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Currently, one can barely toss a cigarette butt in this metropolis without it hitting a brand-spanking-new French dining establishment with a classic perspective. An abundance of Le and La and L’, Chez This Guy and Maison That Gal, This or That d’Or. If, in a daze of butterfat and white Burgundy, you were to sit and pen a spoof of the quintessential eatery for our present-day culinary Franco-uproar, a title of “Chateau Royale” would befit the parody. The phrase is both stunningly commonplace and amusingly suggestive. It also represents a place that debuted this past summer, in a century-old coach house just to the south of Washington Square Park, the most recent venture from restaurateur Cody Pruitt, of Libertine, along with his colleague, Jacob Cohen. The near-absurd nature of it all is prominently showcased: waiters in white coats? Foie gras? Escargots? Oui, oui, and indeed.
Chateau Royale isn’t doing a whole lot that’s innovative; but, to the restaurant’s benefit, that seems entirely intentional. With regard to the predictability of what’s on offer—and, surely, the general atmosphere—Chateau Royale performs it authentically yet nonchalantly. At ground level, you find a bar, moodily dim and cozy; above, inside the more conventional eating space, walls of ivory and a cascade of portals afford the area an airier, brighter vibe. While the selections in each locale have some commonality—at both, one can procure hefty chilled New Caledonian blue shrimp on ice, or a whole artichoke, steamed, with a ramekin of lively béarnaise—they are wholly separate entities. I gravitated toward the upstairs, where the décor and fare elicit an older, more grandiose style of French restaurant compared to what I’ve grown accustomed to. The cuisine contains iconic dishes of yesteryear, for example, lobster thermidor, the crustacean cleaved the long way and nestled in a shroud of bubbling cream and cheese, which oozes invitingly from its shell at the slightest pressure of a utensil, in addition to a cut of sable, already the most sumptuous fish one can find, prepared in a beurre blanc flecked generously with black droplets of caviar. There is a peculiar comfort to this variety of blatant extravagance: an opulence of grease and salt that circumvents reason or caloric consciousness and goes straight for the primal regions of the brain.
Lobster thermidor.
The fierce intensity is effective, as a consequence of choices enacted by the restaurant with respect to portions (not overly big) along with service (not overly hasty), thereby allowing the palate some time to recover between joyful sighs. In such a manner, Chateau Royale puts one in mind of Libertine, Pruitt’s other restaurant, a sultry West Village bistro devoted to cream where I’ve frequently considered that patrons need to be handed a round of Lactaid tablets in conjunction with the bread alongside butter. Akin to Libertine, Chateau Royale proffers essentially no deviations from the richness, including when you may presume you’re getting something light. An endive salad, to illustrate, is mixed in a delightful anchovy dressing, and augmented with a sprinkle of grated Mimolette cheese. The sauce for the duck a l’orange, vivid with bergamot paired with calamansi, is clinging as well as shiny. A scallop crudo is wrapped in plushness, thanks to a sauce grenobloise, composed of browned butter incorporating capers, amplified slightly using miso, and viscous like peanut butter.
One palpably American intrusion into all of this Frenchness emerges, a potentially superfluous flourish on a menu whose excesses are otherwise more restrained: the beggar’s purse, a single-bite appetizer wherein crème fraîche and osetra caviar are gathered up within a springy crêpe, subsequently bound using a ribbon of chive. While it is widely, though without confirmation, believed to have its roots in France, it’s an utterly New York icon: circa the nineteen-eighties and -nineties, the beggar’s purse comprised the signature morsel of the Quilted Giraffe, the decade’s most sought-after restaurant. (Incidentally, Chateau Royale’s head chef, Brian Young, once held the title of cook at the Quilted Giraffe.) On account of, conceivably, its audacious designation that provokes class friction, the beggar’s purse became a phenomenon, definitely helped by its mind-blowing cost: when it was introduced, in 1981, the Quilted Giraffe levied a sum of thirty dollars per piece; by decade’s end, it was fifty dollars. Chateau Royale’s beggar’s purses are priced at thirty-nine dollars for each ping-pong-ball-sized package—depending upon one’s perspective, this is either an outrage or an incredible bargain.
The caviar-filled canapé known as a beggar’s purse.
The rationale for why this bite seems so estranged has to do with the fact that, while Chateau Royale isn’t in any way an affordable eatery, it isn’t overly bold or proud; it isn’t the appropriate location for a menu selection so outwardly condescending. In all other respects, Pruitt along with his crew seem to be toiling hard to cultivate a cordial, disarming occasion: service is exquisitely affable, with servers guiding diners through the more sophisticated aspects of the menu void of any arrogance, and accepting of devoted Francophiles of differing levels of gastronomic awareness. I had supper one evening adjacent to a family unit with a couple of young children, who went bonkers for both oysters as well as French-fried potatoes, much to the glee of the whole eating space. There exists a disharmonious note of a differing nature on the downstairs menu, inside the bar, where the atmosphere persists in being enjoyable, and the potations celestial, however where I discovered little to appreciate with respect to the more laid-back edible offerings that weren’t accessible up above. A “club sandwich,” as an example, was prepared using lukewarm shredded duck (and single-layered—it wasn’t a club at all!). A hulking chien chaud (clever, right?) read as less of a jaunty spin on the coexistence of haute and low cuisines and more as a bitterly costly hot dog, albeit offered along with a très français kohlrabi sauerkraut.
A Martini served from an old-fashioned bar cart.
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There isn’t any bar to be found on the top floor, yet Chateau Royale’s answer to such a logistical challenge comprises my most appreciated aspect of enjoying dinner there: a bar cart of yesteryear. A curated variety of mixed drinks—a dirty Martini prepared using olive-oil-wash, an Old Fashioned redolent with citrus—are pre-mixed downstairs, chilled down to near-freezing inside crystal decanters, subsequently delivered on the cart around the eating area, ready to be poured at the table. This bar on wheels cuts across the checkerboard flooring within the space sounding similar to the growling roar of a subway train. One gains the perception that the acoustics occur by design: it wouldn’t be difficult for anyone to arrive and amend the cart, tightening some axle or dabbing on a touch of lubricant, nevertheless its purring clackety-clack affords the contraption an awareness of presence, a dash of pleased, nonchalant imperfection. Regardless if you opt out of the hard beverages, it’s a worthwhile action to bring your meal to an end with a splash of Champagne—ideally, dispensed from a silver jug spanning a garnet-toned sphere of cassis sorbet, a delightfully state-altered Kir Royale. Lastly, a touch of effervescence together with brightness, a sliver of dawning following a velvet night. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com