Stations de combat, Polo Bar and Ristorante Armani — Parisian glamour-pit L’Avenue has joined the battle to be Fifth Avenue’s flagship for global fashionista-feasting.
The great news is that L’Avenue, at Saks Fifth Avenue, is nothing like the snooty French original owned by Jean-Louis Costes and Alex Denis that’s been called a “‘fashion insiders’ power hub for the style elite.” Although it’s drawn the boldface likes of Karolína Kurková and Odell Beckham Jr., it’s a fun and appealing eatery with surprisingly good food that’s welcoming to everyone
The secret? It’s managed not by distant Parisians, but by Restaurant Associates — the storied, feet-on-the-ground New York company that launched the original Four Seasons restaurant more than a half-century ago and which today runs dining rooms at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Morgan Library.
The two-level L’Avenue, designed by Philippe Starck, occupies the eighth and ninth floor of the department store. Elevators take you to the reservations-only ninth-floor dining room, a brown-on-brown, clubby and comfy spread with Moorish-style arched windows and cozy booths. A grand circular staircase leads downstairs to Le Chalet, which features a gorgeous circular bar, redwood paneling, ceiling logs, faux animal heads and romantic nooks overlooking Rockefeller Center.
Forget “dress code” — fat guys with shirts out of their pants shared the floor with Fashion Week glamourpusses. Two blond sisters in H&M-like leopard-print blouses at the next table giggled their way through romantic fiascos. (“I told him I couldn’t think of him in a date-ish-type way,” lamented one.)
Street-savvy gatekeepers ensure that the place won’t be another out-of-touch disaster like Le Caprice, the London import, where hosts wouldn’t have known the Yankees had the team bus pulled up. L’Avenue general manager Alessio de Sensi previously worked at the boldface-infested Polo Bar, where an iPad-bearing sentry checks guests in at the door. Here, at L’Avenue, “We’re much more open,” he says.
The menu’s reassuringly familiar despite names like “vapeurs de crevettes” (shrimp dumplings). Delicate, steamed sea bass with coconut milk sauce and curry; “tigre qui pleure” (luscious marinated, sliced beef with spicy Thai sauce); and vegetables in spicy green curry sauce are fully realized, Asian-tinted crowd-pleasers. It’s affordable, too, with some starters in the teens and main dishes in the $18-to-mid-$30 range.
But a “classic” club sandwich available in the Le Chalet eighth-floor lounge ($26) doesn’t stack up against Ralph’s Corned Beef Sandwich ($28) at the Polo a few blocks north — a much nearer rival to L’Avenue than another in-store canteen, Freds at Barneys. Polo regulars such as David Foster, Andy Cohen, Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Seacrest, Kelly Ripa, Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Seinfeld and Alex Rodriguez won’t likely switch allegiances overnight.
But L’Avenue’s already drawing its share of the notable and the notorious — e.g., prison-bound Michael Cohen, whom I saw with his wife living it up last Saturday night. Also spotted in the past two weeks: supermodels Joan Smalls and Grace Elizabeth, actress-producer Jessica Chastain, Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, actors Kyle MacLachlan and Jean Reno and rapper Vic Mensa. I even saw Tao restaurant kingpin Marc Packer holding down a booth on a Friday night when the rest of Midtown was dead.
The media went bananes over L’Avenue’s French pedigree including pastry chef Pierre Hermé, who has a retail shop off the Fifth Avenue dining room. But none mentioned that it’s a three-way deal between Saks, L’Avenue and Restaurant Associates with RA as the operator.
Saks likely didn’t want to dilute L’Avenue’s “French” image. They needn’t have worried. Most of us will take Fifth Avenue over Avenue Montaigne any day.
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