Gourmet Magazine, November 1995

By Andy Birsh

In 1979 Karen and David Waltuck opened CHANTERELLE on an isolated corner in SoHo, a part of New York City then reaching ascendancy as a district for art dealers and stylish merchants. Mr. Waltuck was twenty-four that year, one of the youngest top-notch chef-proprietors the city has known. Now, as the restaurant turns sixteen, Mr. Waltuck turns forty. If he were one of the major artists who have made Chanterelle their favored destination for special meals, the occasion might call for a retrospective.

Interestingly, despite the restaurant’s association with things contemporary — menu covers have been created for the Waltucks by, among others, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Virgil Thomson, and, running currently, Allen Ginsberg — Chanterelle has stood apart from the twists and turns of culinary fashion. Indeed, the only big change by the restaurant in all this time was a move nearly seven years ago to the ground floor of the splendid former New York Mercantile Exchange (finished in 1884) in TriBeCa. The designer of the original SoHo space, Bill Katz, adapted the look of the spare chanterelle — hued dining room to the restaurant’s new location. Abundant daylight makes this one of the city’s most appealing midday escapes, and the relative quiet of night in the surrounding streets enhances the sense of cozy privacy here.

The Waltucks remain as involved with their restaurant as ever. Karen Waltuck manages the front of the house and additionally spends mornings refreshing a towering flower arrangement that is the dining room’s most striking adornment. Her husband oversees the kitchen and plans menus, which undergo drastic revision about every four weeks. In contrast, the classic white china, French silverplate flatware, and white napery on the tables have never needed rethinking.

The only dish Chanterelle unfailingly features is grilled seafood sausage — a first course — in beurre blanc studded with shallots. Sometimes the dominant taste is scallop, other times it is shrimp or lobster, but the casing is always taut and lightly browned and the contents juicy — a perfect sausage. This is the sort of accurate, proudly maintained, unaffected cooking for which the French provinces are famous.

By dint of hard work, David Waltuck has become one of America’s best chefs following that French tradition. His priorities are such, for instance, that, in those months when he offers braised free-range chicken, he starts with a superb bird and then butters and pampers it through its cooking until the meat is supremely moist and silky tender and the skin has a satisfying crackly finish. Having succeeded with this main topic, he then proceeds to some elaborations: a howering of softened garlic cloves and a bliss-inducing sauce of reduced stock, garlic, and verjus (juice pressed from unripened grapes). The plate is handsome but not flamboyant; the thrills are in the flavors.

These late fall weeks are auspicious for Chanterelle because Mr. Waltuck has both black French and white Italian truffles at hand, as well as game at its height. They usually figure in the six-course tasting menu that is the chef's suggested meal of the season, which might include preparations reminiscent of bygone kitchens — fillet of beef topped with beef marrow, for instance, or an outrageously rich pig’s foot “cake” that showcases fresh black truffles. The lighter end of the menu is generally taken up by such fish as Arctic char, perhaps napped with grapefruit butter.

One of Americas foremost sommeliers, Roger Dagorn helps Chanterelle evening guests select among the riches. A red wine of distinction is especially welcome, as the house sets forth one of the best cheese boards anywhere. The diversity and number of these cheeses are meant to overwhelm (just among chèvres, they come large or small, mild or strong, and often include a subtle Banon, characteristically wrapped in chestnut leaves, or ultracreamy Amalthee, made like Brie), but because all are superior, I let my curiosity guide my sampling.

Desserts at Chanterelle, whether an apparently innocent lemon mille-feuille with raspberries or a more obviously rich warm chocolate souffle cake with housemade vanilla ice cream, have flavors intense enough to rejuvenate a sated appetite. The little parade of elegant chocolates, cookies, and miniature pastries that later accompany coffee and digestifs is, on the other hand, too much of a good thing — some of the lustiest eaters I know have left them untouched or asked to have them wrapped.