Results tagged “aureole”

This week Sam Sifton at the Times files a two star review of A Voce Columbus. This slick Italian-influenced restaurant is the Time Warner Center incarnation of the Flatiron district A Voce, which was made successful by chef Andrew Carmellini (now at Locanda Verde). Chef Missy Robbins (Chicago's Spiaggia) is running the kitchen now, and Sifton agrees she's "an excellent chef. She didn’t come here to mess around. But make no mistake. A Voce is a corporate enterprise, part of a master plan, and feels like it. Save for swiveling yourself around in the Eames-y leather chairs that appoint both restaurants, there is very little room for improvisation. Service is clinical, almost silent, beyond language... This restaurant could yield more A Voces in other cities, in other malls, all over this land."

This week Sam Sifton at the Times files an unenthusiastic one star review on the flashy Bryant Park location of Charlier Palmer's Aureole. Palmer, a restaurant impresario who made his bones in the kitchen of the River Cafe, relocated his well-liked restaurant from the Upper East Side to the new Bank of America building this summer.

       

Charlie Palmer—chef, restaurateur, frequent Today Show guest and owner of a dozen restaurants nationwide—isn't afraid of a challenge, but his ambitious new endeavor must take nerves of steel in this economy: After two decades in a townhouse on the Upper East Side, he's relocated his popular restaurant Aureole to a flashy new home in the Bank of America tower at One Bryant Park. Unabashedly elegant, the new Aureole hearkens back to a more ebullient era, when opening a fine dining restaurant with a proven track record wasn't quite so fraught with terror. There's been a ton of money sunk into this baby, evident in the oak-clad columns, brushed zinc bar, walnut table tops, leather chairs, the wine mezzanine, and the five custom-made chandeliers. And the downstairs kitchen is massive.

     

Have you ever dreamed that you could have a multi-course lunch at the home of an amazing chef, hang out in his kitchen while he prepares it and pick up some cooking tips and recipes along the way? It’s possible. One way is to befriend (or maybe even date) a chef. Another is through By Invitation Only events, open to platinum American Express card members. Chef Cyril Renaud of Fleur de Sel opened up his Brooklyn kitchen to some Platinum AmEx cardholders, many of whom had used their reward points to attend the event. If you've been saving your reward points for a rainy day, now's a great time to use them.