The acclaimed and iconoclastic 32-year-old chef Paul Liebrandt is today the subject of a New York Times profile. The news: after years of working in restaurants all around the world, it seems as though the Zimbabwe-born, French and English-trained chef at Corton now considers New York City home. In its way, the article all but assures the dining public that because Liebrandt ♥ NY, his days of restless culinary experimentation are over (we certainly hope not). The article even ineluctably evokes the madcap memory of Papillon, a short-lived radical dining experience where Liebrandt once played Pinky and the Brain with pastry chef Will Goldfarb. That restaurant was all about courses like the one where guests were fuzzy handcuffed to their chairs while the dinner plates got all animated and Battlebots-like and fought each other to the death with whirring chainsaw forks. You were supposed to eat the victor.
Flash forward to 2009, and the more reserved Drew Nieporent/Paul Liebrandt collaboration called Corton has three NYT stars, and Liebrandt was named a Food & Wine Best New Chef 2009 a few weeks ago. There’s now talk of another Paul Liebrandt restaurant—a more casual place than Corton—opening sometime in the near future. First off, Liebrandt recently supplied The Feedbag with the following completely noncommittal, logic puzzle quote: “What I will say is yes, I can not comment on that. I will say that maybe at some point in the future we may or may not be doing that.”
Now, embedded in the today’s NYT article is the next big clue: “For the first time, he said, [Liebrandt] is thinking of settling down with a second restaurant, with simple food like ‘the perfect beef short rib.’” Note to Liebrandt: perfectly cooked short ribs are still perfect, arguably, even if they’re delivered tableside via pneumatic tubes, and pneumatic tubes happen to be very New York. Please?
