The chef and owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant Le Bernardin on the future of fine dining in NYC — and what you can expect from the seafood menu after the pandemic
by Taylor Borden- NYC fine-dining establishment Le Bernardin closed its doors to customers after dinner on March 13.
- Eric Ripert, the chef and co-owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant, said the restaurant will "definitely" open back up by October at the latest.
- He predicts a slow opening with noticeable changes like a smaller staff and abbreviated menus.
- The restaurant industry is facing "an apocalypse" due to the coronavirus pandemic, and fine dining establishments are particularly at risk.
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On March 13, Michelin-starred restaurant Le Bernardin closed its doors after dinner as the pandemic spread across the US.
On the night of the closing, chef and co-owner Eric Ripert told Business Insider in a recent phone call, the restaurant employed 180 people.
The seafood restaurant, known as one of the best in the world and one of five NYC restaurants awarded a full three Michelin stars, was almost always at full capacity before the pandemic — 150 people — according to Ripert. "When we closed, things were not slow," he said.
Now, there are only four people in Le Bernardin's kitchen every day, and Ripert has eschewed takeout for charity. Every day, the skeleton staff whips up hundreds of meals for healthcare workers near the restaurant's Midtown Manhattan location in collaboration with World Central Kitchen, the Jose Andres-founded aid organization.
When asked about the restaurant's plans to reopen for regular dining service, Ripert said he's looking to the fall — "September or October at the latest."
"It's not going to be easy," he said, "but we are definitely reopening."
He noted there will be changes and limitations that will have to be addressed at the outset: how many diners can be in the restaurant, how many employees will be needed, how much space to put between tables, how to separate employees in the kitchen, and how to procure proper PPE for employees, for example.
However, one of the biggest changes Ripert forecasts is menu-related.
Expect to see abbreviated menus in high-end restaurants after the pandemic
Reopening will come with sacrifices, Ripert said, both in terms of menu size and staff size.
"We will probably have a smaller menu with less choice," Ripert said. A robust menu can only take shape with a complete staff.
"We're going to have to make some very big sacrifices at the beginning," Ripert added. "It would be foolish to think we would need the whole team for reopening."
Ripert predicts that menus could change as often as weekly, becoming even more seasonal. The change would allow the restaurant to only buy ingredients necessary to meet the restaurant's presumed minimized demand. The ingredients that are available at any given time will "basically dictate" dishes, Ripert noted.
Consider the restaurant's menu. There's caviar, tuna, and red snapper if you want your food served "almost raw"; scallops, sea trout, and lobster if you prefer your dish be "barely touched"; and Dover sole, monkfish, and halibut if you're looking for something "lightly cooked." And that's just a sampling of the restaurant's menu, where a three-course prix fixe runs for $93 and a four-course prix fixe is $165.
Those dishes, of course, are from the restaurant's pre-pandemic menu.
The chef has worked with one seafood vendor in Maine for years. Currently, that vendor only has 50% of the variety of seafood that he offers usually. That uncertainty makes it difficult to promise specialties like poached halibut, sautéed Dover sole, yellowfin tuna carpaccio, and striped bass tartare.
Le Bernardin will not 'become a bistro'
Ripert's outlook on the future of the industry over the next six months isn't exactly optimistic.
"I think we are going to suffer in the fall, definitely," he said. "Until the vaccine is efficient or we find a medication that works well with COVID-19, everything will be slow."
He also predicts a wave of closures in the industry. "Unfortunately, a lot of restaurants will not be able to reopen for many reasons," Ripert said, citing fine dining restaurants' slim profit margins. It's a prediction echoed by many experts: A UBS note from April, for example, predicted that one in five restaurants in the US could permanently close as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
When dining does open back up, Ripert predicts there's "going to be an evolution" — but that Le Bernardin will remain true to its core.
"Le Bernardin will remain fine dining," the chef said. "Of course, we're going to have to adapt — but Le Bernardin is not going to become a bistro when we reopen."
And while menus will change and seating layouts might look different, Ripert predicts that customers are still going to want the "special experience" of fine dining after the pandemic.
"It's the luxury of a dining room, the quality of service, the beauty of flowers — the details that make the experience different than just nurturing yourself," Ripert said. "It's supposed to be dreamy."