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Chef Daniel Boulud, a Favorite Among the Well-fed
Since the Late '80s, Set to Open His First Restaurant
Outside of New York City
By John Tanasychuk, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News 

Jun. 9, 2003 - Dustin Hoffman dines in his restaurants. So do Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Allen and the nation's titans of industry and finance. 

Chef Daniel Boulud has been a favorite among the well-fed since the late '80s during his time in front of the burners at the old Le Cirque. They followed when he opened his first New York eatery, Daniel, in 1993. This summer Boulud will open his first restaurant outside of New York. 

Called Café Boulud, it will be housed in Palm Beach's Brazilian Court, an intimate boutique hotel that opened in 1926. Its 103 rooms are being converted into 80 condominium hotel units priced from $450,000 to $2.3 million. Owners can rent out their apartments when they're not in town. One apartment was recently photographed for a spread in Architectural Digest. 

A passer-by might mistake the Brazilian Court for just another multimillion-dollar Palm Beach estate. But inside, Café Boulud is taking shape. Workers have laid French corton limestone in the dining room according to designer Leslie Schlesinger's specifications. The ceiling is inlaid with pecky cypress, painstakingly sandblasted, stained, sanded and finished. 

Café Boulud is tentatively set to open June 30, but its opening has already been pushed from January to May because of construction delays. 

"We're very happy to be opening out of season," says Boulud (pronounced boo-LOO). "It would have been terrible to have opened in the middle of the season because everyone would have criticized us. We wouldn't have time to put it together. We're not here to make a great flash. It's to make a long-term establishment and hopefully become a fixture in Palm Beach dining." 

South Florida has no shortage of chefs and restaurants with national reputations. Mark Militello, Norman Van Aken and Michelle Bernstein come to mind. 

And Boulud, 48, isn't the first New York celebrity chef to give South Florida a shot. 

Drew Nieporent, best known for New York's Tribeca Grill, consults on Lucca at the Boca Raton Resort & Club. Nobu Matsuhisa opened Nobu in Miami Beach's Shore Club two years ago. And Emeril Lagasse will kick South Florida dining up a notch in the fall when he opens Emeril's Miami Beach in the Loews Hotel. 

Boulud also knows that another star New York chef, Charlie Palmer, failed a few years ago when he opened Aquaterra in Palm Beach. Palmer blames the seasonal nature of the island. Others say Palmer didn't know the market or the clientele. 

"I know that Charlie Palmer failed miserably here," says Nick Velardo, food and beverage director at The Breakers. "But I think if anyone can make it here, it's Daniel. It's not just another restaurant. It's the entire food and beverage operation." 

Critics love Boulud, and his arrival raises the bar for every South Florida restaurant. In New York, he operates Daniel, Café Boulud and DB Bistro Moderne. The International Herald Tribune calls Daniel one of the 10 finest restaurants in the world. Daniel is one of just five restaurants to have received four stars from The New York Times. 

"I've never seen a buzz like this in Florida, not even for any of those big openings in Miami," says Nick Morfogen, chef at 32 East in Delray Beach who worked for Boulud at Le Cirque back in the late '80s. "All my guys are asking. My customers are asking." 

Morfogen had just graduated from the Culinary Institute of America when he snagged a job as line cook at Le Cirque. 

"Each night was a challenge," says Morfogen. "The pressure was intense. You have a mile-long list of VIPs, the New York old guard. You had a huge menu and you had a very strong-minded, aggressive French chef in Daniel. I think the island of Palm Beach is a little intimidating. That's why I think Daniel can stand above that." 

Boulud has already signed a deal to open a restaurant in Las Vegas in 2005, and he calls Palm Beach his testing ground. 

"People know my cooking from New York," he says. "It's not like I'm parachuting in without having proven what I've done. We'll see how they react." 

The developers of the Brazilian Court realized a great restaurant could set the tone for the development and approached Boulud. They paid $18 million for the property and will spend $12 million more on renovations. Frederic Fekkai, who has hair salons in New York and Beverly Hills, will open a third location inside the hotel. 

Boulud will not only operate the restaurant, but also provide 24-hour room service as well as private dining and catering functions. That, he says, will keep him busy out of season. 

"The whole state of Florida doesn't shut up. I believe we're going to have enough interest and growth to carry on through the summer. After the season, we'll decide if we want to close for a month." 

Boulud has traveled to South Florida more than 20 times during the 23 years he's lived in the United States. More than a decade ago, he did some consulting work at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables and can name several South Florida chefs off the top of his head. 

"Florida was not always considered a food state, more of a sunny, fun state," he says. "Latino food was always the highlight, but I think now it's becoming a little bit more global in terms of its food appearance. I think it's good. It's good because it really strengthens the motivation to come here." 

