center skating rink.
Many patrons clearly favored the “very French” outdoor ambience and view.
Open daily for breakfast or brunch, lunch, dinner, bar and café menus.