Three Days of Lafayette

Last weekend I was immersed in Lafayette, Andrew Carmellini's latest, a French restaurant designed by Roman + Williams. It started with Friday night dinner in the private dining room, which for one of those rooms is quite nice, swaddled in warm wood paneling punctuated by a vignette of mismatched mirrors & other vintage-y objets. Food was served family style but again quite good for that mode, the chicken and the gingerbread-chocolate-chip cookies being the best (not eaten together, of course).

Lafayette's wood-paneled private dining room.

Sunday was the friends & family brunch, which I came to as the guest of my friend, architect Stephanie Goto, who herself has designed some stunners (Aldea, Corton). This time I really got to take in the environment, which, although a touch loud, is quite remarkable. The color palette is sophisticated (browns, burgundies, and yellows, instead of the predominantly red seen in most American interpretations of a French bistro), the proportions and light grand, and the details surprising (booths with their own lamp, playful murals randomly appearing on walls). As for dish, we feasted on lemon pancakes with fresh berries, smoked salmon benedict, and egg white frittata with mushrooms, all delicious, the latter probably being the unexpected tastiest. Two other designers joined us and the aspect they all focused on the most was the small leather tray the check is presented on. They loved the feel and the logo and the leather itself. Go figure.

The welcome card to friends & family brunch.

Random wall sketch.

Leather tray for check.

Smoked salmon benedict, brioche, sauce choron.

Finally, Monday night was the second in the three-part series Dining + Design: Conversations with Chefs and Architects, coproduced by the New School and the James Beard Foundation, featuring AC himself with Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch of Roman + Williams. (The first was Blue Hill's Dan Barber and architect Peter Guzy.) My day job's obligations to cover ICFF made me miss the first half of their talk, but I did catch Robin and Stephen dissect the subtle differences between the Dutch and Lafayette, bc at first glance, they could look and/or feel similar. But the Dutch is the more casual of the two, supposed to be like an upscale American roadside diner or waffle house, with big round pendant globes, rounded corners, the font of the signage in print not script. Whereas Lafayette is more formal and layered, art deco columns clad in Provence-style tiles, chefs that are visible wearing tall white toques, French but through an international lens.

Here's the video of the discussion. The last in the series is June 10, 6pm, with David Chang and the Design Agency.

The New School's Fabio Parasecoli, Robin Standefer, Andrew Carmellini, Stephen Alesch beneath a rendering of Lafayette.