FORK PLAY February 6 2008
My Ducasse Obsession. The Homesick Deli
Dear Friends and Family,
If you read Alex Morris's L'Obsession in New York (January 14) you can feel Alain Ducasse's pain as he struggles to wiggle into the psyche of the New York gourmand. He might have learned a lesson from Gilbert LeCoze, oozing the most winning humility, as he arrived with sister Maguy in 1985 to open Le Bernardin. But Ducasse rode into town in 2000 with six Michelin stars on every epaulette, all puffed up and advertising his gift to the city. Alain Ducasse/New York at the Essex Hotel would show New York what great dining was all about. He has always believed his own press: Why didn't we?
By then Ducasse had abandoned the kitchen for pin 
stripes and a global empire. spoke to the consultants he had hired to find him recipes for the launch of Alain Ducasse/Paris, an event that so distracted him from his fabled Louis XV in Monte Carlo that even Michelin was forced to notice, and snatched away one star.
I'm not sure why I was so shocked to learn he was too busy to find his own inspiration. Maybe that's what global moguls do. Daniel Boulud brings in a master charcutier he admires from Paris to whip up the gorgeous terrines and pâtés at Bar Boulud. Do we think Jean-Georges personally worked out the recipes for Spice Market in his own laboratory beaker. Indeed I rather hope it wasn't Jean-Georges' idea to deconstruct the onion soup at his doomed V Steakhouse.
If you were old enough to have an international driver's license and were doing the truffle fields of France in the 70's and 80's, trusting my gasping reports in New York, you might remember that I actually loved the young Ducasse at Juana on the Riviera. And when he moved to Louis XV, supposedly promising to get three stars or abdicate, I was there, swooning over the gilded, white-glove excess. I recall my blinding astonishment at finding a storied French chef with the audacity to borrow from the Italian. I can still see the three little cannolini on the plate..or was it three little ziti? So nouvelliste, tiny and perfect. The pulled sugar cages, the melting macaroons.
Did we go overboard? Was I just a gullible American gosling? Wasn't everything better in France? Well, in fact, it was.
But the French press are blinded by anything French too. When an impressive coven of French critics was invited in 2007 to discover how wonderful New York restaurants are, a four day round-robin focusing on 
transplanted French chefs in New York was scheduled. Pitiable, but why was I not surprised? They were ultimately persuaded to add a steak house detour and a few sneaked off to Momofuko - but these cranky Gauls are so totally brainwashed by love for Joël Robuchon, they couldn't see how Eric Ripert's extraordinary lunch at Le Bernardin trumped a perfectly fine tasting in the empty dining room at the Four Seasons with the entire kitchen working just to please them. Indeed, I think even Robuchon would agree his Atelier concept was never meant to be a four star dodge, not quite fast food, but.a counter, after all.
When the New York critics slammed Alain Ducasse at the Essex, he had an advisor arrange for Paris critics to be flown in on-the-house. And the big time birds flew home to report one and all that in fact, Ducasse's food was glorious and the American critics were just too naïve to appreciate it. Imagine, suggesting that the house's lovely, old fashioned asparagus holder looked like a gynecological instrument.
The French can't even fire a banker for letting 7 billion euros slip away during his watch. And who can blame Ducasse for believing his rave notices.
Well, as Ducasse has himself exaulted, David Rockwell has given him a room that is like an intricate jewel by Faberge
Perhaps instead of focusing on defatting the classics and the purity of a turnip, he should let the chef give us a transcendent cuisine worthy of this rich, celebratory stage set. The desserts are always there. It shouldn't be that hard. What did I eat? See BITE on my website.
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The Homesick Deli
And now from the not yet sublime to the almost sublime. The Second Avenue Deli reborn as a sliver of itself, not on 
Second but on an inauspicious side street off Third (162 E. 33rd Street) is bittersweet for those of us who teethed on great rye bread with caraway seeds and ate corned beef sandwiches with root beer after the prom. A bravo for
Jeremy Lebewohl (nephew of founder Abe) for giving new life to the mushroom-barley soup-sour-pickles-stuffed derma culture. Learn why we shed a tear as we rip into our pastrami, tongue and coleslaw on rye..
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