Pete Wells Praises Gluten Free Bread at Bouley

“Yes, the restaurant is trying to seduce you,” says New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells in his review of Bouley this week. While the restaurant isn’t new, it hasn’t been reviewed since 2009. Unlike Per Sé, Bouley is still good. The original location opened in 1987 across the street, and not much has changed. That’s a good thing.

bouley

No, Bouley is not trendy. Mr. Bouley doesn’t even seem aware that trends exist apart from those shooting through his own mind, of which there are more than anyone can count. Occasionally, these overlap with trends in the world outside.

That begins with two different types gluten-free bread:

Yes, they’re delicious. The black one is a little salty, earthy from buckwheat, crackling with walnuts, reminiscent of the seeded health breads of northern Europe, and wonderful as toast. The white one is a little sweet and speckled green with pistachios, slightly tropical-tasting from the coconut fiber that helps hold it together.

Wells says these two breads even better than their gluten-containing counterparts. This is, of course, shocking and a bit unsettling to us, but we’ll play ball. “Mr. Bouley takes paths nobody else is on, and walks farther along them than anybody else would,” says Wells.

There are times the restaurant falls flat, both with its food and its service. On certain occasions, the “chocolate frivolous” dessert was less than appealing, and sometimes servers forgot who ordered what.

But, when the food hits, it hits. He described a dish of “chicken baked in a sealed pot over hay and alfalfa” as being “something close to perfection,” and enjoyed Mailbu sea urchin:

For sure, the most dramatic dish in New York is the Malibu sea urchin in its spiky shell that looks like a medieval torture device. Inside is a layered composition of almond and soy milk; tofu; soy and vinegar; yuzu jelly and bursting orbs of salmon trout roe; creamy tongues of sea urchin under yuzu sorbet; and an olive-green spoonful of golden osetra caviar. Swooshed around it all is a puckering froth of green apple juice. Each bite is exciting in a different way.

The restaurant is eccentric, sure, and not always consistent, but Frank Bruni gave the restaurant three stars back in 2009, and in 2016, it retains each one.

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