With a dash of déjà vu, famed chef Charlie Palmer was simmering over the current financial crisis.
“As scary a time as we’re in now, I remember Black Monday,” Mr. Palmer said, referring to the infamous stock market crash of Oct. 19, 1987.
Talk about bad timing: “That was just prior to when we were ready to open the restaurant!”
Back then, some people thought he was nuts to go forward with Aureole, the ambitious young cook’s pipe dream of an American-style Lutèce, located inside an Upper East Side townhouse, which he and a partner had purchased and spent months renovating.
“I remember signing those mortgage papers and going on the hook for three million bucks!” recalled Mr. Palmer, who was just 29 at the time. “Well, what am I to do? I built a restaurant. I’m ready to open. Am I not going to open? Of course I have to open!”
His perseverance paid off. The economy eventually rebounded and Aureole opened the following year—setting a new standard for American cuisine and catapulting the career of the aspiring chef, who’s now pushing 50, with a dozen restaurants coast to coast.
“Now, here we are 20 years later, again, starting construction on a $10 million restaurant in the Bank of America building,” Mr. Palmer said, laughing. “At least I can say I’m glad it wasn’t the Bear Stearns building.”
Recent banking catastrophes notwithstanding, Mr. Palmer will toast to Aureole’s 20th anniversary at a splashy cocktail party on Oct. 30 in the very townhouse where it all began, at 34 East 61st Street.
Meanwhile, nearly 20 blocks away, construction workers will be busy assembling the seminal eatery’s spacious new digs on the ground floor of the Durst Organization’s 54-story Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park.
Dumping the small cozy brownstone for a big glassy skyscraper will likely wind up costing his flagship restaurant some of its romantic charms. But the venerable purveyor of tea-smoked squab and oxtail terrine isn’t one for crocodile tears.
“I don’t look into the past as much as some people—I always look forward,” Mr. Palmer said, speaking by phone last week from Sonoma County, Calif., where he owns and operates the boutique Hotel Healdsburg and its in-house Dry Creek Kitchen.
“I think for Aureole to continue to grow as a brand and as something special that we needed to do something drastic,” he said. “We’ve literally torn that restaurant apart five times and redone it right down to the cement walls. And, you know, it’s a brownstone—it’s not going to change. There are a lot of physical limitations to that space. As cozy and romantic as it is, the bar is only four seats!”
He’ll have space for an entire bar room with seating for 60 in the new, nearly 10,000-square-foot location, which is scheduled to open this spring with a more modern, Adam Tihany-designed look and more casual offerings than the traditional Aureole customer would be used to. Barroom patrons can even order items a la carte.
“Come into Aureole now and it’s a big-deal experience—that’s all we offer,” said Mr. Palmer, noting that more formal dining will take place separately in an intimate 55-seat room (roughly 30 fewer chairs than the existing dining area).
“The way people dine is different now, 20 years later,” he explained. “Some nights you have diners that are going out for the big-deal dinner. They’re entertaining clients. They have friends from out of town and they want to show them a great time. Then there are other nights where you just want to grab something quick to eat, a great glass of wine or cocktail, and you don’t want that huge commitment.
“What we’re really focusing on here is solid, amazing food, amazing service and an amazing wine list, but deliver it in a way that people are really comfortable and it’s not stuffy and not over the top,” Mr. Palmer continued. “We’re not going to require a jacket in any part of the restaurant. Twenty years ago, that was unheard of.”
A third area will be reserved for private parties—another amenity the old townhouse was sorely lacking. “In 20 years, I’ve probably turned away $40 million worth of private business because we don’t have a private room,” Mr. Palmer said. “I can’t even calculate the number of times people have called, ‘I have a party of 40 people.’ Can’t do it. Click.”
The vast space at One Bryant Park just seems limitless by comparison. “We’ll have one of the largest wine cellars in New York City—if not the largest—on premise,” gushed Mr. Palmer. “Real estate’s so expensive in New York that now, at Aureole, we have three wine cellars in the restaurant and probably double that in off-site wine storage. … Now we’re going to bring all this to one amazing cellar. We’ll have storage for about 23,000 bottles.”
Not every developer can entice a star chef to uproot his legacy with mere promises of additional wine storage.
“Over the years, we’ve been—how should we say?—romanced by different people about possibly moving,” Mr. Palmer said. “Time Warner Center was a good example. I know quite a few of the guys at [developer] Related Companies. … I just didn’t think it was the right thing for us at the time.”
Leave it to noted foodie Douglas Durst to belly up to the bargaining table.
“I’ve known Douglas for quite some time,” said Mr. Palmer. Compared to more meat-and-potatoes-style developers, “he’s a very solid connoisseur of food and wine,” the chef said.
(“Charlie’s cooking certainly stands out,” Mr. Durst told The Observer. “A lot of people these days think the more ingredients you put into a dish, the better it is; Charlie’s food, while not simple, is not terribly complicated.”)
“He certainly could have leased it to a TGI Friday’s for 10 times what I’m paying, and they would’ve jumped at the deal,” said Mr. Palmer.
“It’s a trophy building, and Aureole is a trophy restaurant,” said Mr. Durst, who noted that his father, the late real estate mogul Seymour Durst, used to live on East 61st Street, not far from the existing restaurant. “We were in there, well, not all the time, but a number of times,” the developer said.
“Rents on 42nd Street are over $500 a foot, but that kind of tenant wasn’t what we were looking for,” added Mr. Durst, who co-owns one of New York State’s largest organic farms. “It was a highly negotiated deal—nowhere near those numbers. We really reached out to have Charlie in the building.”
But what to do with the existing Aureole building, which will become vacant upon the new location’s spring launch? The veteran chef and property owner isn’t quite sure.
“The one thing I know is, it’s not going to be another restaurant,” Mr. Palmer said. “There’s only one Aureole in New York.”
His other one is in Vegas.
cshott@observer.com
