Growth mindset
Daniel Boulud, Quique Crudo, The Point, Dumbo revelation, Maru Coffee, stationery shops, MORE
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WORK • Tuesday Routine
Winging it
DANIEL BOULUD • chef & restaurateur • The Dinex Group
Neighborhood you work & live in: Upper East Side
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s on the agenda today?
I had an early flight to Nassau and arrived at Rosewood Baha Mar and my restaurant Café Boulud. It’s always a pleasure to come here. I was greeted by the chef and the manager. They’re all so excited to see me; I’m excited to see them. I didn’t even go to my room! I put my suitcase down and went directly with my shirts into the kitchen because I wanted to test the dishes. We’re hosting a truffle dinner and all the dishes, we never really made them before, so we kind of wing it. I love to do that.
When I cook, I don’t have to test the recipe 10 times — I just go with it. So with this, we modified a lot of things. I spent an hour and a half making a sauce because I wanted this really nice vermouth sauce for the white truffle to go with the salmon and the leeks. It’s a very simple dish. The sauce is 50 percent of the dish, the other 50 percent is the truffle. The salmon is just the salmon, the leeks are just the vehicle that carries the two. By nature, a dish has to taste simple, natural, easy, so we just make it happen.
What’s the scene back in New York?
On the Upper West Side near Lincoln Center, we had Bar Boulud for 18 years and Boulud Sud for about 12 years, and also Épicerie Boulud. We’re transforming it all into a brasserie. We are keeping, of course, Épicerie Boulud, and a little bit of Bar Boulud, but it’s becoming more of a speakeasy in the back, a cozy bar, and then the front and everything north of that will become one restaurant as Brasserie Boulud. It will have the soul of Bar Boulud, which was a bistro with a great wine program, but you’ll also have some Mediterranean dishes from Boulud Sud and great brasserie classics, and oysters. We’ll be opening in early 2026.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
I go to Rezdôra because I like pasta and I like Stefano’s pasta. I go to Quique Crudo by chef Cosme Aguilar, I love it there. I go to Stretch Pizza, Wylie Dufresne, because it’s cattycorner from La Tête d’Or. And in Midtown, Le Bernardin — if somebody invites me, I say, Le Bernardin.
How about a little leisure or culture this week?
I have young kids, so I have to keep them busy. On my day off, we play soccer a lot. We were in Armonk, and the day before we were in Brooklyn for soccer. I go to the country. I have a house in Bedford. Jean-Georges has a restaurant near there, The Inn at Pound Ridge. And then there’s a restaurant called La Bastide by Andrea Calstier in North Salem. It’s a young couple and they’re wonderful. They just got the star this year. He worked with me in the past. It’s a dual restaurant, so there’s also Cenadou Bistrot. It’s the perfect getaway.
Any weekend getaways?
If I can escape, I go to a Relais & Châteaux, The Point in Saranac Lake; love that. My wife loves Newport, RI, and we go every summer. We escape to St. Louis because I have a daughter there and grandchildren. St. Louis, it’s interesting, there’s a lot of young chefs — or they were young when they were with me — who are now operating restaurants in St. Louis. And it’s the hometown of Danny Meyer, so I always feel like I’m in the right place.
What was your last great vacation?
We come to Baha Mar all the time. My kids this morning, I had them on FaceTime when they were going to school and they were like, Oh, Daddy, are you gonna do the big waterslide? This is a fun destination. If I get out of the property, I mostly go see friends because they either have houses here or I had a friend that was on a boat here. There’s Albany, a good bakery. I love to go to the fish market. I couldn’t believe it, there’s this guy doing a conch crudo. He’s a dude there that’s just cracking conch, with a mountain of shells behind him.
Having children, of course, vacation is with them. I was in Greece this summer. Thessaloniki in the north. I was in a wonderful resort there called Sani. They have a food festival and it was a very different format. They bring a chef every two weeks and the chef cooks for one night rather than a lot of chefs in one night. So they have the festival the whole summer. It was amazing for the kids. There was so much activity and soccer camp also.
WORK LINKS: Wall St bonuses driving luxury real estate surge • Law firm Cahill coming over the top with $200K associate super bonuses • French financier building billion dollar film studio in NJ • In defense of the office holiday party • The most effective organizations act small.
GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Café
Nice drip
I’ve long stood firm on the belief that there are exactly two food places in NYC worth waiting in line for — Cafe Sabarsky and Emilio’s Ballato. Yet in the last couple of months since Maru Coffee opened on Wythe Avenue, I’ve waited in line from 15 to 45 minutes no fewer than five times for a cup of coffee. It doesn’t seem to matter whether I go at 8a on a Saturday or 1130a on a random Tuesday. Maru’s Williamsburg outpost is always packed with a blend of well-dressed, obviously busy New Yorkers who would probably walk away from any other coffee shop line but are happy to wait patiently for an iced breve macchiato and a seat in Maru’s sunlit, Japandi-styled interior.
