In the city led by Socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani, crowds flock every evening to Le Chêne, Manhattan’s new French restaurant, to share roasted pigeons ($135 each), 1.5-kilogram beef ribs ($350), whole blue lobsters or pithiviers stuffed with pork and smoked eel. In the kitchen is Alexia Duchêne, in her 30s, who rose to fame in France on Top Chef and has been based in New York for two years.
In defiance of the current political zeitgeist and the rise of appetite suppressants like Ozempic, the young French chef champions a cuisine of opulence and luxury, in a setting of white tablecloths, crimson velvet and silver cones of fries. “In a generation that mostly embraces bistronomy, this unapologetically bourgeois approach is almost punk,” said restaurateur Hugo Hivernat, who once hosted her in residence at Fulgurances. Since opening in May in the West Village, Le Chêne has been fully booked every night of the week.
We met her on a Friday morning at the restaurant, just after she had received her weekly delivery of Breton turbot – two giants weighing between 6 to 8 kilos, arriving directly from the airport. Aged for four days, these extravagantly sized fish are grilled whole over a Japanese barbecue and served to connoisseurs who follow their arrival on Instagram, where the chef has more than 100,000 followers. People no longer go to restaurants “just to eat,” Duchêne observed, but to “have an experience.”
The surf-and-turf pithiviers, stuffed with pork and smoked eel, are a house specialty. SAMANTHA CASOLARI FOR M LE MAGAZINE DU MONDE
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Dining and Cooking