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Best Chefs 2003

REASON TO MOVE TO THE UPPER WEST SIDE— PART TWO
Tom Valenti
’Cesca
It’s one thing for Tom Valenti to have given the Upper West Side the great gift of Ouest. But now with ’Cesca only a lamb shank’s toss away, East Siders and downtowners are beginning to feel neglected. The warm, glowing room with its laid-back bar and cheery open kitchen is the type that makes everyone feel instantly at home. And was there ever a doubt that Valenti’s gutsy, stylish take on southern Italian would be anything less than revelatory? The answer is in the hordes clamoring for a taste of wood-oven-roasted sardines with soft egg, and lush potato gnocchi with braised duck and crisp garlic. “I don’t want to say this too loud,” Valenti confides, “but a lot of my regular customers from Ouest have come up to me and quietly said, ‘We like this even more.’ ” Who’d have thought that living outside the baby-stroller zone would ever be considered a culinary handicap? Thanks to Valenti, that day has arrived..

Try this: Tom Valenti’s Meatloaf with Mushroom Sauce

CARRYING THE HAUTE-FRENCH FLAME
Gabriel Kreuther
Atelier
Is it any wonder that Gabriel Kreuther has made a resounding splash at Atelier, the elegantly subdued, ultracivilized restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton? The Alsatian chef wasn’t exactly plucked from obscurity, after all, but from nearby Jean Georges, where he’d spent two years as chef de cuisine. The pedigree shows in his food, which has only gotten better and better, its modern-French focus enlivened by an emphasis on exotic herbs and gossamer sauces. Kreuther doesn’t stint on luxury—big spenders can gobble caviar and gorge on foie gras to their heart’s discontent—but he revels in unexpected combinations and eye-catching presentations, like the Muscovy duck that arrives encased in clay, only to be whisked away, precisely plated, and moistened with an intoxicating jus. With the occasional rustic touch puncturing all that refinement— a crayfish-and-wild-mushroom “bakeoffe,” a sort of lidless Alsatian potpie—he scores points for not forgetting his roots, just embellishing them.

HOMECOMING KING
Gary Robins
The Biltmore Room
Gary Robins is a great chef, but he’s also a bit of a tease. After making an inventive Asian-inflected name for himself at Aja in the mid-nineties, he abruptly embarked on a game of musical kitchens, ricocheting from Match to Mi, from Miami to L.A., global spice rack in tow and despondent diners in his wake. When we heard he was returning to town to open the Biltmore Room, our enthusiasm was tempered by more than a touch of skepticism. Would he last? Would it work out this time? And most important, would we get another crack at his luscious noodle-wrapped prawns with mango-mint salsa, or his chili-tinged, miso-marinated black cod? The answer, so far, seems to be a resounding yes on all counts. The wayward chef has dug in his heels—so he says—the only foreseeable change being on his menu (less Asian, more European, but still embracing equatorial flavors). “I’d love it if we were here for twenty years,” says Robins, on the brink of doing the unthinkable: settling in.

MEXICAN REVOLUTIONARY
Richard Sandoval
Pampano
Call Richard Sandoval a reluctant, if accomplished, Mexican chef. Born in Mexico City and trained at the Culinary Institute of America, he returned to Acapulco to open a restaurant. An Italian restaurant. Then he moved to New York to launch Savann, an Asian-accented French-American bistro. Finally, all the culinary wanderlust out of his system, he embraced his roots at Maya, where he couldn’t resist fusing sophisticated French technique with authentic Mexican flavors, painting plates with flavored oils and quashing culinary stereotypes. But at Pampano, Sandoval’s reinvention of Plácido Domingo’s beleaguered midtown restaurant, the chef wholeheartedly embraces the taste memories of his Acapulco boyhood. His seafood-centric menu is an elegant, exuberant celebration of a side of Mexican cooking seldom seen before—coastal, modern, and refined. Lobster tacos and red-snapper quesadillas are Sandoval’s bright idea of street food, octopus is glazed with ancho chile, and swordfish is smoked and turned into a dip compelling enough to render guacamole irrelevant.