Cuisine Francais - a la "Old School'

I have an affection for 'old school' style restaurants and I remember having, maybe not great meals but great dining experiences at places like the "21" Club and the Rainbow Room. Los Angeles is all about the new new thing when it comes to food and there are very few traditional 'old school' restaurants left. So voila, New York.



This is the second time this week that I've read about this very traditional Manhattan restaurant Le Veau d'Or. Thanks to The Trad I found this video of Anthony Bourdain enjoying an old fashioned french meal. The Epic liked it so much that he dined there several times on his holiday vacation.

Definitely it will be on the top of my list for my next trip to New York.

Do you have an 'old school' favorite?

NY Recap - Dining at DBGB

Having only a limited amount of free time in NY last week, I did much more in an average day there than I would do here. But since NY has a way of energizing you the day seemed easy.


So after the visiting the Morgan Library my friend and I headed downtown to SoHo where there was such a completely different vibe than in Mid-Town. After that feeling of claustrophobia from being surrounded by the huge Mid-Town buildings it was nice to walk around in a neighborhood of low buildings and more open space...even if the area was tawdry.

Being in a New York-y state of mind, we decided to stop at a local movie theater and see this film. It was an interesting group of shorts by different directors with an ensemble cast in vignettes that were cleverly woven together. It was the perfect film to watch in NY.
If you haven't see it, here's the trailer.



After the movie we wandered up Bowery to have dinner at Daniel Boulud's DBGB Kitchen & Bar, and like Boulud's other restaurants, it did not disappoint.
A casual restaurant with a bistro menu listing three pages of beers and ales...which impressed me even though I wouldn't know the difference between Bud Light and a Belgian Ale.

We sat in the bar area, which was way more lively than the restaurant in the back
and this was for dinner

roasted marrow

and blood sausage on a potato puree

exactly what I would have ordered on a cold winter night in France

My friend was not about to go all francais with the blood sausage so he ordered something traditional

Ignoring the vast list of beers and ales, I went for the Train Wreck Zinfandel from Schrader Cellars which was served by the glass.

It was a fabulous dinner and very reasonably priced for New York.

When is Daniel Boulud going to open a bistro in Brentwood?

NY Recap - The Morgan Library & Museum

Fortunately NY wasn't all about business. I managed to fit in a little culture, fine dining, a film and some shopping.

For some reason I had never before visited the Morgan Library & Museum. Whenever I had tried in the past, it always seemed out of the way or my plans always got changed, so finally on this trip I made it to the Morgan.

I love small museums like the Frick in New York and the Jacquemart-André in Paris because they don't overwhelm like the Met and the Louvre. Also being created in private residences from private collections, these museums give you an incredible view into the architecture, interior design and lifestyle of a significant family within their historical period.



And the Morgan Library certainly did not disappoint with its elegant Italianate portico

and over the top library designed by Charles Mckim

and the juxtaposition of the open and airy steel and glass structure connecting the original building and the annex by Renzo Piano
very cool.

While the architecture alone was worth the trip, I also enjoyed viewing two of the current exhibitions

Rococo and Revolution: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings

and

William Blake's World: "A New Heaven Is Begun"

The dix-huitième drawings by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Prud'hon were beautiful and I'm sorry that I will miss this week's lecture Glamour and Guillotine: Fashion, Theater and Decorative Arts in Eighteenth-Century France

The Blake works were incredible too. Does anyone else find all those floating figures in Blake to be an artistic precursor to those by later artists such as Chagall and Matisse?

The exhibit that I missed at the Morgan was A Woman's Wit: Jane Austin's Life and Legacy.

Miss Cavendish, if you have an upcoming trip to NY, it will be on display through March 14th.

NY Recap - Conde Nast, Hearst and Fashion Babes

I'm pleased that my New York trip was successful
My meetings went really well, it didn't rain and I didn't come down with the flu
all very good things.

Although I was disappointed not to meet Wendy B and see her cleverly designed jewelry
there will be additional trips to NY and other opportunities to meet.

For some silly reason I didn't realize that the Conde Nast building was going to be a Times Square adjacent dark glass box. I was expecting a more "Devil Wears Prada" type of building with elegant architecture and interiors matching the chic look of the fashion babes working there.

But in spite of the fact that the building houses the offices of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Allure, Architectural Digest and many more publications, the architecture was pretty pedestrian.

