Gabriel Kreuther arrived in New York in 1997, took a job at La Caravelle, the since-closed French institution, moved on to cook under Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and then spent nearly a decade as executive chef at the Modern, Danny Meyer’s restaurant. In 2015, he opened his namesake, Gabriel Kreuther, at 41 W. 42nd Street, overlooking Bryant Park — which earned three stars from the New York Times, two Michelin stars, and a James Beard Award.
Kreuther has watched this city change from a place where people go out three or four nights a week without thinking twice, he tells Eater, to one where diners are more conscious of what they want and what they’re spending. His answer is a new wood-fired French brasserie Saverne, opening on Monday, March 2, at 531 West 34th Street, at the base of Tishman Speyer’s Spiral tower on the far West Side in Hudson Yards.
The bar at Saverne. Francesco Sapienza
The restaurant takes its name from a historic town in the Bas-Rhin region of Alsace, at the foot of the Vosges mountains, where Kreuther is from. But the feel is unmistakably New York, or rather, the New York that Related Companies built at Hudson Yards. The interior is two rooms: one with a dramatic entrance and a brass bar and chandelier, the other a back room built around an open kitchen anchored by a wood-fired oven and grill. Twelve seats face the flames for the best seats in the house. The booths behind are raised about a foot, so no one misses the show.
For Kreuther, wood fire is “going back to the basics,” he says. His restaurant is one of a handful of new spots cooking with live-fire grills, along with Soho’s Or’esh from the team behind the impossible-to-book Corner Store; the soon-to-open Oriana in Nolita from the Noortwyck crew; and spots that have been open longer, like Melissa Rodriguez’s Crane Club, and chef Hillary Sterling’s Ci Siamo nearby.
The dining room at Saverne. Francesco Sapienza
Every main dish off the Saverne menu — the half-roasted chicken with chicories and pommes puree($38), a deboned loup de mer grilled skin-side down until it blisters ($39), a black sea bass cooked en papillote ($45) — comes off that fire. Three tarte flambees ($22 to $31) are also on the menu: a classic, one with mushrooms, and another with house-cured gravlax and horseradish. There’s a beet spaghetti — made with beet juice and semolina, finished with oysters, salmon roe, smoked sturgeon, and caviar ($85!)— that sounds like it shouldn’t work and apparently does. And over at the bar, pretzels with horseradish dip are on the menu from 4:30 to 7 p.m. “Just for fun,” he says, “with a beer.”
Kreuther sees the move toward a la carte as a broader shift. “People who go out and eat do not want to spend money on an adventure that they don’t know how it’s going to be,” he says. “They want to know what they’re gonna get for it.” The era of fifteen-course tasting menus has given way to something more grounded, he shares.
The wine list follows a similar logic. Kreuther wants small producers, accessible prices, and discovery. “I wanna find a wine list where people can have fun,” he says, “instead of sitting there and like, ‘oh my god, this is so crazy expensive.’”
For dessert, Nicolas Chevrier, who runs pastry at the Bryant Park flagship, oversees the desserts: creme brulee, ile flottante, chocolate mousse, and coupes glacées, such as the Mont Blanc, with chestnut ice cream, cassis sorbet, meringue, and candied chestnuts ($22).
“This is a place where you know what you’re getting,” Kreuther says. “And what you’re getting is good.”
A collection of dishes from Saverne. Francesco Sapienza
Coupes glacées at Saverne. Francesco Sapienza
Dining and Cooking