Question: Why did the tick-fearing New Yorkers cross the country lawn? Answer: To get to the Jean Prouv\u00e9 cabin on the other side.<\/p>\n
As sunset began falling on Yann Nury\u2019s home in Pound Ridge, New York, the French chef and his wife, Grace Douglas, led guests on an adventure. Trailing the couple across the sprawling lawn, past the apple and cherry orchards, the group was greeted by a miraculous sight. While at first their attention landed on the generous caviar service arrayed on vintage silver, a magnum of Pol Roger champagne at the ready, their eyes soon turned to something that even this well-traveled crowd had never seen: a maison d\u00e9montable by At\u00e9liers Jean Prouv\u00e9\u2014one of just 130 movable pavilions made in France in the mid-1940s. The humble yet pedigreed prefabricated cabin\u2014which will eventually travel the country to host Nury\u2019s unparalleled nomadic dining \u00ad experiences\u2014is the perfect expression of his entertaining style: a creative combination of impeccable ease and\u00ad exceptional ingredients.<\/p>\n
In the 21 years since the classically trained chef moved to New York from Paris to intern at Daniel Boulud\u2019s catering company, he has become the luxury world\u2019s private chef and caterer of choice, traveling the globe with his team to produce hundreds of dinners a year, be it a feast at the Desert Botanical Garden in Arizona for Herm\u00e8s (the brief: 15 courses, no utensils, with each component of the meal integrated into the decor); a meal for 450 guests of Cartier at the Conciergerie in Paris, with all of the sterling silverware sourced from Nury\u2019s collection; or a dinner under the Saturn V rocket at NASA, in partnership with Omega watches.<\/p>\n
Chef Yann Nury entertaining at home in Pound Ridge.<\/p>\n
A Brazilian teak dining table by Jos\u00e9 Zanine Caldas paired with chairs by Wharton Esherik<\/p>\n
Jean Prouv\u00e9\u2019s maison d\u00e9montable, from the mid-1940s situated just down the hill from the main house<\/p>\n
In 2023, Nury combined his lifelong love of hyperspecific design with his m\u00e9tier of crafting to open La R\u00e9sidence. Set in a 3,000-square-foot loft overlooking New York\u2019s SoHo, the atelier\u2014a kind of word-of-mouth culinary social club\u2014hosts invitation-only meals for in-the-know guests. There, those who are as passionate about food and l\u2019art de la table as they are about design will be rewarded by such treasures as a colorful cabinet made by Prouv\u00e9 and Charlotte Perriand for Air France employees in the Republic of Congo in 1952; a suite of antique copper cookware that extends to more than 100 pieces; and rare vintage tableware and glasses that Nury and Douglas began collecting decades ago. Connoisseurs of contemporary furniture will take note of the bottle green mohair sofa designed by Nury\u2019s collaborator on the project, the celebrated French architect Charles Zana, who envisioned the loft as \u201ca living space for gastronomy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zana and Nury were introduced in 2019, when the architect was looking for a chef to help him celebrate his appointment as Chevalier dans l\u2019Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France\u2019s highest honors. The meal was pushed back two years, \u201cbut we started to talk about the New York kitchen, and now we\u2019ve created seven meals together and designed two projects. Plus, I cooked for his wedding in Saint-Paul-de-Vence,\u201d said Nury with a smile, recalling the Proven\u00e7al feast he served in the sculpture garden of the Fondation Maeght for Zana\u2019s wedding to Parisian jewelry designer Daphn\u00e9 Lignel. Zana also helped Nury and Douglas with the renovation of their Pound Ridge home, which was built for the daughter of one of the town\u2019s founders in the 1780s.<\/p>\n
The exterior of Nury\u2019s 1780s house<\/p>\n
\u201cThe house was a dream project, 10 years in the making\u2014a dream to continue blending our passion for entertainment, cooking, and hospitality,\u201d said Nury. \u201cThere are five different locations to cook, with different mediums. But it\u2019s also a creative haven.\u201d<\/p>\n
The design process began five years ago with Zana\u2019s sketch on a paper tablecloth. He envisioned creating a double-height center staircase inspired by 18th-century French designs; shrinking the kids\u2019 rooms to make space for a shared play area; and, most importantly, transforming an adjacent barn, with its original beams and chestnut ceiling boards, into the kitchen and dining room. \u201cMy sons love cooking too, so we wanted to use the biggest room,\u201d Nury explained. \u201cPeople always say the kitchen is the heart of the home,\u201d Douglas added. \u201cI think Yann\u2019s heart is the kitchen. It\u2019s where he shows his love and where he goes to relax.\u201d<\/p>\n
