David Burke

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 25, 1999 by Andy Battaglia

Park Avenue Cafe's chef de cuisine, Neil Murphy, says he has learned from that undeniable, unpretentious quality.

"I remember working with David at River Cafe when Charlie Palmer had gone on vacation, and he wanted to serve a dish his own way," Murphy says. "I kept saying, 'No, Charlie doesn't do it that way.' But he wanted to serve the soft-shelled crab belly up, with its legs in the air, because he said it was 'sexier' that way. And it was."

As corporate chef for the New York Restaurant Group, Burke spends about 60 percent of his time in the kitchen at Park Avenue Cafe, which he calls "my baby." He devotes the rest of his time to overseeing the group's 10 other restaurants. And when not fiddling with, say, a new mashed potato doughnut for Smith & Wollensky, he says he's filling up legal pads with notes or spending time developing a television show to be called "Live to Eat" or tweaking the menu for Park Avenue Cafe's Americanized dim sum brunch or wondering how to persuade diners to eat soup with shark's fin and cocks' combs, the fleshy top to a rooster's head. Or, most of all, mulling around ideas for his aforementioned "dream restaurant," an as yet-unnamed small, intimate affair he and Stillman plan to open during 1999.

Burke says he would like his new restaurant to offer more creative high-end specialty dishes with only one seating per night, allowing diners to take a buggy ride through Central Park or take in some theater before dessert. Plans for that dessert include a roaming ice-cream cart with a waiter dressed as the Good Humor man holding cotton candy and a music box with sprinkles inside.

And then there is the elevated-table idea, which includes a table sitting atop the bar, as if on a stage. That would be a good vantage point from which to view the floating food helium balloons being tapped from one end of the room to the other.

"This is a project I've been sitting on for a while now," Burke says. "It will be sophisticated, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun. I like to pique people's interest and put a smile on their faces."

Name: David Burke

Title: corporate chef; executive chef

Concepts/Location: New York Restaurant Group; Park Avenue Cafe

Education: The Culinary Institute of America: Ecole Lenotre

Career highlights: sous chef at La Cremaillere, Baknsville, N.Y; executive chef at River Cafe, Brooklyn, N.Y; opening Park Avenue Cafe in New York and Chicago

Professional recognitions: won Meilleurs Ouvriers de France Diploma at the International Food Festival in Tokyo in 1988; named to National Advisory Committee of Chefs in America and voted "Chef of the Year" in 1991; received Robert Mondavi Culinary Award of Excellence in 1996; received Auggie Award from the Culinary Institute of America in 1996; received Five Diamond Award of Excellence from The American Academy of Hospitality Sciences in 1997; named" Chef of the Year" by The Vatel Club, 1998

Profound career inspiration: "Food itself inspired me with the never-ending learning game."

Biggest unrealized aspiration: "I would like to own and operate a world class inn."