Richard MartinTweets is WatchingOpen
It’s been a wild weekend at the opening of the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel in Miami, featuring a procession of celebrities that range from LeBron James to Brooke Shields to A-Rod. The “game room” consists of a 10,000-square-foot NBA-approved basketball court, a digitally simulated bowling alley and the mandatory state-of-the-art gym. But the New York-based, Lyon, France-born Chef Daniel Boulud isn’t interested in all this at the moment. Not because he’s hovering over his staff in the kitchen downstairs off the lobby at his new db Bistro Moderne, but because he’s swinging for the green in the lavishly appointed Jim McLean Indoor Golf School, pulling back his 9-iron and knocking a ball into a screen projecting a fairway. Unfortunately, Chef’s ball slices right, and he lets out a demure, “Oh damn” in his charming French accent before picking up his drink and heading back out to the opening-weekend festivities. The next day, Chef Boulud sits with us in the Yabu Pushelberg-designed lounge of db Bistro Moderne Miami, downing coffee after coffee and telling multiple callers on his BlackBerry that he’ll have to get back to them. Whoever said chefs were the new rock stars was slightly off when it comes to Boulud, who’s opening multiple restaurants in far-reaching locations (in 2011, we’re talking London, NYC, Miami and Singapore). Nope, the way he handles his business, our man Daniel is more like a rap star.
Life + Times: You and some other French chefs keep opening more and more brand extensions. You’ve got db Bistro Moderne, Bar Boulud, Daniel, DBGB and others; Jean-Georges Vongerichten has Jean Georges, Market, ABC Kitchen and more; Alain Ducasse has Benoit, Adour and miX among others. Are you in some kind of race?
Daniel Boulud: I don’t worry about the other guys and what brand extensions they have.
L+T: Your latest is Boulud Sud in Manhattan, opening early 2011. What’s that one?
DB: It’s a grill but it’s more of a Mediterranean restaurant. I’m joking, saying “no pork, no cream, no butter,” because I have done the bistro extended concept, like Bar Boulud is not a bar, Café Boulud is not a café, much more than that. And db Bistro is not just a basic bistro, it’s more than that. And so with that concept of a grill it’s going to be more than that. It’ll be a grill application in the preparation. Like Café de Paris in Monte Carlo, where they have the grill room. I mean the grill room in the old days was sort of the international brasserie feel. I like that.
L+T: You like to change things up. What was the story behind DBGB, your sausage and beer joint on the Bowery in downtown Manhattan, right near the old punk club CBGB?
DB: I always dream of making a diner, a French-American diner, and I was going to call it Paris Texas. Because there’s that little city in Texas called Paris, and in France if you think of America you think of Texas—they all wear cowboy boots and a hat, ha ha. And to have an American menu and a French menu side by side of really simple diner things. In France you eat mashed potatoes—pommes mousseline—and in America you have baked potato. And all the garnish—soupe a l’onion versus clam chowder. But that idea never really materialized. It might still be on the backburner. But going downtown, all my restaurants are very serious, I mean we try to be very professional in what we do at every level. We try to be very honest with what we do in terms of how much we charge for what we give and the quality and the creativity and the consistency. And the staff we invest into. I could run a restaurant with certainly five percent less payroll in it, but I think it wouldn’t be the same. So at DBGB we had to find a formula. I love sausage, and everywhere in the world I travel I always eat them: Dried, cooked, hot, cold, I try sausage. And so I wanted to come with this idea. I know how to master charcuterie, Bar Boulud and the different charcuterie we have, and so I asked my partner in Paris; I said we have to go out of France and go to Austria and Italy to Tunisia and Spain and Thailand—and we just made a Korean sausage. We have fun doing it.
L+T: Who came up with the Vermont dog?
DB: With the cheese inside! We were doing an Austrian sausage with smoked Emmantaler inside—we smoke the cheese and then after, we put it in the sausage. In Austria you eat those in the street with a beer. And so we thought cheddar—something a little sweeter, lighter, a little more American. That’s how we created the Vermont cheddar. But that was trying to make myself super-affordable. How can Daniel be Daniel and yet be affordable? So the sausage program really helped me with that.
L+T: What about the name? Are you a music fan?
DB: Of course! I arrived in NY in the early ’80s, so I would I would go to the Lower East Side and when we talk about ghetto, the LES was really ghetto. There were rows of houses totally disaffected—I don’t know how we did it, we didn’t have any cell phones— and we’d go to these house parties where they’d do it for the night and run away. And CBGB—
By Dana Leigh Smith & Stephen Perrine
These are the tasty ways to keep diabetes, weight gain, joint pain—and other age-related ailments—at bay.
Turning 45 isn’t what it used to be. Nowadays you could be halfway to 90 and still be a hipster icon like Jared Leto or Sofia Coppola, have shredded abs like Justin Theroux or Mark Wahlberg, or crack up the cool kids like Amy Poehler or Keegan-Michael Key. Each of these stars was born 45 years ago, but none of them strike us as anything close to “middle-aged.”
And there’s a good reason why: When you take care of your body by eating right, you prevent age-related weight gain—the number-one way to pump the breaks on the passage of time. And it’s not just about how you look; when you slow the aging process, you expand your future opportunities. In fact, a University of Florida study found that for women, gaining an additional 25 pounds—about what the average person gains between the ages of 20 and 45—results in a salary that’s $15,572 lower than those who keep their weight steady.
Plus, eating right now will prevent all the other tell-tale signs of aging, from doctor visits to senior moments. And while we recommend all 25 of these foods, some may be more game-changing for you than others. When food journalist Kelly Choi’s mother—a former nurse in Korea who knew the vast benefits of tea—was diagnosed with diabetes, she asked her daughter for help with developing a tea-focused cleanse. Choi stepped up and authored The 7-Day Flat-Belly Tea Cleanse, which not only helped her mom lose weight, but also brought her blood sugar under control. “My mom knew sip on this super drink, but a lot of people are still missing out,” Choi says. “If you’re over 45, you should definitely more of these foods and drinks like green tea into your daily routine.”
To keep your health, and your hipster cred, intact, the editors of Eat This, Not That! have identified tea and 24 more foods that are on the kitchen table of nearly every lean, fit, healthy 45+ star, and should be making an appearance on your daily menu, too. And once you see how easy it is to eat your way to a longer life, be sure to avoid these 20 Foods That Age You 20 Years!