The soaring room, which easily absorbs the largest Noguchi pendant lamp, is a culinary wonderland, from the dramatic island and back wall carved from Italian limestone to the professional French stove, which requires three-star skills. Several sets of pocket doors close to conceal stations, including a coffee zone and the pantry, with its many kinds of flour. The thoroughly considered layout was also designed to showcase the couple\u2019s culinary treasures, such as the antique copper pots that they\u2019ve been hand-carrying, one by one, from France for the past 15 years. \u201cThere\u2019s a purpose to this collection,\u201d Nury said of the pieces, all of which are regularly incorporated into both professional and personal meals. \u201cIt\u2019s things we can use.\u201d<\/p>\n
The kitchen and dining area, lit by a Noguchi lamp from the 1950s<\/p>\n
One of the lush tomato tarts on offer at the party<\/p>\n
A Wiener Werkst\u00e4tte chair, alongside a Jean Touret les Artisans de Marolles lamp<\/p>\n
Nury sketching out flavor pairings<\/p>\n
The rest of the home also balances history and modernity, provenance and practicality. Humble three-legged stools from the midcentury French woodworkers\u2019 collective Les Artisans de Marolles coexist with patinated bronze Rick Owens side tables and a plywood\u2013and\u2013petrified antler chair that, while contemporary, \u201creally spoke to us because of the craftsmanship,\u201d Nury said. The room\u2019s original stone fireplace is softened by a white boucl\u00e9 Pierre Paulin Alpha sofa and chairs\u2014the same model that was commissioned by President Georges Pompidou and his wife, Claude, for the private apartments of the \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace in 1972. Nury bought the set because it represented a tipping point in modern furniture. \u201cThe fact that Pompidou accepted to bring design into L\u2019\u00c9lys\u00e9e and embrace those creators, for me, was very important. As a collector of design, I think that is really what changed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the living room, an Alpha sofa and chairs by Pierre Paulin offset by Rick Owens bronze side tables and a plywood-and-petrified antler chair<\/p>\n
Similar stories can be shared throughout the home. There\u2019s the picture frame the couple \u00ad carried back from their favorite antique-frame dealer at the flea market in Paris, finding the painting to go in it years later, and the antique Russian silver incense thurible they found in London, which Douglas designated as a planter. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like, \u2018Oh, let\u2019s build a house and do a mood board and buy everything,\u2019\u201d Nury said of their project. \u201cFirst of all, we couldn\u2019t. And second, the pressure of being forced to do all of this at once was just\u2026what about falling in love with things? That was a big part of the process, and why Charles was also really infatuated with this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seated down the hill in the Prouv\u00e9 cabin\u2014a bucket list acquisition that took Nury years to obtain\u2014Zana was in conversation with Alison Cayne, the creator of the soon-to-launch fragrance line Choulie, who was telling him that the sinuous upholstered bed he designed was onher dream list when she was furnishing her weekend home a few miles away. Nearby, as polished silver goblets of champagne were passed around, cooks were baking rustic buckwheat sourdough flatbreads in the embers of a grill\u2019s fire and brushing them with citrus butter, to accompany the caviar in lieu of blini. \u201cTake a lot and spread it on,\u201d Nury urged art adviser Leslie Fritz, whose home could be made out through the trees. Nury slipped into French, miming slathering a \u00ad generous amount of jam on toast: \u201cIl faut le tartiner!\u201d<\/p>\n
Artist Nicole Wittenberg with Mario Apollon Mowatt of Van Cleef & Arpels<\/p>\n
A butcher\u2019s block circa 1900<\/p>\n
Art adviser Matt Bangser with his sons Albert (seated) and Simon, and Nury\u2019s friend Marty Ellington, a doctor, and his wife, Christine Huang<\/p>\n
Guests\u2019 children took turns on the steel beam swings before heading off to play hide-and-seek in the orchard. As the sun dipped just below the treeline, Object & Thing founder Abby Bangser and her husband, Matt Bangser, of Art Intelligence Global\u2014followed by beauty entrepreneur Tata Harper; artists Nicole Wittenberg, Megan Marrin, and Federico de Francesco; director of Frieze Americas Christine Messineo and her husband, film producer Matthew Shattuck; Mario Apollon Mowatt of Van Cleef & Arpels; and others\u2014made their way back toward the kitchen, where a sumptuous summer feast awaited.<\/p>\n