Boulud isn't sure how much time he'll be spending in his Palm Beach kitchen. But it will be left in the capable hands of executive Zachariah Bell, originally from Clermont and a graduate of Johnson & Wales in North Miami. He has been sous chef at Café Boulud in New York since 1999. 

While success in South Florida isn't guaranteed, few doubt either Boulud's cooking or business skills. The biggest names in food are watching to see how Boulud does in Palm Beach. 

"He's really an example of why people come to America," says Ruth Reichl, editor of Gourmet magazine. "He's this really great French chef who chose to come to this country because here he can be a star. He's become an international businessman and celebrity cook through coming to America." 

He's also created unique restaurants that Reichl calls Franco-American hybrids. 

"Alain Ducasse comes in and opens what is essentially a French restaurant in New York," she says. "But Daniel came and opened essentially a French-American restaurant in New York where he keeps the quality of food and the excitement of the food along with the ability to turn the tables three times and understand what it is that Americans really like. He's taken everything that's so good about being French and everything that's good about being American and combined them in a restaurant." 

Boulud even understands the hamburger. 

Last year, he introduced a $50 hamburger to his DB Bistro Moderne. Made from ground sirloin and chuck wrapped around braised short ribs, the DB Burger Royale has 50 ingredients, including seared foie gras. You can order it without shaved black truffles and save $21. That burger got him in USA Today and on national Television. 

"We're going to serve it here," says Boulud. "But we don't know if we're going to put it on the menu because everyone's going to want it. It's going to be one of the secret dishes. You've got to be in the know. " 

Michelle Bernstein, chef at Azul, the only Miami-Dade restaurant to have a Five Diamond AAA rating, says Boulud's arrival is a stroke of good luck for South Florida restaurants. 

"Every time someone incredibly talented and so highly regarded as Daniel Boulud can come into town, it raises our level of consciousness when it come to the quality of food," she says. "We all have to push ourselves to get a little bit better. Competition is very important for our field. This kind of competition shoots a little fuel in our fire." 

Bernstein, who started her culinary career in Manhattan, says Boulud's Upper East Side base will serve him well in Palm Beach. 

"I think it's his sort of clientele because he does attract the hoity-toity. And more than just foodies, they also like to say that they're going to a restaurant of such high quality and held in such high regard. If they don't know him personally, they definitely dine there often." 

William Grimes, restaurant critic at The New York Times, says Boulud has ingratiated himself into the crowd Bernstein speaks of. He also has a knack for keeping himself very much in the public eye. Boulud recently switched jobs for a day with Today Show weatherman Al Roker. He's written cookbooks and pens a column, "Daniel's Dish," for Elle Décor. Boulud sells his own private label brand caviar and soon will lend his name to a line of cookware. 

"He's very much a part of the community that his restaurants cater to," says Grimes. "Which is exclusive, very well-to-do, Upper East Side New Yorkers who are very clubby. Once they decide you're one of them, then you're one of them for life. It's well-heeled clientele who likes to stick with what it knows." 

But Leslie Brenner, author of The Fourth Star: Dispatches From Inside Daniel Boulud's Celebrated New York Restaurant (Three Rivers Press, $15), says it was Boulud's lack of pretension that convinced her to write the book. 

"I do think he's unpretentious," says Brenner, whose book recounts her year behind the scenes at Daniel, during which time the restaurant earned its coveted fourth star from The New York Times. "One of the reasons that I wanted to write about his restaurant was that I thought he was articulate and interesting and approachable in a way that I haven't always found with chefs." 

But Brenner thinks that if anyone can run a tight ship from afar, it's Boulud. 

"The minute he crossed the door into the kitchen he turned into a different person," says Brenner. "He seems like a very gentle and kind person when you talk to him in the dining room. And maybe he is. But when he crosses the threshold into the kitchen, when he goes through those swinging doors, he gets very sort of military. He's like a general who just sort of galvanizes everyone with his presence. He's a sweetheart in the dining room, but you would never call him a sweetheart in the kitchen." 

Boulud knows that he's become enough of a name to draw diners from across South Florida. But don't look to Boulud to make a big South Beach style splash. He doesn't like the word trendy. 

"I like when there's a buzz," he says. "I like the animation of a restaurant. But the trendy restaurants are really out of control in terms of controlling the experience for the guest. It's the music and the girls. We're not going to have a crazy scene here. The animation will come from the clientele, the diversity of it and the fact they will be in a comfortable environment. I hope it's not going to be stuffy, because I'm going to de-stuff it." 

-----To see more of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel -- including its homes, jobs, cars and other classified listings -- or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sun-sentinel.com. 

(c) 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. 


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