Review: Demarchelier Restaurant, New York City

Feeling rather Parisian, I decided to try the coq au vin, one of my favorite dishes and one Julia Child highlighted in her 1961 masterwork, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Coq au vin is made with chicken braised with Burgundy wine, mushrooms, and lardon and at Demarchelier it was accompanied by fingerling potatoes. The verdict: simply delicious.

Meanwhile, my dining companion had the moules marinière, which he pronounced extremely satisfying.

Throughout the meal, our server kept our water and wine glasses filled, checking on us without hovering over us, while we surveyed the rest of the dining room from our perch – a raised window seat – and saw diner after diner enjoying their meals with gusto.

Dessert presented a conundrum. Perhaps we shouldn’t have eaten quite so much of the cheese fondue (I did stop halfway through the coq au vin so I could take the rest home to enjoy), but we nonetheless opted to share the crème caramel and crèpes suzette, the name of which is a somewhat controversial to food historians. Could it have been after the guest, a young girl named Suzette, dining with the future King Edward VII at Monte Carlo’s Café de Paris, or perhaps named after French actress Suzanne Reichenberg. This controversy notwithstanding, the combination of crèpes with a sauce of caramelized sugar, butter, orange juice, zest, and Grand Marnier has become the quintessential French dessert and it was splendid.

As we realized the meal was coming to an end, the waiter brought out a shopping bag with the coq au vin and, full as we were, we left Demarchelier feeling quite satisfied and certain we would return again soon.

THE DETAILS

Demarchelier Restaurant
50 East 86 Street
New York, N.Y. 10028
www.demarchelierrestaurant.com
Tel. +1 212 249-6300

(Photos: Accura Media Group)

Pages: 1 2