The more French, the better
Le Veau d’Or (Upper East Side)
RESTAURANTS • First Person
The menu at the recently reborn Le Veau D’Or on East 60th St. is broad and tall, in stark contrast to the cozy quarters of the restaurant to which it belongs. Both restaurant and menu, however, are proudly anachronistic throwbacks to a different era of fine dining.
Up top, an array of starters, opening with pommes soufflées caviar rouge a la creme, continuing with other French classics down to the mains, a subsequent salad course, and finally, desserts. And how French — and classically French — it is. Reading that menu, if you don’t already know by then, you might need Google Translate or a waiter to decode exactly what you’re in for, which (in both languages) works out to a very, very good night.
After an impressive run from 1937 to 2019, followed by a five-year closure, Le Veau d’Or reopened earlier this month. Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr of Frenchette and Le Rock renown have assumed ownership, blessing the space with subtle updates that echo the vintage design down to the red and black tiled floor. The result is a very 2024 room, in which every bit of history feels intact.
Before returning to that menu, a martini is in order. Though it can be tailored “your way,” take it “our way,” namely, with dry gin in a martini glass accompanied by a sidecar of vermouth topped with Vichy Catalan sparkling water and a lemon twist. The idea is to sip back and forth between them.
As drinks arrive, you’ll chart a course through the four-course prix fixe, $125 per. The food, like the design, is updated without erasing the past: You could ease in with salade de tomatoes, oysters, or a petit omelette. Or you could dive in head-first, via a beautifully crusted and glistening pâté en croûte, or escargots provençale served out of the shell in individual cups and topped with a wafer. If there’s a best practice for navigating this portion of the menu, it seems to be the more French, the better.
All four entrees on our table earned raves. Plates of crusted halibut and duck magret aux cerises were finished in a flash. The best was (somehow) yet to come: The onglet frites is a borderline-psychedelic hanger steak, impossibly tender, with a meticulous, peppery, seared crust on the outside. Fricassée chicken “en cocotte” — served in a Le Creuset — arrived in a throne of vin jaune sauce the color of uncut sunshine.
After entrees are cleared, a lightly vinegared bowl of lettuces appears, clearing the palate for desert, where that beautiful shade of yellow shows up again in île flottante, a cloud of meringue swimming in a pool of crème anglaise. It’s a French standard not often seen stateside and was a first among equals alongside boozy strawberries au sabayon, a scoop of house-churned cherries jubilee ice cream, and a cheese plate.
As the night wound down, we admired a menu on the wall across from our table dating, they think, to the first decade of the restaurant’s life. It has the same spirit and energy as today’s menu, and was a last reminder of how completely of the city, yesterday and today, Le Veau d’Or is. It’s the sort of place to return to when an essential and exceptional Gotham feels like it’s drifted out of reach. Or as one of our dining companions put it: Why would anyone ever leave New York? –Foster Kamer & Lockhart Steele
→ Le Veau d’Or (Upper East Side) • 129 E 60th St • Tues-Sat 5-9p • $125 prix fixe • Reserve.