I first had Maru’s cultish (and slightly controversial) cream top coffee on a work trip to LA. For weeks afterwards, I tried and failed to find a place in New York that came close. I reverse-engineered a decent approximation using my Subminimal nanofoamer and beans from Public Records, but it just wasn’t the same. You get the sense that everyone else at the Williamsburg Maru had a similar experience. The crowds aren’t just here to snap a photo of their coffee — it scans, mostly, as coffee connoisseurs, people who are excited to talk to the baristas about single-origin lots and linger over a hand-brewed cup and some screen-free conversation.
For the first few weeks you couldn’t get the cream top Americano in Williamsburg, but the team has since remedied that situation. You can also get your fancy whipped cream fix on the tiny bonbon and iced macchiato drinks. But the real menu draw, for me, are the espresso sets. As someone who always wants coffee with their coffee, I was charmed by their black-and-white offering: a cortado with a sidecar of drip. It pairs especially well with one of Lysee’s milk chocolate banana cookies, which are available on the weekends (the weekday pastry offerings are from Frenchette). It’s the perfect midday snack to enjoy while ogling Maru’s tightly curated selection of brewing equipment and wondering whether you do, in fact, need a Yamanaki-shikki wooden dripper. –Carina Finn
→ Maru Coffee (Williamsburg) • 320 Wythe Ave • Daily 730a-5p.
GOODS & SERVICES LINKS: Gotham launches The Highrise, invite-only event for cannabis industry • Last chance to see Gehry’s interiors at Issey Miyake, shuttering this Friday in Tribeca • Menswear brand Warren on making clothes in New England • Quince is selling wine now • The comfort fallacy • The 50 best clothing stores in America.
FOUND GIFT GUIDE • The Nines
Holiday cards and stationery
The Nines are FOUND’s distilled lists of the best. Additions or subtractions? Hit reply or found@foundny.com.
Greenwich Letterpress (West Village), made in-house or at its Brooklyn letterpress, custom options available
Goods for the Study (Greenwich Village, Nolita, Upper West Side), stationery outpost of McNally Jackson empire
East Village Postal (East Village), classic stationery shop and functional postal store
City Papery (Flatiron), every color card imaginable for those seeking custom options
Measure Twice (Cobble Hill, above), rotating selection of cards for every holiday, plus blanks
Yours Truly, Brooklyn (Fort Greene), tiny storefront packed with cards and pens for all purposes
Mr. Boddington’s Studio (Park Slope), cards w/ hand-drawn illustrations and cheeky quips
Rider (Park Slope), equal parts card store and gift shop, highlighting independent makers
The Analog Stationer (Prospect Heights), cards, journals, and every tool needed to live an analog lifestyle
ASK FOUND
Today, three PROMPTS for which we request your immediate attention:
Which bar or restaurant are you booking for your company’s holiday party?
Where did you source your Christmas tree?
Where will you celebrate New Year’s Eve?
Hit reply or email found@foundny.com with more answers or questions.
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Kids club
My kids are growing up in New York City, so they’re growing up in restaurants. In our neighborhood of Dumbo, however, the palatable options have been limited. Until recently.
This fall, two heavy-duty operators, Jonathan Waxman and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, each opened what amounts to a greatest-hits version of their restaurants within walking distance. At 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, the new Barbuto Brooklyn occupies a space that (with respect to Barbuto’s original West Village location, a classic with its iconic garage doors) blows its newer West Village digs out of the water. With floor-to-ceiling glass windows looking out onto Brooklyn Bridge Park, and views across the top of the bar to the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan skyline, it’s a very pretty spot.
On an early fall visit, our daughters delighted in playing on the large outdoor patio, and very much enjoyed the pizza, too (particularly the Hannah, with burrata, fontina, tomato ragu, and parmesan). This is a restaurant we’ll dine at dozens of times over the next few years.
Down the Dumbo waterfront, tucked inside the Empire Stores building that also houses Time Out Market, JGV’s abc kitchens merges dishes from three of his other restaurants (abc v, abc cocina, and abc kitchen) to create a menu as massive as the space itself. Settling in with our kids on a recent Saturday night, we were surrounded by strollers, hardly the only neighborhood residents who’d had the idea for a family night out here. Our food came fast and delicious, everything from oysters on the half shell to arroz con pollo to crackling macaroni and cheese — and, yes, pizza. Overseeing it all on this night was the man himself, Vongerichten at the pass (as, by the way, was Waxman during our night at Barbuto). Give the empire builders credit for crossing the river.
As welcome as these two new restaurants are, the most exciting new development for family dining — not just in the neighborhood, but anywhere in the city — opened its doors in the heart of Dumbo last month.