Changes

Is there a more depressing sentence in the English language than “Times change, and we have to change with them”? Those were the words spoken to me last night when I asked the folks at Chanterelle whether the rumors were true that they were revamping the restaurant to add a bar, tear up the carpeting, and start serving small plates. It’s true. Tonight, August 15, is the last night Chanterelle will exist in its current format, which is just as I remember it from my first visit a decade ago, before New Yorkers became obsessed with “small plates.”

Chanterelle does real French cuisine, but not the stale variety that doomed creaky East Side institutions like La Côte Basque and Lespinasse. Roger Dagorn kept the wine list focused on Bordeaux and Burgundy standbys and a few French country wines, but delighted in curveballs like the occasional sake pairing. It’s fashionable these days for restaurants to tout fresh, seasonal ingredients, and that’s been the theme at Chanterelle forever, without descending into ingredient-worship of the sort where the waiter gives you the name, town, diet, and hobbies of the animal you are about to eat. Dishes are finished with rich, complex sauces. Meals are a civilized four or five courses, not marathon tasting menus that cause you to lose your appetite by the time the kitchen is done showing off.

The cheese course is essential—done the proper way by pointing to the cheeses you want on the board, rather than getting a few tiny slivers pre-selected by the kitchen with pointless fixings. And they’re stunning. Von Trapp Oma is Vermont’s answer to Reblechon or Abbaye de Citeaux, and I can’t wait to buy some for myself at Murray’s. But I have bought Tomme Crayeuse at Murray’s dozens of times, and none compared to the runny raw-milk one on Chanterelle’s board.

With Chanterelle abandoning this format, it’s probable that no one else in New York is doing it—and it’s certain that no one else in New York is doing it as well. And I feel terrible about it. I wouldn’t have been there yesterday if I didn’t know it was my last chance. The last time I got this maudlin about a restaurant I committed the following bit of sappiness, but it sums up even better how I feel today:

I think much of the appeal of these kinds of restaurants lies in their ability to become time capsules, impervious to changing trends and as comfortable as an old beloved sofa. We forgive the consequent quirks and take the rest for granted, putting off visiting when we know we should, like they’re old relatives, banking on the certainty that they’ll still be there for us, unchanged, when we find the time.

But I don’t go to restaurants all that much anymore, so I couldn’t have saved the place even if I’d tried. With a dog we can’t bear to leave home alone and a baby due in the fall, at the end of a long day it’s the comforts of home and my own kitchen I tend to crave more than a meal at a restaurant, even a great one. Times change, and we change with them; fortunately that’s not always a sad thing.