Printemps, the decadent Parisian retailer doling out luxury garments and goods since 1865, has branded itself with the tagline, “not a department store.” In appointing Gregory Gourdet as culinary director of its first New York outpost at One Wall Street, the high-fashion hub ensures its new fine dining restaurant, Maison Passerelle, is “not just another French meal.” Gourdet, who first rose to fame on Top Chef in 2015, has since won three consecutive James Beard Awards, including Best Chef, and opened a thriving Haitian restaurant in Portland, Oregon.
Maison Passerelle is situated on the first floor of a 50-story Art Deco landmark in the Financial District. It opened on April 17, nearly a month after Printemps debuted dressed in whimsical, aquatic glass installations on the first day of spring. While Maison Passerelle has some dishes one may expect to eat in a luxury Parisian department store in New York, such as a $52 lobster cocktail, splayed open and smothered in Creole cocktail sauce, and $150 steak frites, Gourdet doesn’t stay in the lines of static French fare. Instead, he colors outside old trade routes, infusing the menu with Haitian, Caribbean and African flavors.
Through cooking, creativity and first-hand knowledge as a second-generation Haitian-New Yorker, Gourdet celebrates the foodways of people who persevered through oppression, slavery and French colonization. The chef turns ingredients like sugarcane—symbolic of Haiti’s history and the successful rebellion of enslaved workers against French rule in 1804—into beautiful sauces draped over meats at one of France’s long-standing luxury shops.
Designed by Printemps’ architect Laura Gonzalez, the restaurant’s interior is a vivacious sea of emerald green and burnt orange. Like the rest of the store, it is maximalist and romantic, yet down to earth with leafy encaustic tile floors, natural wood accents and a stained glass wall. The only element that does feel like a department store is the lighting—more akin to a fitting room than an evening with a James Beard Award-winning chef like Gourdet.
When I arrived for my reservation on a Tuesday at 9 p.m., I scoured the packed tables to see if any were available in a spot with dimmer lighting. One section of booths near a gold Art Deco door leading to the Red Room was full. Luckily, two of the six fabric stools overlooking the open kitchen freed up in time for me to sink into a seat at the auburn marble and turquoise tile counter.
There, under a warmer yellow glow, Gourdet worked in the kitchen. His rhythmic tempo set the tone for the team, who tweezed pink pickled onions and curly herbs onto plates of fresh-seared seafood. While the crowd at Maison Passerelle felt excited and hungry for the latest tourist attraction fused for fast-paced, fashion-forward cities like Paris and New York, Gourdet was steady and purposeful. Seated below him, I felt relaxed, like I’d stepped off the passerelle (which translates to catwalk or bridge) and into his well-informed world of multicultural cooking, creativity and quiet wonder.
I began the meal with the creamy asparagus soup and a warm plantain bread loaf, served whole with cultured local and spicy plant butter ($16 and $14, respectively). I am partial to soups poured tableside, so that I can really familiarize myself with the ingredients I’ll be spooning up. In this one, a generous pile of blanched asparagus, grilled pickled cucumber, lump peekytoe crab meat and mint blossoms waited for the lively green liquid to stream down from a teapot spout. Gourdet, who moved coolly through the open chef’s kitchen checking dishes before they went out, lit up when talking about the mint blossoms, which I first mistook for chrysanthemum; the blossoms followed suit, lighting up the dish with their zingy, aromatic bite.
The duck leg confit, which Gourdet recommended as a personal favorite, is bathed in a cane syrup glaze and jus made from tamarind, an indigenous African fruit—melty-sweet like a date and encased in a thin, rustic shell. Priced at $72, the duck breast, sliced thin and served rare, is accompanied by a fall-off-the-bone drumstick with crisp skin that, when swiped through the syrupy brown sauce and bitten into, really steals the show. A petite pile of diced pineapple is a bright complement to the savory duck. However, the contrast of chilled fruit was a bit distracting, and I would have preferred it grilled to maximize the juiciness and keep a consistent temperature with each forkful.
Dishes like diri ak sos pwa, a recipe Gourdet learned from his mother, are yet another testament to how the chef honors his personal history at Printemps. The depth of flavor in this simple side reflects the generations who preserved African food traditions in Haiti and the Americas. Served in two separate bowls for $16, the rice is fragrant and buttery. The beans are not whole and peppered in, but a thick soupy mixture layered with spice. To top it off, Gourdet squeezes a drizzle of olive oil across the top, which adds earthiness to the comforting dish.
The citrus kampachi is served with smoked coconut milk, rhubarb and ginger-pickled jicama. The roasted farm chicken is rubbed in ras el hanout with harissa jus with soubise, green olive and preserved lemon. The vegetarian entrée, a plate of hearty white grilled asparagus served in a row, each at least an inch thick, is topped with dried tomato and ginger relish and Creole cream. The crispy-skinned ocean trout swims on a ripe plantain puree. And the salt cod fritters are an archetype of French Caribbean cuisine.
The cocktail and dessert lists salute the tropics with sweets such as a hibiscus-guava sorbet, shaved ginger-lime ice and mint, and a caramelized pineapple cake with fermented pineapple sorbet. The creamy kokoye punch is made with Glenlivet, rum, sherry, oolong tea and clarified coconut milk, while the Tamaren Royale is avua cachaça, pineau de Charentes, brown butter and tamarind. Cocktails range from $20 to $28. Wines by the glass and bottle lean heavily on French classics. Any questions on what to order—and take with you shopping, should you like–can be directed to the sommelier, who strides about the room in the Maison Passerelle khaki jumpsuit uniform so unassumingly it makes you want to order whatever he recommends.
Gourdet, alongside Kent Hospitality, created all five of Printemps’ F&B offerings. The all-day Café Jalu offers pastries and coffee to sip on intermittent shopping breaks; a champagne bar specializes in champagne and non-alcoholic elixirs; the Red Room bar, adjacent to Maison Passerelle and open until 11 p.m., unfurls into a sprawling Gaudi-esque tiled sanctuary of designer shoes; and the raw bar, Salon Vert, looks out onto the latest spring looks from Marni and other designers. Unlike Maison Passerelle, which is accessible from a separate entrance and operates after store hours from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m., the cafe and bars feel more like Printemps tourist attractions, than a celebration of Gourdet’s accomplishments. Maison Passerelle, however, is different.
Some may reserve a seat at Maison Passerelle because of the reputation that precedes Printemps’ fanciful shopping experience. But what makes a dinner here truly worthwhile is the attention Gourdet pours into his craft—defining, one diri ak sos pwa, what French-Haitian-Afro-Caribbean food can be.
