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lsandersonWhat Lulu Has and Thomas Keller Wants
By TANIA RALLI
ORWELL, Vt.
On the Streets of Bangkok, Two Guys Keep It Real
By R. W. APPLE Jr.
BANGKOK
The Contemporary Dining Scene, Est. 1985
By FRANK BRUNI
By TANIA RALLI
ORWELL, Vt.
THE beauty of Diane St. Clair's pasture beneath the Green Mountains here draws the occasional tourist. But Ms. St. Clair recalls one who stood out. She was wearing Gucci shoes. And she wanted to photograph the cows.
The woman had dined at the French Laundry, Thomas Keller's renowned restaurant in the Napa Valley in California. When customers there, and at Mr. Keller's Per Se restaurant in the Time Warner Center in New York, ask the source of the rich, tangy cultured butter on the table, they are told it comes from Ms. St. Clair's "special cows" in Vermont.
On the Streets of Bangkok, Two Guys Keep It Real
By R. W. APPLE Jr.
BANGKOK
THE guidebooks touted Bed Supperclub, where the hip and beautiful recline while they eat, and the airline magazine featured the Australian Amanda Gale, who has set the town on its ear with her fusion food at Cy'an. But I was looking for something more traditional, so as soon as I had settled into my hotel room, I picked up the phone and called Robert Halliday, an American writer and gourmand who has lived here so long that he finds vacations without Thai food painful.
The Contemporary Dining Scene, Est. 1985
By FRANK BRUNI
IN October 1985, a relatively inexperienced, wildly optimistic 27-year-old restaurateur took a deep breath and opened an unusual restaurant in a Manhattan neighborhood not then associated with fine dining.
The neighborhood wasn't the only wild card. This restaurateur had decided to wed serious food to mirthful, big-hearted service, to make diners feel that in going out they were coming home. He had also decided to jettison ethnic boundaries, emphasizing Italian but inviting French and even Asian into the mix.
There was no shortage of people telling him these were interesting ideas - and foolhardy, ruinous ones.
He disagreed.
"There was a big, fat, wide-open bull's-eye for someone to say, 'Whoever wrote the rules that food tastes better because it's more expensive, more formal, and served with more pretense is wrong,' " the restaurateur, Danny Meyer, said recently.
Mr. Meyer made that statement with the Union Square Cafe, which for two decades has maintained an arguably nonpareil popularity in this city. It is often cited in surveys and small talk as many New Yorkers' favorite restaurant. It begat its closest rival for unflagging popular affection, the Gramercy Tavern, along with the rest of Mr. Meyer's formidable restaurant empire.
