The worst-kept secret in the restaurant business is finally out today: Drew Nieporent and Paul Liebrandt announced their endlessly rumored joint venture, Corton, to the Times. The major speculation about Corton (in the old Montrachet space, at 239 West Broadway) had been whether Liebrandt, known for his molecular-gastronomy bag of tricks, would succeed in finally selling New York on deconstructed food. But Liebrandt says he just wants to do some good cooking: “My food is not El Bulli–esque,” the chef says, swearing off the world capital of the geek-gourmet movement. The dishes that he's released to the paper seem to back this up: Brandt beef with fondant potatoes, cobia with sea urchin and black olives, and “a mélange of seasonal vegetables.,” As if to underscore its unthreatening, un-molecular nature, Nieporent tells the Times, “Paul’s food is very refined, but it’s also satisfying.” Having eaten it, we agree. But whether Liebrandt's wings will be clipped entirely is still a matter of speculation — until Corton opens in August.

New Life, New Name, and a New Chef for Montrachet [NYT]
Related: Liebrandt and Nieporent, Sitting in a Tree…

Is it just us, or has the entire city turned aesthetically schizophrenic? How can the forces of anti–fine dining, led by David Chang, be at the forefront of gastronomy, while, uptown, restaurants like Eighty One, Dovetail, and South Gate are springing up like ramps, avatars of a genre supposedly half buried in the proverbial potter’s field? As Florence Fabricant writes in the Times today, haute Greenmarket hegemony continues to hold sway, and yet here come Benoit, Bar Boulud, and Bouley’s new French project resurrecting blanquette de veau and lobster thermidor. Is there some key to understanding the city’s culinary Zeitgeist right now? Or is this just a period of historic fecundity and instability, like the Roman empire after the death of Augustus? Either way, it adds up to a lot of very different, and very good, restaurants. Maybe New York will never have a single ruling spirit again, but rather a confederacy of aesthetics. If so, we could live with that. As long as lobster thermidor is in there somewhere.

There’ll Always Be a France, Especially in New York [NYT]

Anyone that shares our morbid attachment to old-school French restaurants will be pleased at the news, reported by Gael Greene, that the owner of Le Madeleine may be taking over the space recently vacated by Rene Pujol. According to Gael, “there are still a few loose threads — investors to commit, the lease to negotiate,” but most of the Madeleine staff will be sticking with Toney Edwards, who ran the place for 28 years before losing the lease a few months ago. The two restaurants were similar in spirit during their long coexistence, and so the move makes a lot of sense — like Buddy Hackett replacing Jack Carter at a Friar’s roast, or salmon filling in for chicken at a wedding dinner.

Short Order [Insatiable Critic]

Related: René Pujol Closes, Victim of the Times (and Theater Strike)

File this under the It Was Bound to Happen Department if you must, but we still feel bad about it: Theater-district mainstay René Pujol, which served heavy French food to happy customers for more than 30 years, went out of business Sunday. “We needed a strong fall, and it was a little weaker than we hoped, and the Broadway strike really hurt us,” explains executive chef Vincent Purdy. “We were an established, mature business, but Sunday was our last night.” Purdy and René Pujol’s other employees ran the restaurant as a cooperative for three years, and such arrangements tend to ward off potential backers. We have lost yet another one of the formal, conservative, vaguely geriatric French restaurants that used to dominate midtown.

Related: Marxist Meals Served at Co-op Eateries

Here’s what we know about the departure of Didier Virot from FR.OG. The fact that he’s gone and the restaurant is still there may just prove something we had heard and only half-believed: that the chef was in fact an employee and not a partner. A source tells us that that the restaurant had been struggling (not helped by its name, which every food writer with an Internet connection had sport with). Rather than just close shop – a real consideration, we’re told — owner Philip Kirsh let the chef, who made a very significant salary, go to his next job, a cushy gig at the Palm Court. Currently, the menu is being produced by the line cooks. Efforts to reach Virot haven’t been successful, but should he be up for talking about the endgame at FR.OG, we’ll let you know the score.

Leaping From FR.OG [NYT]

We’ve heard that mixed in with the usual assortment of line cooks, caterers, and wannabes on Top Chef’s next season will be a bona fide NYC cook: Joe Paulino, top banana at Café des Artistes. A restaurant manager claimed to be “in shock” when we asked him to confirm that Paulino will be a contestant — Bravo no doubt swears everyone to secrecy — but he admitted that executive sous-chef Kelvin Fernandez is running the kitchen while Paulino is on “vacation”; meanwhile, a lower-level employee told us he knew all about Paulino's being on Top Chef. (The Bravo publicist we spoke to asked if she could call us back later.) Looks like we’ve already got a favorite.