again years later when it came time to design the restaurant and she shared images of some azulejos with her mother, Francine. “You can’t buy those,” Francine told her. Georgette protested that she had budgeted for them and they weren’t all that expensive. “No,” Francine pressed. “Your father bought Portuguese tiles 40 years ago in Lisbon. We never used them and they are sitting in a warehouse somewhere.” Georgette’s father was Alexander’s Department Store scion Alexander Farkas. “He always bought massive quantities of things, even if he wasn’t selling them in the store,” Georgette says. “He had bought crates of these tiles and sent them back to the U.S.” Alexander has since passed away, and the tiles moved several times, from warehouse to warehouse, but eventu- ally, Francine and Georgette tracked them down. Upon receiving them, Georgette noticed that they seemed to be parts of a mural. So she sat down and pieced them together like a puzzle. She was amazed by the image they formed: birds hanging to be cooked. “It was uncanny,” she says, still amazed by how perfectly they fit into her concept. A sign, perhaps, that she had ar- rived at her true calling. Her recently-realized vision had been in her mind’s periphery for most of her life. Georgette credits her mother Francine with instilling a love of hos- pitality. “She loved to entertain when I was growing up,” Georgette says. “It
BAR ROTISSERIE GEORGETTE
PHOTO BY MELISSA HOM
would chase me out of the kitchen. I would always come back and eventu- ally I was allowed to stay and look on. They did everything so perfectly and beautifully and impeccably that they put it in my mind that what you do when you grow up is go to Swiss Hotel School. Some kids wanted to be fire- men. I wanted to go to Swiss Hotel School.” And that she did, heading to Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne. (She also found the time to graduate Harvard University). After landing internships in the legendary kitchens of Alain Du- casse and Roger Vergé, Vergé introduced her to chef Daniel Boulud, who
ended up becoming her employer, but only briefly in the kitchen. Georgette went on to become Bou- lud’s Marketing Director for 17 years. “I’ve always believed that Daniel placed me in the communica- tions role specifically because of my operational and culinary experience, and perhaps because I wasn’t a ‘PR person,’” she says. Georgette credits her Boulud experience with giving her a “360-degree approach” to opening her own restaurant. In her transition from nearly two decades be- hind-the-scenes to front-of-the-house, Georgette Farkas has literally made a name for herself, emerg- ing as not only an exciting new restaurant, but as a hostess, a la Elaine Kaufman of Elaine’s, who is an essential part of the dining experience. Patrons at Rotisserie Georgette enjoy spotting the lady of the house as much as they savor their roast chickens. “I hesitated to put my own name on the restaurant,” Georgette admits. “But I thought that one of the
was something that she did to give a gift to people and she did it with such incredible style. It was personal, generous, homey and abundant.” The Farkas family also had homes in the south of France, so Georgette grew up steeped in Gallic culture, speaking French as comfortably as her native English. “There were places that we went to as a family that were very much an inspiration,” she recalls. “In France, when you are in a market town, there is always the rotisserie truck. You can smell it and your mouth just waters.” That idea of mouth-watering roast chicken is in- deed the centerpiece of Rotisserie Georgette, and it is incredibly hard to choose which preparation to order. Half birds arrive at the table in metal baskets with a choice of sauce: Provençal, hinted with lavender and garlic; Diable, sharp with tomato, tarragon and pa- prika; Grand Mere, a rich, salty blend of red wine, mushroom and bacon; and Chimichurri, accented with parsley, oregano, garlic and olive oil. The Poule
CHAD BRAUZE & GEORGETTE FARKAS
PHOTO BY M. HOM
things it would convey is that there is a person here who personally, individ- ually cares about everything happening. It didn’t occur to me the degree to which guests really associated with that and wanted to connect with that.” She pauses, and demures, as only the lovely Georgette I know can. “It just didn’t occur to me that…how can I say it?...that I would matter.” Rotisserie Georgette, 14 East 60 th St. 212/390-8060; rotisserieg.com Kathleen Squire’s current work appears in The Wall Street Journal, Saveur, Details, Cooking Light, Fodors.com, Zagat.com, National Geographic Traveler, The New York Daily News and The New York Post, among many other publications. Kathleen is also the co-author of The Coolhaus Ice Cream Book (Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin); the IACP award-winning, e-Cookbook, The Journey (Alta Editions); and she is the co-producer of the upcoming documentary America’s First Foodie: The Incredible Life of James Beard. *
Deluxe, a whole chicken for two, is especially luxurious, served with wild mushrooms and seared foie gras. Chef Chad Brauze’s skill, however, goes be- yond his poultry prowess, with a formidable cote de boeuf; a whole market fish; and a not-to-be-missed rotisserie lobster special. In a dining era when restaurants are competing to out-modernize each oth- er, there is something wonderfully back-to-basics about Rotisserie Georgette’s kitchen—amasterful combination of simplicity and luxury, where home cook- ingmeets special occasion feast.The restaurant has already earned a coveted two stars from The New York Times, where Pete Wells pointed out Farkas’s notable presence: “Rotisserie Georgette has a real rotisserie and a real Georgette, both easy to spot.” In his three-star review from the New York Post, Steve Cuozzo called Rotisserie Georgette, “Manhattan’s first great French-style rotisserie spot since short-lived Gascony-inspired D’Artagnan, way back in 2001.” It is all a testament to Farkas’s extreme competence, first bred in the home kitchen of her childhood, where her palate was influenced by French and Swiss cooks. “I adored them,” she says. “When I was five or six years old they
WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM 125
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter