When Printemps approached him to oversee food and beverage at their New York location, he knew there needed to be a French element to connect back to the brand’s Parisian roots. But he also knew that the city didn’t necessarily “need another French restaurant.” So what could he—and should he—bring to the table (quite literally), given he was trained in just about everything?
French-Haitian food would make sense given his own background. But he wanted to go beyond that, to “all the places around the world where French has been spoken or is spoken,” he says, from Afro-French countries to French Asian countries like Laos and Vietnam to even Louisiana. All of them have signature dishes that meld indigenous and French flavors, creating a truly original cuisine in the process. “It’s complicated,” he acknowledges of the cultural legacy he’s exploring.
He quickly got to work on the menu. There’s a creole cassoulet with sausage and chicken, as well as a cane syrup glazed duck with pineapple and tamarind jus. A dry-aged strip steak is rubbed in an organic Haitian coffee chili and spice mix. (Gourdet imports beans from a Haitian coffee company Cafe Kreyol, which he also uses in drinks and desserts, like his chocolate ganache.) And yes, there’s even his own take on sos pwa with a red kidney bean sauce. “Any opportunity to present the flavors of the diaspora are important to me,” he says. “Also, the opportunity to do so in a fine ding setting—that’s the setting this type of cuisine deserves to be in.”
