Le Pavillon is a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The restaurant is owned by the Dinex Group, a restaurant company led by chef and restaurateur

Daniel Boulud Daniel Boulud (born 25 March 1955 in Saint-Pierre-de-Chandieu) is a French chef and restaurateur with restaurants in New York City, Palm Beach, Miami, Toronto, Montréal, Singapore, the Bahamas, the Berkshires and Dubai. He is best known f ...

. Le Pavillon opened in May 2021 in One Vanderbilt, a skyscraper completed in 2020 in Midtown East.

History

The idea for a new Boulud restaurant at One Vanderbilt began around 2017, when the skyscraper's developer approached Boulud about opening a restaurant there. Le Pavillon opened on May 19, 2021, the same day New York allowed restaurants to open at full capacity after 14 months of restricted dining during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. At its opening, its executive chefs were Daniel Boulud, Michael Balboni, and William Nacev. The restaurant's initial opening is set to have limited reservations; its full opening will be on May 28.

Attributes

Le Pavillon is an restaurant. It is located on the second floor of the One Vanderbilt skyscraper, and has its own dedicated entrance. The restaurant faces Grand Central Terminal, which lies just across a pedestrian plaza, and the

Chrysler Building The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper on the East Side of Manhattan in New York City, at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. At , it is the tallest brick building in the world with a steel fra ...

, about a block to the east. The restaurant is focused towards local and seasonal products of farms and the sea, with only three dishes including meat or poultry on the first menu. Le Pavillon's dinner menu is a three-course, prix-fixe menu with a cost of $125, including "Oysters Vanderbilt", a play on

Oysters Rockefeller Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but not ...

. Its wine list has 650 bottles, assembled by Boulud's wine director Daniel Johnnes. The restaurant space is a glassy multi-story room, with ceilings up to . The room features a wall of trees and plants, including 20-foot olive trees; about half of the restaurant space is dedicated to flora. The 120-seat dining room has banquettes and chairs with neutral colors. The tables are left uncovered for lunch service and have pale linen tablecloths for dinner service. The restaurant's design was led by Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld, along with the architecture firm KPF. Weinfeld is known for adding natural elements to his works, and designed the restaurant as a mix of New York skyscraper elements and elements of

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated ...

. The restaurant also includes a bar and lounge area with seating for 46 guests, with an

à la carte In restaurants, ''à la carte'' (; )) is the practice of ordering individual dishes from a menu in a restaurant, as opposed to '' table d'hôte'', where a set menu is offered. It is an early 19th century loan from French meaning "according ...

menu. The bar has a hand-blown glass chandelier designed by sculptor Andy Paiko. Additionally, the restaurant has a "garden table", for guests to have special food and wine experiences led by guest chefs and winemakers. Le Pavillon is named for an earlier Midtown Manhattan restaurant, also named Le Pavillon. That restaurant first opened as part of the 1939 New York World's Fair, and formally opened in Midtown in 1941, where it was known to define French cuisine in the U.S. until owner

Henri Soulé Henri Soulé (1903, Bayonne, France –1966 New York City) was the proprietor of Le Pavillon and La Côte Basque restaurants in New York City. Soulé also operated The Hedges in Southampton, New York. He is credited with having “trained an en ...

's death in 1966. The name for the new restaurant also reflects its French meaning as a

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

, a park space to provide entertainment for visitors.

Reception

The restaurant received a significant amount of press at its opening. ''

The New York Post The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com. It was established ...

'' titled it "the most important new restaurant in New York City's history", while '' Town & Country'' called it the city's "most ambitious restaurant opening in years", and a sign that the city's dining scene is returning following the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pavillon, le 2021 establishments in New York City French restaurants in New York City Midtown Manhattan Restaurants established in 2021 Restaurants in Manhattan