Jean Georges: New York

Nation's Restaurant News, May 24, 2004 by Paul Frumkin

Restaurant and guidebook publisher Tim Zagat sounds mildly frustrated with himself when he talks about Jean Georges.

"I eat there all the time," admits Zagat, whose offices are about a five-minute walk across New York's Columbus Circle to Trump International Hotel & Tower, home of the 7-year-old restaurant. "And I shouldn't be doing that. I should be out trying to see as many new restaurants as possible."

But, he adds by way of justification, "The restaurant is just fantastic."

Years before the sprawling Times Warner Center focused the dining public's line of sight on the Columbus Circle area, Jean Georges was an international destination. Named for its creative chef and co-owner, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the small, gemlike restaurant has dazzled critics and diners alike since it opened its doors.

Owned by the Alsatian-born Vongerichten with partners Phil Suarez and Bob Giraldi, the $13.5 million-grossing restaurant was already at the epicenter of Manhattan's culinary cosmos within weeks of its March 1997 debut. Ruth Reichl, then the restaurant critic for The New York Times and current editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, bestowed the paper's highest rating on it and declared that "Jean-Georges Vongerichten is creating a restaurant revolution. This is an entirely new kind of restaurant."

Esquire magazine's John Marian named Vongerichten Chef of the Year in 1997, based on his performance at the new restaurant, and People magazine crowned him the "toque of the town." The Zagat Survey called the restaurant "1997's Best Newcomer" and proclaimed, "You'll taste flavors you never knew existed."

And in the years since Jean Georges opened it apparently has lost none of its luster. The influential, luxury-class restaurant has managed to remain on everybody's "best" list while continuing to extend the boundaries of culinary artistry. The most recent Zagat Survey awarded it 28 points out of 30 for food, placing it on the same top rung of Manhattan's gastronomic ladder as Bouley, Daniel, Le Bernardin and Nobu.

Even Jean Georges' powerful and hard-to-please landlord, Donald J. Trump, is a fan. Commenting on the restaurant's induction into the Nation's Restaurant News Fine Dining Hall of Fame, "the Donald" said: "Jean-Georges is a brilliant chef. I am happy that his five-star restaurant is located in our luxury hotel, Trump International Hotel & Tower, and I am very happy that Jean-Georges has been elected to the Restaurant Hall of Fame. He well deserves this recognition."

Remarkably, Jean Georges is only one facet of an expanding and globally prominent fine-dining empire that embraces a diverse range of culinary styles. The $50-plus-million Jean-Georges Management not only has proved to be a vital force in the Manhattan dining scene with such restaurants as Jean Georges, Vong, JoJo, 66 and Spice Market but also operates top restaurants in other cities around the country, including Chicago, Houston and Las Vegas.

Nor is the JGM restaurant machine showing any signs of slowing down. In April the company opened a variation on its flagship, Jean Georges, in Shanghai, China. A couple of weeks after that, it debuted V, a modern steakhouse, in the Time Warner Center just across the street from Jean Georges.

Apart from the 16 restaurants gathered under the Jean-Georges Management umbrella, Vongerichten operates Dune on Paradise Island in the Bahamas and Market in Paris, while Suarez runs Patria in New York as solo projects. Nevertheless, working together, the pair has helped to reshape the New York fine-dining scene since they teamed up in 1990.

At that time the then-33-year-old Vongerichten--the former protege of the critically acclaimed French chef Louis Outhier--had cooked in restaurants in Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, Portugal and Great Britain. He moved to New York in the summer of 1986 to run the kitchen at the Lafayette restaurant in the Drake Swissotel, whose management had entered into a consulting contract with Outhier. Within 18 months Vongerichten's skillful and innovative style of cooking would win the hotel restaurant four stars from The New York Times.

While Vongerichten was at the Lafayette, his cooking began to reveal the intensely creative and assimilative elements that eventually would become the hallmark of all of his restaurants. For example, he was among the first in New York in the late 1980s to introduce flavored oils and vegetable juices to the professional culinary palate.

Wylie Dufresne, chef and co-owner of WD-50 in New York and a former chef at JoJo, Prime and Jean Georges, called those innovations "still as valid today as they were 15 years ago. They still influence young chefs."

However, after four years at Lafayette, Vongerichten admitted to needing a new challenge. He approached Suarez, with whom he had consulted briefly at Brandywine d'Alsace, one of Suarez's earlier New York ventures.

"He was ready to move on," recalls Suarez, who at the time was a partner in a commercial filmmaking company with Giraldi, who had directed, among other things, Michael Jackson's groundbreaking video, "Beat It." "Jean-Georges asked me if I would be interested in joining him and starting a new place. And I said, 'In a heartbeat.'"