Winging it
DANIEL BOULUD • The Dinex Group
WORK • Tuesday Routine
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.