Just outside the kitchen\u2019s glass doors, Nury was inaugurating his sizable custom grill, housed in a wide, waxed concrete\u2013finished chimney. Trays of Montauk clams simmered in vin jaune broth with celery from the garden; bottles of chilled Bandol Domaine Tempier ros\u00e9 awaited nearby. Once the flames had subsided, the chef slowly roasted beef tenderloin and the season\u2019s first tomatoes until both were impossibly tender, a nod to Nury\u2019s childhood in the South of France. (His American touch? They were served with ramp jus.)<\/p>\n
Nury with his wife, Grace Douglas, and architect Charles Zana<\/p>\n
Two young guests on steel beam swings<\/p>\n
At the kitchen island, guests and neighbors, such as ceramicist Re Jin Lee, helped themselves to the rosy beef, as well as to cauliflower gratin with verveine from the garden and roasted potatoes with thyme blossoms. Nearby, Douglas had transformed the family\u2019s candlelit dinner table into a tableau fit for the film The Taste of Things: ripe cantaloupe draped with jam\u00f3n Ib\u00e9rico cut paper-thin on a vintage Berkel slicer, trays of plump figs with buckwheat honey, and silver cake stands of varying heights bearing painterly tomato tarts. Accompanying the homemade breads\u2014including a brioche spiked with Timut peppercorns and thyme blossoms, baked in vintage copper souffl\u00e9 molds\u2014was the talk of the table: a basket bearing five pounds of beurre d\u2019Isigny from France. \u201cYann first sent it to me as a joke when he was out of town,\u201d said Douglas. \u201cWho needs flowers when you have butter?\u201d<\/p>\n
Douglas and Nury with their son Grayson<\/p>\n
A loaf of sourdough black bread, baked over the grill<\/p>\n
A painting by Gary Simmons, just beyond the living room<\/p>\n
A 1952 cabinet by Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouv\u00e9<\/p>\n
As for the evening\u2019s menu, \u201cit started by how to utilize the spaces,\u201d explained Nury, his arm sweeping from the kitchen to the grill area to the cabin down the hill. \u201cAnd then things that I was very excited to share with the people coming tonight. I wanted to keep the evening simple and really make everything shine. My favorite way to cook is focusing on the ingredients: I finalize the menu at the farmers market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Douglas summed up her husband\u2019s genius: \u201cWhen I met Yann, his excitement for life and people was infectious. It still is, and I think it\u2019s what makes him so good at entertaining and hosting. It\u2019s also what we have in common: We love to share everything we love in life with others.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the caviar and champagne, and the tenderloin and its accompanying red Burgundy, were indulgently celebratory, the evening\u2019s most generous flex was the enormous vintage silver berry bowl from Tiffany overflowing with Harry\u2019s Berries, the sought-after California strawberries that are so perfect, Herm\u00e8s served them to guests at its recent presentation in Los Angeles. \u201cThey are Grace\u2019s secret weapon for dinner parties,\u201d said Nury. Toward the end of the meal, guests scooped a spoonful onto their plates, alongside a cloud of whipped cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche, returning shortly thereafter for more. Once the couple\u2019s sons, Alexander, 14, and Grayson, 9, told the kids about them, the bounty quickly disappeared. As the candles flickered low, signaling the end of a memorable evening, only a single berry remained.<\/p>\n
Hair and makeup for Grace Douglas by Ginger Leigh Ryan for Bumble and Bumble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Question: Why did the tick-fearing New Yorkers cross the country lawn? Answer: To get to the Jean Prouv\u00e9 cabin on the other side. As sunset began falling on Yann Nury\u2019s home in Pound Ridge, New York, the French chef and his wife, Grace Douglas, led guests on an adventure. Trailing the couple across the sprawling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,305,1789,1790,1768,84,5150],"class_list":["post-4698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chefs","tag-chef","tag-culture","tag-homepage","tag-in-the-magazine","tag-interiors","tag-life","tag-vol-4-2026"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dnc\/117190160810357382","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/chefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}