But you’re almost certainly not here for the food or the room, and neither are you here for the service, which has a sort of friendly air of bafflement, as if this were everyone’s first-ever shift, every night. The upshot of this is that George, who works the room in a sharp gray suit, a few tattoos peeking out, has plenty of opportunities to charismatically make things right, shaking hands and clasping shoulders and sending over lull-filling drinks. It would be tempting to say that Faux illustrates some fundamental difference between father and son—to pronounce that Keith is good at this whole restaurant thing and George is not—but I’m inclined to be less deterministic, and to say, instead, that what we’re witnessing is the difference between innocence and experience. When you’re at the start of life, full of potential and little else, as George McNally and his friends and their friends of friends are, the room itself doesn’t matter, and neither does the food, really, as long as the French fries aren’t soggy, as long as the Martinis hit the table. You are the room, you are the scene, you are both the moth and the light. Excellent food, attentive service, artfully crafted interiors, and a cultivated mood—those luxuries can come later, as compensatory bulwarks against the gentle indignities of time.
About half of Faux’s dining room, on my visits, seemed to be occupied by the young and beautiful, perhaps strategizing, over moules bouillabaisse, when to move the party to the bar downstairs. I suspect that, over the next months, there will be fewer of the rest of us, as the novelty of the place fades and the Keith loyalists—the brasserati?—get their curiosity-fuelled visits out of the way. In the taxi back uptown, they’ll agree that they’re certainly thrilled for young George, and wish him every success, and maybe they’ll find something more their speed at whatever restaurant he opens next. Stepping out onto Church Street after dinner one evening, happily buzzed on one and a half cocktails and a fairly potent baba au rhum, I nearly collided with a pack of young women on their way in, leggy as fawns, the New York night sweeping out behind them like a glittering train. ♦
Dining and Cooking