Well once again finding myself launched into "above 59th Street" territory, I unfolded my umbrella and cut across Central Park a recent weekday afternoon. What is it about CP that makes one lose one's bearings so readily? The only place on earth i feel dizzier is Paris!!
But...
A good New Yorker MUST have and maintain a perpetual sense of direction. And as a long time time New Yorker, I have prized my sense of awareness in a city fraught with calumny and disaster. There is little in life as delightful as strolling across Central Park on a grey Autumn afternoon. The light cresting over the edge of the island and peeking through the cracks of the buildings and trees, the leaves clinging yellow-orange in despair. Or was that merely the orange of the ING banner in preparation for the coming weekends marathon? Baltos looks particularly noble this time of year; eyes, ears, and snout all pointing upward toward the greying Winter sky.
A good New Yorker MUST have and maintain a perpetual sense of direction. And as a long time time New Yorker, I have prized my sense of awareness in a city fraught with calumny and disaster. There is little in life as delightful as strolling across Central Park on a grey Autumn afternoon. The light cresting over the edge of the island and peeking through the cracks of the buildings and trees, the leaves clinging yellow-orange in despair. Or was that merely the orange of the ING banner in preparation for the coming weekends marathon? Baltos looks particularly noble this time of year; eyes, ears, and snout all pointing upward toward the greying Winter sky.
What a delight to have divined a relatively straight path across Central Park and to find myself strolling down W 65 to the intersection of Broadway and Amsterdam. One is immediately struck by the the quality of light as you move towards the large intersection;, crisp, luminous, glowing. What one has is the magnificent view of the restructured Alice Tully Hally building at Lincoln Center.
I start thinking back to my last trip up to the LCand realize that when last viewed by me this entire corner was boxed in! Yikes!!
I've been anxious to see the transformation that Diller Scofidio + Renfro were promising to this Rockefeller folly. What they have accomplished is nothing short of a miracle! The corner with Alice Tully Hall has had a face peel; the horrible marble that "united" Lincoln Center is gone, replaced by a vaulted glass front entrance. The box office and theater are opened up to the public and by cutting away the corner of the building it improves pedestrian traffic tenfold. And in a clever twist, the architects have taken that corner, flipped it over and placed it across the street in the completely redesigned Lincoln Theater plaza between W 65th Street and the Henry Moore reflecting pool. A restaurant called Lincoln is the occupant of this new addition and it reflects lovingly in the pool. As for food and service, I hope we can report to you on that in a future entry!!
Looking from across Broadway and Columbus you don't notice anything radically wrong with the plaza. And yet a dramatic shift has taken place. By extending the canopies of the State Theater and Avery Fisher Hall east with long beveled glass, audience members now have covered protection from the theater to their pick-up/drop-off area on the service road. The use of these enormous glass slabs act as an effective counterweight to the heavy pock-marked marble of the three main buildings on campus. So does the clever imposition of led lights built into the shallow set of steps leading up to plaza. Programmed to deliver building performance and event information, they are staggered in interesting effects that turn this electronic billboard into a very subtle light piece! Another reason I felt an obligation to visit the plaza was because of the story I had read in the NY Times that the Johnson Fountain in the center of the plaza was going to be replaced and chronicled the typical knee-jerk reaction New Yorkers tend to have to change. I never had a deep attachment to that fountain. Let's hope that the new Revson Fountain in the Josie Robertson Plaza will provide more endearing memories than being chased off of it. It's a clever work. In homage to its earlier incarnation the fountain is black and round; but instead of being a black heavy monolith it is now a floating marble circle. The plumbing has been moved sub-plaza level and supplemented with lights and computer-timing to create a truly dramatic fountain. I loved it. I stood for over ten minutes watching it until my stomach demanded food!!
Feeling in a bountiful mood, I decided to pop over to check my boy Daniel Boulud's Bar Boulud. Happily still in business, I sat at the bar/communal table and enjoyed a prix fixe dinner in honor of LC's fabulous make-over!
Boulud is a master of figuring out the right food and ambiance for the right location. Bar Boulud has always been aimed to be high-middle brow, culture-loving, bistro-chic. With its leaning towards country cooking and charcuterie, it allows the plate to be adorned with something as simple as whole grain mustard, cornichon and picked onions for my starter of tangine d'agneau, a Moroccan-inspired terrine with lamb and sweet potatoes. I was pleased that my waiter had steered my entree selection towards the schnitzel. Breaded and fried to perfection it was accompanied by Reisling-braised Napa cabbage and seasonal veg. It was rustic magic on a plate. And in usual Boulud style, the dessert was a tantalizing work of pastry art!
But the genuine pleasant surprise here, oenophiles, was the sommelier's special. Seems the maestro here offers magnum pours of fine french wines. The night I attended I was lucky enough to be the first to sample a 2000 Beaune 1er cru Domaine Champy. This was a magnificent French Burgundy, chewy, leggy with a lovely play on your tongue and palette. So lovely in fact that at even $25 a glass your dedicated reporter felt he had to have two!! And from the array of labels I recognized from earlier such pours, this dedicated reporter intends to visit again!!