To add to the pedestrian nature of the experience,
when I had what was termed as "deskside meetings" at Conde Nast

I never got anywhere near an actual desk.

After going through security in the lobby and taking the elevator to the correct floor, I saw that all of the offices are housed behind locked glass doors. Instead of being invited into any actual work space I met with the fashion editors in the interior seating areas next to the elevators. Naturally I presumed that some major top secret fashion-y stuff was going on behind those glass doors.

The wow factor at Conde Nast was getting to ride the elevator with the natty Hamish Bowles...not La Wintour to be sure, but a bonafide fashion celebrity in his own right.

My experience at Hearst was entirely different from the neighborhood to the architecture to the ambiance.

The Hearst Tower in Columbus Circle was an impressive 42 storey building designed by Foster & Partners as a tower of glass rising from the original 6 storey Art Deco Hearst building from the 1920's.

The lobby of the building was magnificent with an impressive multi storey stepped waterfall crossed by escalators leading to an open atrium style lobby that housed the elevators as well as a seating area, cafeteria and gallery space.

Where the ambiance at Conde Nast was closed and dark, at Hearst it was open and light.

Meetings were held in brightly lit conference rooms with walls of glass and spectacular city views.

The wow factor came from taking the elevator with Pamela Fiori , the editor in chief of Town & Country, who politely inquired who we were there to meet after we stepped off the elevator on the same floor.

Now, about the fashion editors, or as I call them, the fashion babes.

They were, not all of course, but for the most part, young, maybe 30 years old, very nice and seemed to all have that New York high wasp upper east side socialite look. You know what I mean, really pretty, thin, blond and very well dressed. They reminded me of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, with an ethereal and fragile look that to me is the essence of New York high style.

I found this interesting because Los Angeles, a city filled with amazingly beautiful women, particularly because of the entertainment industry, is so just different in terms of style than New York.

Meeting With The NY Demi-Gods At Conde Nast

I think this is a photo of the building where I spent my afternoon...the Conde Nast building.
I will have more to say about this next week when I get back to LA, but until then, let's just say that I am very disappointed to not have seen Anna Wintour at Vogue.

NY View

OK, so maybe I don't have Central Park as my view, but what's not to like about being on the 20th floor and looking at the gorgeous architecture and trees on the building across the street.

I think the big window with the big curtains, set in the mansard style roof, is the office of the Carlisle Collection clothing company. Nice real estate, no wonder the clothes are so expensive.
Question: Does anyone wear clothes from the Carlisle Collection?

New York Deskside Meetings

Why, oh why, did I wait until the last minute to get ready for my trip to New York .
It's not as though I didn't have a couple of weeks to get myself prepared.
But no...I had to do emergency shopping over the weekend including a trip to the dreaded Beverly Center, my least favorite mall.
And worse, emergency shopping always comes down to breaking my cardinal shopping rule
Never Pay Retail
(when you work on the wholesale side, you just can't bring yourself to pay full retail)

But there you go, it's business and I have to be dressed for it.
Luckily all my purchases were from the usual low to mid-range stores
Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, Gap, Bloomingdales
and from a new store Jigsaw, a British label that has a shop on Beverly Drive.

Since I don't have time to lay out my travel wardrobe for photos like Karen and Pseu did for their trips to Paris, I will just post these pictures of the looks that I am going for.

For my two days of meetings I will be dressed in something like this

And for the rest of the time I will be sporting a look like this

With the all essential black coat

Rain is in the forecast for later in the week...but hopefully it will be cold enough to snow...

Playing With Polyvore - Planning For New York

I can take the New York chilly weather for a few days...can't I?

Things To Do In New York In The Fall

On my list of things to do in New York this fall
(besides meeting the infamous Wendy B)
The Watteau exhibit at the Met


Watteau, Music, and Theater
September 22, 2009–November 29, 2009
The exhibition will explore the place of music and theater in the work of the great early eighteenth-century French painter and draftsman Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), comparing an imagery of power, associated with the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, with a more optimistic and mildly subversive imagery of pleasure, developed in contemporary opera-ballet and theater.
It will show that the painter’s utopian vision was directly influenced by these sister arts and will shed light on the subjects of a number of Watteau’s images. In addition to material drawn from various departments of the Museum, including musical instruments, porcelains, and prints, there will be a number of major loans of paintings and drawings by Watteau and his contemporaries from other collections in the United States and Europe.

Especially because I loved this movie
Ce que mes yeux ont vu
An art history drama/thriller
Here's the trailer