There are six petite artichoke halves in the tart artichokes à la grecque I order at the bar of Le Veau d’Or, the recently refurbished Upper East Side bistro—and the oldest standing French restaurant in New York, once frequented by Hemingway, Marlene Dietrich, and Truman Capote. The rest of the dish is as glossy as the dining room’s walnut paneling: little pickled carrots cut into florets, button mushrooms with fluted caps, a single poached tomato, all delicately adorned with chervil. It’s a far cry from Gajadhar’s rowdy preparation at Le Dive, a perfect showcase of the vegetable’s versatility.
When I speak to Le Veau d’Or chef Lee Hanson, he reminisces about the whole artichoke vinaigrette he and his co-chef, Riad Nasr, used to make “back in the day at Pastis” (the chefs cooked together at the famed Meatpacking bistro). “Here, we wanted to be true to Le Veau d’Or’s original menus, which had always had mushrooms à la grecque or artichokes à la grecque.” But artichokes, Hanson says, are “a chef favorite.” What makes them a favorite? “Well, they’re a pain in the ass. Chefs gravitate to them because the home cook might think: I’m not dealing with that. But when you know the reward, it’s worth the hassle.”
Hanson removes all but the artichokes’ tender inner leaves and scoops out their fuzzy chokes. “We make a brine with lemon juice, lemon peels, garlic, fennel seed, coriander seed, toasted black peppercorns, white wine vinegar, water, and salt.” The artichokes are cooked in the brine, each in its own pot, until tender. (“Sometimes we’ve got six pots going.”) Hanson makes a vinaigrette from the cooking liquid, adding fresh lemon juice, olive oil, mint, shallots, herbs—a complicated preparation. But most of Le Veau’s menu is unabashedly rich. A meal of the sharp, pickled artichokes followed by a lamb gigot with coco beans, especially if accompanied, as mine is, by a 2022 La Soeur Cadette Bourgogne, would suit a teenage de’ Medici as well as a current-day food writer.
I leave Le Veau d’Or for my next artichoke. I’m trying to eat as many as I can, gathering my thistle buds while I may. My destination is the quarter mile of the West Village occupied by the restaurant dynasty of Rita Sodi and Jody Williams. The married chefs, one of whom is Italian, adore artichokes. “We love the ritual,” Williams tells me. “And the complexity of the artichoke—both flavor and preparation. It isn’t always obvious what to do with them; it’s something someone shows you.” As a young cook in Reggio Emilia and Rome, Williams says, she must have cleaned the equivalent of fields of artichokes. Now Sodi and Williams’s dominion includes Buvette, where one can order artichokes à la barigoule; I Sodi, where carciofi fritti appears on the menu; Bar Pisellino, where one can sip Cynar, the artichoke liqueur; and Via Carota, which has the distinction of offering the most artichokes in a single meal.
